Chapter 30 Thirty
Chapter 30 Thirty
Ethan
The hotel bar was nearly empty at midnight, just a few exhausted students scattered across the dark leather booths and a tired-looking bartender wiping down the counter, I had been sitting on the same stool for almost two hours nursing a whiskey that had gone from amber to pale as the ice melted and diluted everything I was trying to drown. I was not even sure why I was still here, why I had not just gone upstairs to pack my suitcase like everyone else, but something kept me glued to this seat with my fourth or fifth drink in my hand and my eyes fixed on the dark liquid swirling around the glass, I wasn't ready yet to face going upstairs and being alone with my thoughts of Zara Lennox.
The convention was over, three days of seeing her from across the convention crowded rooms and pretending to care about the ongoing discussions and academic papers when all I could think about was the way she looked at me, like I was anything more than an annoyance she wished would just disappear. I had spent months trying to get her attention, months of texting her and asking her out and showing up in places where I knew she would be, and she had rejected me every single time, called me a freak and a stalker and told me to leave her alone, and now I knew why, now I knew that she had been fucking Professor Kane this whole time.
I was so lost in my own head, so deep in the spiral of anger and rejection that I did not notice the woman approaching until she was already sliding onto the stool next to mine. I turned my head and found myself staring at a pair of sharp blue eyes set in a face that was pretty with blonde hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail I had no idea who she was or why she was sitting next to me or what she wanted, but something about the way she was looking at me made my skin prickle with unease.
"Buy me a drink?" she asked, not waiting for an answer before signaling the bartender and ordering whiskey neat, the good stuff, I blinked at her, trying to place her face, trying to remember if I had seen her before.
"Do I know you?" I asked, my voice came out rougher than I intended, rougher than I wanted, I had been drinking for hours and my tongue felt thick and my brain slow. I did not like the way she was looking at me.
"No," she said, taking a slow sip of her whiskey, her eyes never left my face or gave me any clue about what she was thinking or why she had chosen to sit next to me instead of any of the other lonely souls scattered around this bar. "But I know who you are, Ethan Caldwell. I have seen you watching her all weekend like a starving person watches a feast through a window they cannot break... that's the way you've been watching Zara Lennox and I figured out why"
My blood went cold and I set the drink down on the bar because my hand had started to shake and I did not want her to see it, did not want her to know that she had hit a nerve, that she had named the thing I had been trying so hard to hide from everyone who knew me. "I do not know what the fuck you are talking about," I said, but my voice came out flat even I could hear the lie in it, could hear how weak it sounded.
She smiled then, "You do not have to pretend with me, Ethan, I am not here to judge you or mock you or report you to anyone, I am here because I think we might be able to help each other, because I have been watching someone too, someone who has been spending a lot of time with Zara Lennox, someone I want for myself, and I have a feeling that what you want and what I want are two sides of the same coin."
I stared at her, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, I tried to figure out if this was some kind of trap, some kind of test, some kind of elaborate cruelty designed to give me hope and then rip it away like everything else in my life had been ripped away. "Who are you?" I asked, my voice was barely a whisper now.
"My name is Becca Halloway, I am in the graduate program for political theory, and I have been watching Professor Darren Kane for long to know that he is currently sleeping with a certain dark-haired undergraduate who has been rejecting you for months. I also have been watching you, Ethan...watching you follow her around this convention like a shadow and then I realized that we are not enemies, we are allies, because we want the same thing which is for Zara and Kane to stop being together so that we can step into the spaces they leave behind."
I opened my mouth to deny it, to tell her she was crazy, to push her away and go back to my drink and pretend this conversation had never happened, but the words would not come because she was not wrong, she was not crazy, she was offering me something I had not dared to hope for, which was a chance to finally do something instead of just waiting and aching.
"What exactly are you proposing?" I asked, and my voice came out calm this time.
Becca smiled again, this time there was something hungry in her eyes that looked back at me from the mirror every morning. "I am proposing that we work together and we share what we know. We watch them together and gather enough evidence to make them nervous, and then when the time is right we remind them that secrets have a way of coming out no matter how carefully you hide them, then we give them a choice, which is that they end things with each other or we end things for them, and once they are apart and broken and vulnerable, you can be there for Zara and I can be there for Kane, and everyone finally gets what they deserve after all this time."
This idea was way better than killing her actually... I never thought of this because I didn't have proof of them fucking...but this, having an alliance with someone else sounds like a good plan.
"Okay," I said, picking up my glass and lifting it toward hers. "I am in."
Becca clinked her glass against mine, the sound rang out in the quiet bar like a threat.
"To getting what we deserve," she said.
"To getting what we deserve," I echoed, and we drank, the ice had melted completely now, leaving only warm whiskey and colder intentions behind...if this plan doesn't work then I cheers to your death Zara Lennox.