Just Friends (29 page)

“That’s for me to know, and you to find out.” Ethan replied.

I shook my head in disbelief, and wandered into the kitchen after gazing upon its magnificence. There’s no way that tree could have fit into the elevator. It must’ve been fifteen feet high.

“We’ll decorate it later, we need to get decorations first. I figured you’d want to go shopping with me for decorations.” Ethan said as I sat on the sofa, observing the tree while eating our breakfast. He was wearing his lovely bird tie today. A dark navy tie, with a pattern of white birds on it. However, they’re not proper birds. Can you remember drawing at school, instead of drawing a seagull or a bird, you’d draw a funny styled tick? Like the tick you would use to mark someone’s question correctly on a paper? The tie had those ticks on it anyway, showing them as birds. I bought Ethan this tie for our tenth Christmas together.

Later on, Max and Eleanor and Ethan and I all went shopping for Christmas tree decorations. Since Eleanor has lived here longer than us she knew all the handy places to get all the required essentials from. We bought several boxes of lights, and a cute little, huge star to go on top of the tree. We found loads of boxes of nutcrackers and snowflakes, the typical Christmas tree decorations. We didn’t have a colour scheme, we just chose the coolest looking decorations. My favourite was the small snow globe you can hang on your tree. Inside, Santa and his reindeer are flying over a village. So cute! I kept it aside and left it until every other decoration had been hung up since it was easily breakable. Ethan bought some funny styled Christmas jumpers to wear while we decorated our tree. Ethan’s had a big snowman on the front with googley eyes, and mine had a Christmas tree on the front with little tiny bells hanging from it. Ethan thought it would be funny to buy me a jumper that’s six sizes too big for me. So the jumper pretty much covered my knees and the arms almost touched the floor. Ethan threw me onto his shoulders to try and place the star on top of the tree. But we failed because we were too busy laughing at one another. We hadn’t thought it through. I was still a few feet away from reaching it, too. So the star, unfortunately, didn’t make it to the top of the tree. We placed it on the mantelpiece instead.

December 20
th

A
s I lay in bed this morning the floor below me started to vibrate. Like a booming noise, shaking the whole room in a repeated pattern. I threw my dressing gown on and rushed downstairs. Ethan had discovered the surround sound button for the music system, but didn’t know how to turn it off. He was wincing with his fingers in his ears. “Sorry!” He was wearing his coffee beans tie I bought him for his twelfth birthday. I rolled my eyes at him, snatched the remote off him and turned the music down.

“I didn’t know we had that.” He said, removing his fingers from his ears. He examined the remote with great wonder, and skipped through the songs, stopping on a song,
Elvis Presley
–
Can’t Help Falling In Love
–
one of Ethan’s favourite songs. I rolled my eyes at him when he grabbed my hands and began to sway. He raised my right hand, placing it into his shoulder. Linking his right hand with my left, he lowered his left hand onto the small of my back, smirking in amusement as I tripped over his feet. He lifted me off the ground and slotted my feet on top of his. “That’s better.” He whispered as we gracefully swayed around the living room. I blushed as he moved his arms around my waist, to which I joined my hands at the back of his neck.

“You have bad morning breath.” He said as we gazed into each others eyes.

“Oh shut up! Where did you learn to dance?”

“I took dance lessons for prom.”

I looked into his eyes as he looked beyond me, focusing on his steps. I was a second away from grabbing him and kissing him. “Ethan that is the sweetest thing I have ever heard.” I replied, tightening my hands around his neck.

“Being August Bishops prom date was a big deal, I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

This was possibly the most romantic gesture I had ever heard. I don’t know what came over me. I was leaning in to kiss him. I really was.

Then a knock came at the door, breaking our trance. Whoever it was on the other side I may attack. Ethan walked over to reveal Max.

“I was walking by and I remembered I left my rubber duck radio in your shower, so I thought I’d collect it,” Max said.

Ethan laughed and turned to me to see if I found it as funny as him. I forced a fake smile, but quickly returned to my
poop
stare at Max.

Ethan ventured upstairs to retrieve Max’s stupid radio duck. Meanwhile I wandered over to Max and punched his arm.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

“I was about to kiss him you moron! And you bloody interrupted for a radio duck. Are you kidding me?” Some swear words may have been replaced with non swear words in that sentence, but I can neither confirm nor deny I said such things.

“I won’t disturb you with my radio duck issues anymore.” Max smirked.

“Better not.” I snarled with glaring eyes.

Ethan returned and handed Max his stupid radio duck. And I slammed the door on him before he could say another word.

December 21
st

O
f all times for Ethan to plan a last minute trip to Miami to meet Natasha, he had to choose today. Of course I’m jealous, it’s a natural thing for me to feel. It’s his relationship with Eleanor all over again. I tried to not let it bother me, still, it constantly toyed with my mind. The TV even appeared to be against me, repeating all of Ethan’s shows ahead of Christmas Eve. Then the next channel was repeating episodes of Patrick Miller’s show. So, I popped over to Max and Eleanor’s. I hadn’t discussed my schedule recently with Max, and was hoping a few more movie roles had come along to attract my interest.

“My first article will be in next weeks magazine,” Max said as he passed me my cup of tea.

“Great work Max, congratulations!”

“Can I speak to August alone for a moment, Max?” Eleanor asked, raising her eyebrows.

It concerned me because I was certain I’d done something wrong although I wasn’t sure what, and I’d only been here two minutes.

“Oh, ok. I’ll go…. and buy you some flowers from across the road.” He replied, swiftly leaving the apartment.

Eleanor sat beside me on the sofa, almost knee to knee. “August, I know.”

“Know what?” I replied, my voice shaking.

She squinted, “About Ethan and the crash.”

I dropped my sight to the floor. “I thought he would’ve told you when you saw his scars.” It surprised me that he didn’t tell Eleanor about the crash, his scars are hardly discreet.

“He told me it was a sporting injury, I don’t know I didn’t want to upset him, so I avoided mentioning it.”

Max obviously broke the news to Eleanor, I still was unsure how much she knew. Did she know his heart stopped?

“What else do you know about the crash?” I asked.

Her eyes suddenly darted at me with a look of sorrow.

“Oh.” Her response wasn’t required.

“I know it’s a hard subject, but I wanted to speak to you and see how you were doing? Does it still bother you?”

I took a sip from my tea. It was too hot, so I placed it straight back down.

“It plays on my mind now and again.” I replied.

She hugged me and rubbed my back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head on her shoulder.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded my head on her shoulder.

“Why do I feel so guilty?” I asked in a weirdly exhausted voice.

“I don’t know August, its one of those things you can’t change and you have to accept that.”

Our hug parted, “I know,” I replied, “I know.” I stared at my tea and sighed.

“You love him, don’t you?” She asked.

Without thinking I nodded. After a few seconds I realised what I had admitted and I glanced up sharply. Eleanor smiled, not a happy or sad one. Just an understanding one.

“He loves you, too.” She said.

“How do you know?” I breathed, trying to not let it show that my heart was dancing.

“It’s the way he looks at you. Every girl dreams of being looked at like the way he looks at you. Even me when I was with him. You just never catch him when he does.”

December 22
nd

M
ax messaged this morning saying there was an interesting article in the newspaper about Ethan. So I bought a newspaper, expecting to see a photo of him with Natasha, kissing and holding hands along the beach.

ETHAN KNIGHT, GENTLEMAN.

My work is built around phone calls. Phoning up the latest celebrities and interview them because everyone wants to know what he or she are doing. This month’s hot topic for me was Ethan Knight, the magician everyone is talking about. Strangely on this occasion, a phone call wouldn’t help me. Ethan Knight was unreachable, maybe because he’s a magician, or maybe he doesn’t like to be disturbed. Either way, this required me to find him and speak to him in person. Verging me on the cliff of becoming more like a paparazzi than a writer. Nevertheless, I set off in pursuit of him after hearing he was in Miami. He wasn’t hard to find. I encountered him helping an elderly woman carry her shopping home. A sincere gesture of good will, regardless of his stature. I walked beside him and introduced myself, he knew who I was and we walked and talked about his upcoming appearance on Patrick Miller’s chat show, and his successful TV Series. The elderly woman’s name was Jean, a very polite and lovely lady. After five minutes, Ethan stopped, and placed down the shopping in his hands. He asked me how much I made a year and if I had a family. Surprised, I answered his query and asked why he wanted to know. He reached his into jacket pocket and wrote me a check for two years wages. “Go and be with your family, take a break, go on holiday. Before you know it, you’ll be paying for their tuitions, and they’ll be gone. Spending time with your family is far more important than walking beside me helping this lady carry her shopping home. I’d give anything to spend Christmas with my family.” He said. He slipped the check into my pocket and continued on his way with Jean, and her shopping. This kid is nineteen years old, nineteen, and wrote me a check for two years wages. Bearing in mind he has never met me before. But he couldn’t have been more right, family is the most important thing in the world. And as I click send on the email with this file attached, I’m currently sipping a glass of wine with my wife as I watch my children run around on the beach in Portugal. I guess what I’m trying to say is, Ethan Knight, Thank you.