Our Anniversary Trip Was Their Repeat Trip Chapter 02

Our Anniversary Trip Was Their Repeat Trip Chapter 02

But we didn’t go back.

The world was full of coincidences.

For example, just as we were about to leave, we ran into Olivia and several friends she and Ethan had known back in college.

Ethan didn’t introduce me. Their eyes passed over me without much interest.

Two people became a group.

Before long, Ethan and Olivia were walking at the front, speaking in low voices.

Without asking me, they decided we would finish the southern half of Highway 1 together.

Their arms brushed against each other now and then as they talked.

I fell behind, and Ethan never once looked back.

He only noticed someone was missing when Olivia had already climbed into the passenger seat and he was about to start the car.

He rolled down the window.

“Why are you taking so long?”

“You sit in the back. Olivia gets carsick, so she needs the front seat.”

They were both so natural about it, as if years of habit had taken over without either of them thinking.

The car filled with Olivia’s perfume, a clean, unisex scent that happened to be one of Ethan’s favorites.

I opened the back window and let the wind clear the scent from the car.

Olivia looked at me through the rearview mirror and smiled.

“Did you two go whale-watching?”

She didn’t even wait for my answer before turning her head toward Ethan with a smile.

“Do you remember? We got so lucky both times we came. We saw whole pods of whales.”

Ethan said he remembered.

“I remember. I told you to wear something warmer, but you wouldn’t listen. Your face turned white from the cold.”

They talked about how the places along the route had changed and what had been happening in their lives.

There was no room for me in the conversation. I kept looking out the window and let the back seat grow dim and silent with the evening sky.

They had reserved an outdoor restaurant for dinner.

When I got out of the car, the beaded bracelet Ethan and I had bought on our first day of the trip snapped around my wrist, and the beads scattered across the ground.

I crouched down to pick them up.

“Ethan.”

I called his name three times.

He didn’t hear me. He was walking shoulder to shoulder with Olivia, head lowered as he listened to her talk.

By the time I reached the table, the only seat left for me was the one tucked away in the corner.

Ethan and Olivia sat together. The server assumed they were the couple celebrating an anniversary and brought over a chocolate lava cake.

She congratulated them at length, and people at the neighboring tables joined in with cheers.

Neither of them corrected her. They just smiled and thanked everyone.

I felt like an awkward piece jutting out of someone else’s picture.

“Ethan, aren’t we the ones celebrating an anniversary?”

“Or did the two of you get back together?”

The air went still, as if everyone blamed me for ruining the mood.

Ethan pushed the cake toward me.

“I told Olivia we were here for our second anniversary.”

“She went out of her way to ask the restaurant for it.”

“Olivia meant well, and so did the server. She just got confused.”

His tone stayed flat. “Tell me, was there really a reason to interrupt someone and correct her like that? To make the whole table uncomfortable?”

“And you? What are you insinuating?”

My eyes stung, but I stubbornly held his gaze.

Olivia rested a hand on Ethan’s arm.

“All right, all right. Your girlfriend just likes you too much. She’s a little sensitive.”

Her eyes curved into crescents.

“Now I remember why you looked so familiar.”

“Ethan, you said you two met through work. Did you forget? She’s the girl who was a year below you and confessed to you right before you graduated high school.”

I was one grade below Ethan.

When he graduated, I thought it would be the last time I ever saw him.

I had run all the way to school without stopping.

Like everyone else, I slipped a letter filled with a teenage girl’s secrets into his desk.

But I wasn’t lucky.

Olivia and Ethan saw me put it there.

Olivia smiled brightly. “Sorry, kid.”

She lifted their clasped hands.

“He’s already my boyfriend.”

My face burned. I ran out through the door, and before I got far, I heard Olivia opening my letter and reading a few lines.

“This is so cheesy.”

“Ethan, should I throw it away?”

With his hands in his pockets, Ethan’s voice drifted after me on the wind, careless and indifferent.

“Do whatever you want.”

The letter landed in a trash can.

Ethan never learned that this was how I had first fallen for him.

It happened during my freshman year of high school, after I bombed an exam and hid somewhere to cry. I ran into him there.

He complained that I was being loud, then sat down and walked me through the entire test.

“You’re smart. Why are you crying?”

Even after he had walked a long way off, I could almost smell the sunlight caught in his shirt. I never forgot it.

My thoughts snapped back to the present.

Ethan said,

“Did she? I don’t remember.”