Page 58 of Open Water
"I'd go with liberated but sure. Mess works."
We drove. The hills getting steeper. Small towns appearing and vanishing — a gas station, a church, a general store with a CLOSED FOR SEASON sign. The radio found a classic rock station and held it.
He checked his phone at a red light in a town whose name I missed. Whatever he saw on the screen made his face do a thing I'd never seen Ethan Grant's face do. A sweet expression. The same expression I probably got when I saw a text from Liam.
"Who's that?" I said.
"Nobody."
"You're smiling at your phone."
"I'm not smiling."
"Your ears are red."
"My ears are cold."
"Ethan."
He put the phone down. Drove through the light. His ears were absolutely, unmistakably red.
"Is it Remy?"
"We're not talking about this."
He was quiet for a full mile. Which, for Ethan, was basically a confession.
"He called me the night the photo went out," Ethan said. Finally. Staring at the road. "Not about the photo. I mean, he knew about it, obviously, I texted him about it. But he didn't call about that. He called because he wanted to know if I was okay. Because he knew I'd be worried about you."
"That's—"
"And then we talked for two hours. About—" He stopped. Adjusted his grip on the wheel. "About stuff."
"Stuff."
"Shut up."
"Two hours of stuff."
"I will drive this expensive ass car into a tree."
I let the silence sit for a beat. "I like Remy, Ethan. He's a good coxswain."
Ethan exhaled. "I know. He's—yeah. He's good." A pause. "He asks questions like he actually wants to hear the answers. And he remembers. I told him about this one artist in Berlin and a few days later Remy sent me a link to the guy's exhibition in Munich. He'd looked him up. On his own."
"That's—"
"Don't make it a thing."
"I'm not."
"You're making a face."
"This is my normal face. I just think that—"
"Your normal face doesn't have that look on it." But he was smiling now. Smiling in the driver's seat of my BMW because a five-foot-six coxswain from Riverside remembered an artist's name.
We drove. The radio cycled through songs I half-recognized. Ethan tapped the steering wheel with his thumb.
