Page 4 of Fractured Ice

"We should hang out some time," he says. "Catch up properly."

"I'm busy."

"Coffee. Just coffee. Twenty minutes."

"Still busy."

"Dinner, then. One dinner. I'll even let you pick the place, which, for the record, is a significant concession."

"That's very generous given that you just destroyed my shirt." I shift my bag and start walking again. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because I have better uses for my evenings."

"That's a little harsh."

"It's an accurate allocation of my time. I'm not being harsh, I'm being organized."

He's quiet for a few steps. Actual quiet, which is noteworthy because Ethan Walker is not someone who tends to lean toward silence. He fills space. Shirtless. Boxers soaking and clinging to him in all the right places. Not that I noticed. Him filling the space is structural to his personality, like a very charming load-bearing wall. Quiet Ethan is unusual enough that I almost ask if he's okay, which I then do not do, because I'm not going there.

"I'm not trying to be annoying," he says.

"I know," I say, because I do. That's the thing. Ethan has never once in his life tried to be annoying. He's just naturally gifted at it.

"Then what's the problem?"

The problem, which I am absolutely not saying out loud, is that Ethan Walker flirts with everyone. Not maliciously, not strategically, just as a baseline state of being. He has been doing it since roughly age fourteen when he figured out that his face was working in his favor and nobody was going to stop him. Every girl in our neighborhood had a phase where she was certain Ethan had noticed her specifically. Many of them were right. He had noticed them. But, he notices everyone.

Any girl that kids herself into thinking she’s special is a fool.

I am not auditioning for that role. The role of the girl who throws her heart away to a careless man. I’ve seen it performed. I know the ending. The girl who thinks she's different is always the least different one because every girl thinks she's different.

"No problem," I say. "I'm just busy."

We've reached the fork where the path splits, humanities building on my left, athletic complex to the far right. This is where Ethan Walker runs out of justification for continuing in my direction. He's in his boxers. He left an active game. He is soaking wet and it’s January. There’s no world in which following me further makes logistical sense.

"I'll see you around," I tell him, and I mean it as a period, not a comma.

"Sienna."

Something in the way he says my name makes me pause one second longer than I plan to, which I'm not happy about. His voice has dropped out of the easy back-and-forth register it's been in this whole conversation and landed somewhere quieter.

I don't turn around.

"Go back to your game, Ethan."

I keep walking.

The humanities building door is forty feet away, then thirty, then twenty. Behind me I can hear the kickball chaos, someone calling his name, the crowd doing what crowds do. He doesn't follow me past the split in the path. I knew he wouldn't.

What I don't anticipate is the very specific and irrational awareness that he's still standing there.

I can feel it the way you feel someone watching you from across a room, that particular thing at the back of the neck that my journalist's brain immediately identifies as projection and therefore dismisses. I'm projecting. Clearly. Ethan Walker does not stand on cold January sidewalks watching me walk away from him. He goes back to his game, his teammates, and the crowd of people who showed up to watch him play kickball in his underwear, which, based on available evidence, constitutes a good part of the campus population.

I reach the door and pull it open.

And I glance back.