He raises an eyebrow. “Where’s the faith? I’ve watched Celine, my mom, and my grandma for years in the kitchen. I can hold my ground.”

He seems very comfortable at Café Azure and perhaps it’s because he’s been around it for so long. His grandparents, then his parents. It’s in his blood.

“I’m enjoying this,” he says, looking at me. The kind of look he gives me from time to time. I’m never sure if he’s just incredibly charming because that’s who he is, or if these looks are reserved for me and they mean something he doesn’t want to or can’t say with words.

“I’m glad you are,” I say.

“Do you like it? Working here?”

“More than I thought I would.” There’s a pit in my stomach as I say it.

“Celine is great. She has so much patience, I sometimes question if we’re truly related.”

“You two are more alike than you think.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says with a smile.

It was meant to be one. “It’ll be strange once it’s over. I’ll miss all of this a lot,” I say.

I wish I could say exactly what I think, but I can’t.

“So you have a plan then?”

“Not yet. But I have to come up with one; can’t stay in your house forever.”

“Hmm,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s relieved I said it first and he doesn’t have to kick me out—eventually. It’s hard to read his reactions. “Why can’t you?”

I shrug. Why can’t I? Well, because this was meant to be for a week; then it turned into two. But in a few days, things will be different. Ethan will leave, Max will hopefully come into the picture, and life—as I know it now—will change.

“You can stay as long as you want,” says Ethan.

“Thank you, that’s nice of you to say.”

He smiles and again, I don’t know what that smile means.

Seventy-Two

“Do you want to take a walk? It’s a nice night,” asks Ethan after we close Café Azure.

It is a nice night. Few people around, the street barely lit, music playing in the distance.

I’m both comfortable and nervous when I’m with him. We’re in this friendly relationship but there are moments, glimpses of something more. A look, a word, a change in his tone or mine—not to mention a trip in a hot air balloon to watch the sunrise—that take things beyond friendship. And I don’t know how to navigate it. We’re in each other’s lives and space every day and every time I want more. More of his time, our talks, more of him. And it’s so confusing.

Like now, just walking with no direction, talking about small stuff—he shows me a house. “I used to play in their yard all the time. My best friend lived here.”

I want to know more about his life, his past, what made him the man he is today.

“Are you still friends?” I ask.