13 - TOMORROW, EVERYONE WILL KNOW

“Maya, there’s something you need to know about Serena,” Ethan's voice of Ethan was quieter than it had been, and the words felt heavier. 

My fingers remained locked around Serena while she was watching my brother from the couch, with her face suddenly stripped of the little amusement she managed to recover. 

“What is it?” I asked, moving forward. My brother didn’t answer immediately, while Serena shifted against the couch cushion, pressing just one hand against her temple. Her movement reminded me that she was still injured, but Ethan's face told me that this was not about the injury. 

Serena slowly reached for Ethan’s arm. “Ethan, don’t,” she said with her fingers resting right against his sleeve like she knew what he wanted to say. Ethan looked back at her hand, then looked back at me, and there was something in his expression.

“You spent years thinking Serena was protecting you from your feelings,” Ethan said, pulling a chair closer and then sitting opposite us.

“You were right, but you were also never the only person she was protecting.” His eyes moved right between us, as Serena slowly removed his hand from his arm. 

“Then who else,” I asked, while keeping my voice low because I didn’t want the answer to turn into another silence.

Ethan rubbed his palm on his hands before resting his elbow on his knees. “Me,” he admitted, while Serena closed her eyes for a second.

“You?” I repeated, Serena opened her eyes and her gaze met mine with an expression that made my chest ache. Ethan nodded slowly, and this time, there was no irritation in his face, only the exhaustion of someone who has carried something in for too long. 

“When you left for the university, Serena changed,” he said. “She still ran velvet, still showed up for me, still even acted as if nothing could touch her, but she stopped letting me talk about you without shutting the conversation down.” His gaze settled on Serena as she looked away toward the window. 

I felt my pulse jump after the statement from my brother. “You noticed?” I asked while turning toward Serena, but Ethan answered before she could. “I noticed every damn thing,” he said, as he leaned toward the chair. “I noticed how she kept your calls short, how she avoided asking about your life, unless Mum brought it up, and how she somehow got to know things about you that nobody had told her.”

Serena swallowed hard. “Ethan.” He shook his head, not angrily, but firmly just to stop her from interrupting. “She deserves to know she wasn’t imagining all of it.”

My throat tightened. “What wasn’t I imagining?” I asked, while Serena looked at her for a long moment before saying, “She missed you so much, Maya, and I knew it before you came home.”

The word from Ethan landed differently from the concession Claire had made. Claire had told me Serena talked about me, but now hearing Ethan say he had watched Serena carry that absence made the years between us suddenly feel real. 

My gaze met Serena and she didn’t try to deny it. “I didn’t want him seeing me like that,” Serena said while she rubbed her thumb over the edge of her palm. “You were gone and I was used to you being around, so I didn’t know what to do with how much I missed you.”

Serena’s eyes met mine and there was no teasing in them. I soon moved closer to her. “But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked with my voice shaking. 

Serena stared at our joined hands before answering. While she spoke, her words came in slowly. “Maybe because telling you would have meant admitting that I wanted something I had spent a long time telling myself I could never have.”

Ethan exhaled and stood, “That’s the part you need to understand,” he said, reaching for the glass of water on the table and placing it beside Serena. “I’m not standing here to tell you that you can’t love each other.”

Serena’s head lifted sharply, as my breath caught before he continued. “I am telling you that if you do this, you cannot keep making me discover in pieces.” His eyes settled on Serena first and then back on me. “I can handle the truth much better than I can handle being lied to by the two people I trust most.”

For a second, something inside me loosened. I had expected anger, or maybe a demand that Serena choose between us, but yet, Ethan had given us something more frightening which is a choice with responsibility. She reached for my hand and she did this one without looking at Ethan first.

“I am not hiding her from you anymore,” Serena said sitting straighter despite the pain that crossed her face from her injury. I could see how much those words mattered to Ethan while he watched her carefully. “Then don’t,” he answered before looking directly at me.

I swallowed. “But then, what happens now?” I asked before the question felt bigger than the room. Ethan’s expression softened, while my heart raced. “Now you two decide whether what you feel is strong enough to survive what comes with it.”

Her fingers still tightened around mine, “It is,” she said immediately. Ethan looked between us for a moment without anger in his face. He looked tired like he had finally accepted that whatever he said next could not undo what had already happened between Serena and me. He reached for his jacket and headed toward the door leaving two of us sitting on the couch. 

“I’m not asking you to stop seeing her,” he said, while pausing with his hand on the doorknob. “But if you’re going to do this, Serena don’t make Maya feel like she has to hide what you two are.”

Serena lowered her eyes for a moment till she finally looked at me, and there was something different in her expression. “I won’t,” Serena said while her voice remained steady despite the exhaustion that was all over her face. “I won’t hide her.” 

Ethan nodded slowly, as he didn’t smile. “Then understand what comes with that.”

He opened the door, looked back at both of us, and then the door closed behind him which left the room completely silent. I looked at our hands still joined between us. “Are you sure?”

She moved closer slowly enough that could have made me pull away, but I didn’t. Her forehead almost touched mine before she stopped, but there was still barely any space between us. “But if I choose you,” she whispered, “I have to stop asking everyone to understand it before I understand it myself.”

I swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”

Serena looked toward the door Ethan had left and then looked back at me. “It means tomorrow, I go back to velvet.”

My stomach tightened immediately. “You’re still injured.”

“I know,” She squeezed my hand as the small smile disappeared from her face. “That’s why you’re coming with me.”

I stared at her unsure whether I had heard her correctly. “To velvet?”

She nodded as her eyes held mine, and there was this certainly that caused my pulse to race. “Not as Ethan’s little sister.” She paused, letting the words settle between us. “But as the woman I am choosing.”

And for the first time since that night. I smiled without fear, and then Serena’s phone rang across the table. 

She glanced at it, and instead of reaching for it, she pushed it farther away. “Let it ring,” she said. 

Serena smiled again and pulled me closer like she wanted to kiss me. “Tomorrow,” she said, “everyone at Velvet is going to know exactly where you stand.”