Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

ethan

"So, Ethan," I said, and pretended that someone, anyone once found me sexy, "here we are again."

Ethan couldn't even look at me.

I'm not a model. I know this. But I'm probably a solid seven out of ten. I'm something of a butterface, but I'm not a complete butterface. I've got a little of that 'fetal alcohol syndrome' look, but it's not a severe case.

And even if it were a severe case, and I were a complete butterface, that just isn't the way you treat a person. You look at them when they are talking to you.

"She's beautiful, isn't she," Ethan sighed. "Ethereally, awesomely beautiful."

The car cover in his hands trembled and he dropped it to the cement floor. The dry heat of the garage struck me, and immediately I was confused. We were in a garage. The damn thing was parked in a garage. Why did it need a cover?

"Just look at these sweet doors," Ethan smoothed his square fingers along its stainless steel body.

It hadn't struck me as weird until last week.

Sometimes you'd see people act this way about a Maserati. Ethan could afford one, too. Podiatrists make a decent salary, and he hadn't an ex-wife or any kids to support. That wasn't why I was so desperately attracted to him. I'm not a gold digger, though sometimes I felt like it. I'm not sure what else people would find conventionally appealing about the man. He was short and chunky, with a baby face and ruddy skin. I'm not sure what it was that I found so appealing about him, either, but I couldn't shake it. Maybe it was his completely placid professional demeanor. I had met him in March, when I still struggled to confront the vacuum of post-grad life: the structure of college now fallen away, the staccato chaos of acute grief, the political uncertainty that day-by-day became less a horror show than a farce.

It was at the end of January that I had watched a self-help video from some professor of clinical psychology on YouTube. He told me, in a thick Minnesotan accent, that I must slay the little dragons of my life before I could even dream of vanquishing the big ones.

So I scheduled a cleaning at the dentist and an appointment at the podiatrist, to do something about my plantar warts.

I saw Ethan bi-weekly. His office was an oasis of stability. Nobody died at the podiatrist. He moved slowly, talked softly, and looked young for his age. I thought I was crazy for wondering if he were single. When Abby found his Facebook and determined without a doubt that he was, I first thought I was insanely lucky. Then, I began to think I was just plain insane for wondering if he'd disregard all ethical standards and date me.

My opportunity to get to know Ethan personally arose on a late April Thursday, while he applied liquid nitrogen to the soles of my feet. He was talking in his calming, soft voice about the weather, I think, and I was too busy admiring his shoulders and his lavender dress shirt to pay attention to what exactly he was saying. My gaze fell to his tie, and then the pin stuck neatly in the middle of it.

"Great Scott," I had said, in a way that I thought would be cute, "is that a DeLorean?"

I had never caught a guy's attention so quickly.

Now, however, in Ethan's garage, I was starting to wish I hadn't ever bothered.

"I'd like to take this baby back to 1985," Ethan drooled.

"Yeah," I said, "it's not actually a time machine, though."

"Not yet," Ethan opened the gull-wing doors, and sank into the driver's seat. "I'm still working on the flux capacitor-"