alive | ethma

21

ethan dolan

My eyes were glued on the horizon in front of me. The warm colors of the sunset reflecting on every exposed part of my body.

I basked in it. The warmth. The comfort. The memories. My eyes closed and my head tilted up, attempting to conjure the feeling I once had.

Emma and I were almost at the top of the ferris wheel. She couldn't know I was terrified of heights, I was trying to play it cool. But she could clearly see right through me. "Hey, look," she said while she pointed out towards the skyline. "Nothing that beautiful could hurt you," her gentle voice talked me down.

After several self pep talks, I was able to get to the roof of my apartment building and sit there.

I went up in hopes to capture the feeling I had when Emma and I were on top of the ferris wheel, with the whole world smaller than us. I needed to remember the fire that burned in me when she pushed me out of my comfort zone.

I quickly realized the feeling wasn't there when she wasn't either.

My arms hugged my knees while I let out a deep sigh I didn't know I was holding.

My eyes fluttered open, taking one more glance at the fleeting sunset.

And she was right, it was beautiful. And it wasn't hurting me.

But it sure did haunt me.

With that last thought, I stood up with frustration. My shaking legs taking me back down to ground level, my comfort zone.

As I started to turn the doorknob to enter back into my apartment, Wyatt beat me to it.

Wyatt opened the door from the inside and faced me with wide and fearful eyes.

"E-Ethan, hey!" Wyatt's hand nervously started to scratch the back of his neck.

My eyes naturally narrowed at him.

"Spit it out," I knew when he was hiding things from me. He was a terrible liar. Always has been, always will be.

Immediately Wyatt sprinted back into the apartment, running straight behind the kitchen island.

The next five minutes consisted of a stand off.

Me going one way around the counter, and him going the other.

"Wyatt! What are you hiding?"

I could visually see the defeat in his eyes, he knew he wasn't going to win this one.

He took a deep sigh and and lowered his eyes to the counter, so he didn't have to look me in the eye.

He mumbled something under his breathe that I couldn't quite make out.

I raised my hand to cup my ear, urging him to speak louder.

"I saw Emma with another guy ..." Wyatt finally looked up at me with pity written on his whole face.

Okay, so? There is endless situations that could occur in. I wasn't going to jump to conclusions.

"Where?" I didn't even register the sound of my own voice, it didn't sound like me.

It sounded desperate. Timid. Scared.

"Outside of the class building," Wyatt grimaced as he tried to go into detail. "She looked happy, Ethan, she was smiling and laughing. I haven't seen her do that in a while."

Then he said the words that shattered my heart.

"She looked at him the same way she used to look at you."

Time to jump to some conclusions.

[more action coming up in the next few chapters i promise, only 4 more left!]