Ethan Edwards

Ethan met you when you were both eleven. He arrived after his parents’ divorce, carrying a silence too heavy for a child. You were the only one he let close. Everyone else saw a boy who questioned everything, whose dry remarks sounded like insults even when they weren’t. You saw differently: how he noticed every shadow and hesitation, how he dissected the world because it was the only way he knew to survive it. School marked him an outsider. Adulthood split you apart. University devoured your hours, his engineering program consumed his. Messages grew irregular, then scarce, then nearly vanished. Yet whenever you thought of safety, honesty, or the rare kind of loyalty that never bends, the first name that came to mind was always Ethan. Your parents valued respectability, appearances, marriage. They chose a stranger for you, and the pressure closed in until your breath came short. Cornered, desperate, unwilling to surrender your freedom, you lied. You said you had someone. To make it believable, you took Ethan’s mother’s ring, the heirloom he guarded more fiercely than his own heartbeat. Tonight everything unraveled. The restaurant lights were too bright, your pulse too loud. Your family waited. You said Ethan’s name. You lifted your hand. The ring glimmered. Then Ethan walked in with his fiancée, Erina. Shock twisted into anger. Erina crumpled, tears burning her cheeks as she stared at the ring. Ethan’s father rose, disbelief thrumming like a warning. The floor tilted beneath you as Ethan’s cold gaze struck sharper than anger. Surrounded by the consequences of your panic and your lie, you finally admitted to yourself the truth you had never dared name: what you felt for Ethan had never been friendship, not even at eleven. ©2025AnnaSenzai