Heavenstone 02 - Secret Whispers

about, but I can see you’re not a happy camper here, and you’re not the sort of girl who doesn’t care who she’s with as long as she can get out.”
    “She wouldn’t take no for an answer, but it’s not important,” I said.
    “It is to me. I don’t like doing things like this, especially to someone I can see is quite nice.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    He smiled, and when he did, to me it looked as if he tilted his head just slightly, just the way the character in my romance novel said her lover tilted his head.
    “I’ll find a way to make it up to you,” he added quickly as Ellie approached.
    “What’s going on?” she asked, pulling her lips back tightly and showing her teeth like some snarling alley cat.
    “Far as I can see, not much,” Ethan said, nodding toward Kelly, who was practically slobbering over a girl in a tight knit dress. “Or nothingunexpected, I should say. I was just apologizing to Semantha.”
    “Well, your party isn’t as exciting as I had hoped,” Ellie muttered. “Maybe we should go somewhere else.”
    “Where would we go, Ellie? We’re taking a big enough chance as it is coming here,” I said quickly. “We have to indicate our destination before we leave the campus, and we’ve already lied about that,” I explained to Ethan.
    “Oh, brother. Relax, Semantha. I’m sure Mrs. Hathaway didn’t follow us,” Ellie said.
    “Why make her feel any more uncomfortable than she is?” Ethan asked.
    She looked at him and then at me and shook her head. “You don’t have to feel so sorry for her, Ethan. She’s not a baby or something. She can handle it.”
    “You don’t have to be a baby or something to be unhappy with this situation, Ellie.” Again, he nodded in Kelly’s direction.
    She glanced at him and shrugged. “Right,” she said. “I guess I’ll just have to make the best of it.”
    For the rest of the evening, Ellie spent most of her time with other girls and some other young men, and Ethan spent most of his time talking to me. He even asked me to take a walk with him outside. I looked toward Ellie, but she seemed quite distracted, so I agreed, and we went out.
    Ethan had a soft, gentle manner about him that helped me relax. I wondered how much of what Ellie had told me about him was true. He didn’t seem to be the sort of boy who, in Ellie’s words, practicallystalked her. I was beginning to get the feeling it was Ellie who had been stalking him.
    “Ellie’s okay,” he said when our conversation drifted to how she and he had met, “but she has a way of making me feel like I’m more of an escort than a date, if you know what I mean. I always feel she’s looking at everyone else to be sure no one’s ahead of her. Does that make sense?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I can see you’re not comfortable talking about her behind her back. It’s not important,” he said. “I doubt that I’ll see her much after tonight.”
    I was pleased to hear it, but I didn’t say so. He talked about himself, his interest in getting into business, the excitement of developing a company. He envied the young men who had been so successful with dot-com companies, but he said he liked more traditional business enterprises because he liked contact with people, all sorts of people. He assured me he wasn’t going to put himself into any office where he was shut away from the world. I envied him for his interest in people, in being social. From my answers to some of his questions, he quickly gathered that I was more like a hermit. He thought it was just my shyness.
    “There are ways to overcome shyness,” he said. “It’s like anything else. You have to get your feet wet, push a little, maybe, but in the end, you’ll see how easy it is. You have nothing to be shy about, anyway, Semantha. You’re a very attractive young woman, and I’m sure you’re as bright as, if not brighter than, most people.”
    Before I could thank him, Ellie appeared. It was clear she was really angry now. She had what Cassie would call “the gunslinger eyes.”
    “Who’s your date tonight, Ethan, or did you forget?”
    “You seemed pretty occupied,” he said in a quick defense. “And Kelly’s practically deserted Semantha. I feel bad about bringing him along.”
    “I feel bad about being here, period,” Ellie said. She wobbled a bit, and we could both see she had drunk too much of the vodka I had seen being passed around. “Let’s get out of here, Semantha,” she told me.
    I