ONE
APRIL 2025
MIA
​
This story begins with a face. His face. Smiling. Beaming, really, at me from mid-magazine. Not a splashy one like
Vogue or Vanity Fair. It’s the local kind addressed to “Resident,” filled with fluff pieces about high-schoolers
collecting canned goods or gently used sports equipment so they’re able to “demonstrate leadership” in college essays.
Amid these faux do-gooders and a flurry of advertisements for dentists and interior designers, he’s there, wearing a
navy suit that brings out the blue in his eyes and the same grin that sent sparks zipping through me the first moment I saw him.
I lean against the white marble island for support. It’s late afternoon. Beyond the kitchen windows, a steely drizzle falls on the bleak landscape. I adjust the pendant lights and lift the magazine, drawing it closer for a longer look.
It’s definitely, unmistakably Ethan.
His lips are parted and he’s doing that thing with his tongue, pressing it against the back of his straight white teeth. It
sounds weird, but picture the hottest actor you know making a similar face. I’ll wait.
See? Oddly charming. It’s like he’s about to tell you a joke or let you in on a secret. What he actually wants to do,
according to this glossy full-page spread, is sell you a house. It takes a full ten seconds for that to register.
It’s not easy to shock me but he’s done it. Again.
It’s quiet except for the refrigerator’s gentle hum and Button’s soft purr as she weaves figure-eights between my
ankles, her tail tickling my calves. When I collected the mail on my way in from yoga, a sweaty sheen coated my skin. Now a chill creeps up my spine.
This is not how I expected my afternoon to go. I’d been sifting through a mix of bills and birthday cards. They’d
arrived right on time. Tomorrow I’ll turn forty.
Seeing my old name—Aimee Montgomery—scrawled across envelopes in my aunts’ lovely, loopy cursive stirred a
sharp, unsettling recognition. I stiffened. You could say I was rattled even before I spotted Ethan. As I study him, in his probably airbrushed splendor, dots float at the edge of my vision. I blink, willing them to disappear. They don’t.
The Pierce Lachlan Group Welcomes Ethan Blackmore is written in an elegant gold font, bold against a shiny black
backdrop. Below that announcement, in a small circle set off to the side, a silver-haired man stands, chin tucked, arms crossed. He looks a bit hostile, but maybe people want real estate agents who appear ready to spar on their behalf. Is he Pierce or Lachlan? Two people own this firm or one?
Who cares? I focus only on Ethan.
​
Even if I hadn’t seen his name, I’d know him anywhere.
I snap the magazine shut like I’m twelve again and my sister Lyla’s caught me reading her diary. I would’ve missed this, him, if the invitation to my cousin Daphne’s wedding (her second) hadn’t gotten stuck inside a Land’s End catalog I tossed in a basket beside the toilet a few months back. Not that I’d have minded skipping that bland affair (complete with mashed potato bar) but my non-response opened the Pandora’s box I prefer to keep locked.
“Still too painful?” my Aunt Lois whispered when she called to ask why I hadn’t RSVP’d.
“Gotta move on sometime, kid,” Uncle Ray barked in the background.
How many post-dinner glasses of port rendered my aunt bold enough to ask, “Did you ever end up freezing your
eggs, dear? You were always so good with children.”
When I didn’t answer, she said, “Aimee? You still there?”
It goes without saying: my eggs are none of her business. It was “Aimee” that threw me. I’ve been “Mia” for more than a
decade now. After a few dark turns that splintered my world into the beautiful before and the devastating after, I wanted
nothing to do with my old life. I faced a starkly different future. Why not enter it with a new name? Amelia
Montgomery lends itself to dozens of variations.
To avoid conversations like that one with my aunt, I flip through everything now. You never know what—or who—
you may find.
​
Ethan.
I open the magazine again with unsteady hands, turning pages until I’m staring him down. Involuntarily, I search for his ring finger. His hands are tucked inside his pants’ pockets. Only his thumbs are exposed. My gaze returns to his smile.
“Oh, Button.” I exhale and lower my shoulders down from my ears. “I hoped someone might’ve punched out those
perfect teeth by now.”
Button meows. I want to believe it’s in solidarity—more likely, she’s hungry. I scoop her onto my lap. “We all want something, don’t we?” I murmur into the soft triangle of her ear.
While I’ve changed a lot in the last thirteen years, Ethan hasn’t. Not really. Fine lines crease the corners of his blue
eyes. There’s a bit more flesh around his square jaw, but his hair is still thick, still the golden brown of a wheat field
shining in the late-September sun. The first time he met my parents, my father steered him to the backyard to admire the garden—as if it could ever compare to the grounds of the Blackmore estate. Mom waited until Dad was in the middle of his lecture on the challenges of growing heirloom tomatoes before she speared a fat olive from her martini, arched her eyebrows, and said, “Ethan’s quite handsome.”
I understood the subtext: What is he doing with you?
​
I stroke Button’s shiny coat, hoping her purr will slow my jackhammering heart. I close the magazine, push it to the
side. What I’d like to do is torch every page, but the fireplace in my overpriced townhouse is gas-powered. We’ve traded our caveman instincts for convenience. I should shower, prepare for my birthday dinner with Matthew. I began seeing him to stop Sheri, my former assistant-turned-friend, from making “use it or lose it” jokes while pointing at my crotch.
This lackluster courtship gives me a reason to get out of the house, and Matthew’s safe—the human equivalent of vanilla ice cream: a sweet, respectable choice but, let’s be real, no one’s favorite. At the end of our first date (bowling—I won), he said, “This was fun. Let’s do it again,” and opened a Google calendar to schedule it, decimating any hint of the romantic suspense that stems from waiting, wondering if he might like to see me again. (Spoiler: I would neither have waited nor wondered.)
The microwave’s clock reads 5:48. He’ll be here in an hour. I can’t go. Not now. Not when spotting Ethan brings
everything back. Button meows. I’m clutching her too tightly around the middle. I kiss her head, an apology, and set her on the floor.
Moving as if I’m wading through rough tide, I open a can of cat food and spoon it into her monogrammed bowl. Usually,
I sit and scratch her back while she eats. Instead, I drift into my home office, pulled by a force—the need to answer all
the questions I’ve blocked.
My legs go limp, boneless, and I drop into the overstuffed swivel chair beneath the desk. I open my laptop, sign in, and click to bring up a new tab. The cursor flashes, tempting me at the same time Lyla’s voice pleads inside my head, No! Stop! You’ve moved on. Do not look back. You swore you wouldn’t.
I try to ignore it. It grows louder. You have built a life. Maybe not the one you pictured, but a life just the same. You have
been good for so long.
Lyla: often bossy, usually right.
“I have been good, and where has it gotten me?” I say in response. Button stands in the doorway licking her paw,
wiping her whiskers. I turn back to the screen. The cursor continues its steady blink. I’m waiting.
On the corner of my desk rests a picture of Lyla and me in a silver frame. She’s four, wearing a pink gingham dress. I’m a newborn, swaddled in the blue blanket our mother knitted hoping I’d be a boy. Lyla’s sitting on a floral sofa, cradling
me, her round dark eyes wide with worry, mouth open in a tiny ‘O’ as she gapes at me.
“Why were you making that face?” I asked her one Christmas Eve after we’d finished watching Love Actually
and had begun sifting through old photos.
“Dad was using his camera with that giant scary lens. Mom was shouting, ‘Support her neck! Don’t drop her!’ I was
terrified. You were my new favorite toy. I didn’t want to break you when I’d only just gotten you.”
I teared up. The Lyla I’d known my entire life was all cool confidence, bold, and fearless.
“That was the moment I knew it was my job to protect you.” She leaned forward and kissed my forehead with an
exaggerated mwah. The Christmas spirit and Mom’s high-octane eggnog rendered her uncharacteristically
sentimental.
After the holidays, I took the photo back to my tiny apartment and stuck it in this frame. Wherever I’ve lived, it’s
always come with me, reminding me of our bond.
If Lyla were beside me now, she’d try to protect me from myself. But she’s not.
I set the picture face down, place my fingers above the keyboard, and type “Ethan Blackmore” in the search bar,
breaking the promise I made to my sister more than a dozen years ago.
I hold my breath and hit return.