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On paper, Chad and Tara should be perfect. Chad is level-headed and loyal but can be reckless, while Tara is caring and thoughtful, though she can be stubborn. They balance each other out, and through the bloodshed and tragedy, they can always rely on one another.
The new Dewey and Gale, as Mindy put it.
So in theory, they should be in love; Chad thinks he is for a while. After the New York attacks and their moment in the theater, Chad thinks he just might love Tara—he knows he loves Tara, but maybe he could be in love with her.
When Chad is in the hospital, Tara visits him, kisses him, and holds his hand. Even though they never talk about it, they are a couple. So it’s only natural that when Mindy and Chad move into the Carpenter sisters’ apartment, Tara offers to share her room with him.
The first thing Chad notices about living with Tara is that she’s not Ethan, which seems simple enough, but somehow he has to keep reminding himself. Ethan would return from classes in a rush, already talking before he opened the door, and carelessly toss his backpack to the floor. And when he wasn’t talking, Chad could tell what he was thinking just by looking at him. After recent events, it crossed his mind that most of what he thought Ethan was thinking could have been completely wrong. How could the boy he could blindly read inside out be the same boy who wanted him dead?
Even so, Tara is harder to read. Her emotions aren’t as clearly expressed on her face, and her actions aren’t much easier to read. A few times, she’s been upset with him and he had no idea until Sam told him days later. However, Tara is more clear in her words. Sometimes she’ll whisper her thoughts to him, in private or in social situations. At first, he thought she wanted him to react, but he quickly learned it was just her way of letting him in. Ethan rarely had to use words to communicate. And why he continues to compare his girlfriend with the boy who tried to kill him, Chad doesn’t know.
More than once they’re on the couch, watching a movie or just sitting in silence, and Chad will look over to say something and expect to see a mop of brown curls and a cheeky grin looking back at him but instead, he’ll see Tara with eyebrows furrowed and eyes dark with confusion; the words he wanted to say leave his mind without a sound, and he turns back to the TV, trying to ignore his own thoughts.
He knows what he must look like when he mistakes her because he’s frequently seen her do the same thing.
Usually when he says something funny, but sometimes when she leans over to whisper to him, she’ll turn to him with a bright smile and stars in her eyes; but as soon as she registers him, her smile will falter for just a moment. And though her smile will return, the stars won’t.
Sometimes he wonders if she hears him speak in a different voice, too.
He thinks he’s seen that look on her before—the bright, glowing one that only lasts a second—and he thinks that years ago it lasted longer.
Once he woke up to the sound of her crying next to him and a few of her tears soaking his pillow. He wanted to comfort her but then he heard a name fall out of her mouth. It was raspy and involuntary, but unmistakable. “Amber…”
Saying her name only made Tara sob harder. Chad knew if he comforted her, they’d have to talk about it in the morning, so instead he shut his eyes and pretended to be asleep. He spent the rest of that night wondering how often she does this without waking him up.
He knows she knows. He knows she can see how his brain short-circuits, expecting her to be someone else; how his gaze lingers on cardboard boxes or anyone with curls. But he also sees her brows furrow whenever she sees a black SUV or how she runs the backs of her nails along her arm to ground herself, something he used to see Amber do for her in the midst of an asthma or anxiety attack.
Ethan wanted Chad dead and was only friends with him to kill him; Chad has to come to terms with that. But that doesn’t stop him from wishing he lived in a world where a ghost mask was nothing but a movie prop and where he and a cold-blooded killer could live blissfully.
He’s certain Tara wants the same thing. Maybe that’s their problem—that they’re too similar; they both want so badly to love the other that they try to replace someone they shouldn’t love in the first place.
It’s not Tara’s fault she keeps disappointing him, just like it’s not Chad’s fault he keeps disappointing her when what they both want is something that could never be. Chad loves Tara, and Tara loves Chad, and maybe that’s enough to pretend to be in love. Maybe if they keep pretending, it might become real.