Page 13 of Left of Forever

I’m pinned in place under his attention, getting worse the longer he refuses to look away. This obliterates our carefully constructed, unspoken rules. We are never alone together, and we rarely speak unless we have to regarding something with Sam. We definitely do not have prolonged, intense eye contact while he strides determinedly at me through mist and fog. His steps are silent, and yet I feel every one of them in my belly.

The closer he gets, the more I see… He looks like absolute shit. Eyes bloodshot, purple crescents underneath. No one would mistake him for gaunt or skinny; the man has never been able to sit still in his life and has the visible strength to show for it. But he’s too goddamn thin for my liking. His stubble-mustache combination has morphed into a beard, hiding the cleft in his chin I used to love, and he’s in dire need of a haircut. Ellis is never beautiful, per se. His nose is maybe a degree too strong, his jaw and brow are all hard lines. His eyes aren’t big and clear like his siblings’, but they are the same signature, striking gray, with striations of brown up close. His mouth, though. His mouth is what I have to avoid at all costs. Framed in all his unyielding hardness is a mouth made for smiling. For pressing whispered jokes and leisurely, drugging kisses into skin. His mouth contains a billion secrets, including how funny and charming he’s capable of being. It always felt like my secret to keep. Ellis is the kind of handsome that you absorb in pieces before you notice something new and get the thrill of starting all over again. Even looking as rough as he does now, he’s devastating.

I hate it. I’m irrationally upset by it.

“Hey,” I say. What an idiotic, pathetic word compared to the emotional anarchy in my head.

“Hey,” he mutters back. His voice is hoarse, and lines pinch around his eyes.

Silas is careful to not talk much about Ellis—a well-respected condition of our friendship. But he let it slip the other day that Ellis has been giving him space. Seeing him now, it’s clear to me that it’s costing him to do so.

Sometimes I wish Silas would try to remember that Ellis’s fretting is just as much about him as it is his siblings. He had to raise them; straddling the roles of brother and father, all while becoming a young dad to Sam, too. I can’t fathom what it did to him to watch Silas go down in flames.

“I, uh,” Ellis says, pulling me out of my swirling thoughts. “Bud.”

God, I would have died for this man, once. Now we’re reduced to single syllables and stilted silences. “Right. He due for new shoes?” I’ve told him at least ten times that I would happily pay a farrier. “I was actually here to take him for a ride. I’ll come back another time.”

“Sage didn’t tell me you were here, and I didn’t see your van,” he says.

“What?”

“Your car. It’s not out front.”

Oh. He’s explaining why he would subject himself to being alone with me, as in: he wouldn’t. He didn’t think I was here. Got it. “Sage and Fisher borrowed it. They have some furniture samples for Starhopper to pick up but didn’t want to use the truck since it’s supposed to rain.”

He nods in understanding, avoiding my eyes and scratching his bearded jaw.

I know better than to ask, but I do, anyway. “You okay?”

A myriad of things pass across his face in a heartbeat, mostnotably something like terror. Over one simple question from me. I can’t do this with him. “I’ll come back another time,” I say again, and step around him to leave.

“Stay,” he rasps. There’s a commanding edge to it that makes my shoulders pull back, awareness running down my neck like a fingertip. Ellis doesn’taskfor what he needs, let alone make demands. “It won’t take long. Get a ride in before the rain,” he explains.

“All right.”

I proceed to putter around awkwardly while he starts heating up the forge and getting Bud set up. I keep my hands occupied in the dog’s coat or hauling out any of the tools I see. Bud nods his shaggy head up and down and neighs in excitement before he starts flapping his gums against Ellis’s Carhartt vest. His low chuckle is a spear through my ribs.

“Be good,” he murmurs, and my body shivers involuntarily. He pulls a sugar cube from his pocket and lets Bud nuzzle it out of his palm.

“You still give him those?” I ask.

He slides a big palm down the horse’s neck lovingly. “They’re not real sugar. They’re healthier treats I got from Serena’s office.”

I make a noncommittal noise while he slides over the hoof stand.

Serena’s the vet in town, who also happened to carry a torch for Ellis when we were young. She was his first girlfriend, back when he and I wereonlyfriends, and she’s the only other girl he took to a dance. She was his first… everything, actually. It’s strange that I can still recognize the chalk outline where jealousy might have been before, even though things between Serena and me long ago became cool. But I idly wonder if there’s any spark between them again, which is when I recognize that jealous twinge trying to flare up, and I force myself to brush it aside. It’slike the old me is gone, but the new me hasn’t quite shown up yet, either, and I’m distressingly confused by it. All I know is that I at leastwantto get to a place where I could be happy for him moving on, which in itself is a huge step for me, and I feel a fresh wave of gratitude for those letters.

Still, I’m obviously not so well adjusted that I’m interested in chatting it up with him about his dating life.

“So… Silas is doing good,” I say to fill the silence.

He lifts one of Bud’s hooves between his legs and looks up his brow at me. “Yeah?” He removes the nails and starts clipping off the edges of the old shoe. “I worry he wouldn’t say anything to anyone even if he weren’t.”

Where do you think he gets that from?I nearly blurt. “He’d say something to me,” I assure him instead.

He grunts and finishes removing the old metal, and I think that’s that. There’s only Bud’s rumbling noises and the soft hiss of the hoof rasp for a few minutes, until he makes a point to look at me again. “I’m glad you’ve stayed his friend, Wren,” he says. “Thank you.”

The sound of my name on his lips and the strange finality in his tone scramble my thoughts. I wonder if there’s been a shift for him, too. Maybe his breakdown in my arms was some kind of catalyst for us both starting to move beyond this limbo between us. “It’s not as if it’s some huge undertaking. He’s a good friend to me, too.” I reach for a light subject. “Did he mention what’s going on with Walter and Martha yet?”