Page 23 of Left of Forever

“Hi. I gotta talk about something uncomfortable, so maybe get comfortable.”

“Got it. Sitting down.” A rustling noise, followed by a goat bleating in the background. “Ready when you are.”

I guess it’s fine if the goat bears witness. “Ellis wants us to go on a road trip together after we get Sam set up at Davis,” I blurt. “Alone.”

Silence.

“Sage?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she says. “I just… Did he say why?”

“I haven’t asked. He pitched the whole thing in front of Sam, so I didn’t want to push the conversation at the time.”

“Huh,” is all she says.

“Please expand on that,” I urge.

“Well. I’m just surprised, is all,” she says in a way that makes me picture her shrugging innocently.

“No shit.Andhe’s been coming around the shop more.” I don’t explain that his visits have tapered off in the last few months. Mentioning that the very last time he came in was in February seems like an unnecessary detail. Makes me sound like I’ve been waiting for him to come back. “He ate my scones.”

I finish a decorative line of buttercream just as she finishes exhaling a soft gasp.

“That’s. I mean… Wren, he won’t even eat your baked goods at the holidays.”

“He did on Thanksgiving,” I correct her.

“What?”

“This past Thanksgiving. He ate a piece of the chocolate bourbon pecan. I tried to make meaningful eye contact with you over it multiple times, but you were preoccupied with eye-boning your pirate lover.”

“Well, you didn’t bring it up after, either!” she says.

“I decided not to make it a thing after that!” I say defensively. “So he ate dessert at Thanksgiving! Big whoop! It sounded stupid to bring up!”

“Yeah, but… thesconesnow? Wren, he won’t even eat them when you’re not around. He’s… You think he wants to get you back?”

I will myself to turn to granite and don’t let those words get their purchase in me. They’re flavored biscuits, for god’s sake. “No. He’s not asking me out. He’s not asking to talk. He’s not… What’s changed?” And then, “No. That wouldn’t make any sense. My guess is he’s just so—fine—that he thinks we can go be friends. Unless…” My stomach dips. “Unless you think he’s, like, serious with someone and feels the need to break it to me in some elaborate way?”

“By taking you on a trip?” she asks disbelievingly.

All right, valid. Breaking the news slowly over the course of a few daysafterwe drop off our son (thus freeing him of his biggest connection to me) seems unlikely. “Well, I don’t know! What’s changed?” I say again.

“I—I don’t know. You know he’s a vault when he wants to be, but…” She trails off.

“But what?”

“I mean, hehasbeen going to therapy? Maybe it’s made him realize things.”

“He’swhat?!” I yell. I can’t hold back the accusation in my voice. Conflicting emotions collide in my chest. An unjustified sense of betrayal, as if I have had any claim over his private life for the last five years. Happiness for him. Hurt and regret thatweweren’t enough to go before. Whenever I brought therapy up in the past, he acted like it was too inconvenient then or like hewas personally offended that I didn’t think we were competent enough to fix everything ourselves. After a while, I simply didn’t want to be the one to push it. I got too tired to push it.

“Honestly, Wren, I’m not even sure I’m supposed to know that,” Sage says. “All I know is that he got a recommendation from Fisher and it went from there.” She pauses while I stare at the giant cake in front of me, the bold frosting letters that spell outCLASS OF 2025in mustard yellow and maroon. I adjust the phone again and grab a tray so I can collect the pastries from the front case and bring them over to the gymnasium, too. I need something else to do with my hands, and I might as well not let them go to waste.

“I still don’t get it, though,” Sage goes on. “I’m not sure whynow. Have you given him the idea that you wanted to explore things again?Doyou want to explore things again?”

I halt, pressing against the revolving door with my rear, right as it occurs to me. “The paper,” I say, voice hollow. My first journal entry, though I had to go back and actually purchase a journal from Athena’s after the fact, even though I have yet to be consistent about writing in it. But that paper on the counter had been folded by someone other than me, the night Sam told us about college.

“Paper? What paper?” Sage says, just as I shove back and rotate out the door and am smacked by the sight of my ex-husband looming beyond the counter.