Page 25 of Left of Forever

I make a face. “I don’t remember,” I lie. Kirby. Young. Blond. Light brown eyes. A little beauty mark above her lip and enthusiastic about her poultry. Seems like your type. Sent me into an emotional spiral that spun me out so badly it took months for me to see straight, until I attempted to move in another direction. It’s been like swimming against a current ever since. And how embarrassing is that? That I’ve had to try so hard at something that was once as easy as breathing, with him. That I only threw myself into dating in the first place because of him.

He shrugs with a worn-out sigh. “Wren, I haven’t been on a date in over two years.” When I don’t formulate a response, he laughs without humor. “Please, Wren. Just answer me.”

“Answer you what?” I say hoarsely.

“Does any part of you think about us still?”

My eyes dart around the kitchen like a cornered animal. I don’t know what the fuck to do with this. Five years of having to pirouette around emotional land mines while maintaining polite distance, of having to strike a flawless balance between friendly and unbothered so that I could keep my family and friends eventhough I could barely handle being near him. He wants to blow it all up in my bakery kitchen in one afternoon. And yet, I watch his hands curl and open inside his pockets like he’s holding himself back. “Ellis, I’ve… slept with other people. I’ve doneeverythingto try to move on.” My voice breaks traitorously. Every time I think I’m making progress, something pulls me back under.

He’s silent for so long that I eventually calm down enough to look at him. When I do, I’m shocked to see him studying me with a gentle look. Not a hint of anger. His smile is soft, like an apology.

“Did you hear me?” I hazard. “I said I had sex with other people.” I cannot explain what is possessing me to hammer in this point, but I think I need him to acknowledge that we have been living separate lives. Maybe I want to shock him as much as he’s shocking me. Whatever it is, I need to know I haven’t been imagining this. Trying to be with other people. Trying to be withouthim. “I just mean that there has been a lot of life in the last five years.” I sound like I’m trying to convince myself.

He inhales sharply and steps closer to me. “Wren, you remember when you had me read all those baby books when we were younger?” he asks.

My expression folds. “What? Yes?”

“Well, obviously, a lot of shit went out the window the minute he was born and we started running on adrenaline and instinct, but one thing that I thought was particularly amazing was how, no matter what, your anatomy would forever be changed.”

My mouth falls open in indignation, and my cheeks go white hot.What the fuck?!“Gee, Ellis, what a perfectly flattering reminder that my hips will never bounce back!”

His chuckle warms ten degrees in the face of my ire. “I’mjust saying. My DNA mixed with yours, and it altered your very bones, Byrd.” He steps closer still and inhales again, closing his eyes like he’s absorbing my scent. When he opens them, his pupils are blown, something raw and open there, too. Something that strips me to my core. “I don’t give a fuck who you’ve slept with or how many times. I don’t give a fuck if you have a boyfriend right this minute. We belong to each other in ways no one else ever will.” I’m certain he feels my gasp land on his throat. His eyes dip to my mouth and go pained before he takes a step back. “I didn’t mean to push this today. I know it’s Sam’s night and we don’t need to do this right now. I’m sorry.” He blinks at his feet.

“Just tell me plainly,” I say, barely more than a whisper. We were together too long for games, and I need to hear the exact words. “This trip. You… It’d be to see if we should give us a chance again?”

His head jerks up, and his gray gaze turns platinum. Three inhales later, he says, “Yes,” the sound rough-hewn like he needs a drink. “I want to be up front about my intentions. But I also would like to celebrate something that we did together—together. I’d like to go have fun with you, Byrd. Even if you just want to go as friends.” He looks down at his hand as he traces a pattern on the counter surface.

My stomach feels like it’s floating behind my ribs. “Ellis, I couldn’t promise anything. I—” I search the room like I might find the answer. Instead, I get hung up on the industrial mixer, one of our first major purchases together. The butcher block island he spread me wide on once or twice or maybe a hundred times, taking me apart over and over again until I felt like melted chocolate poured across it. I shut my eyes like I can block out the memories.

“I get it,” he says. I can’t help but notice it’s the same tone he’duse on Bud, back when he was easily skittish. “All I know is that I’m not sure we’re through.” He looks off to the side with a frustrated huff. “Or at least I’m not sure I ever got closure, either. And then, after the fact, I just got so used to whatever this is we’ve been doing, separately… that I think it got too hard to figure out where the road back was. Or if there was one at all. We’re too damncarefularound each other.”

I feel the astonishment on my face. He’s just echoed what I haven’t been able to articulate, and why I started writing that paper in the first place.

“I wanted to protect Sam, too,” I admit. It’s so hard, worrying about your worthiness over another human being. Especially knowing you were so young yourself. We were so young. We worked so hard at being great parents. After we failed each other, it became easier to put all my focus on being a good mom than spending any of my limited energy regretting or resenting being an ex-wife. Which meant cutting myself off from him as much as possible. “Being careful around each other. Staying… distant. It made it easier to protect Sam.”

“That’s why I’d like to do this now. Why I think it would be a good time, I guess,” he says. “And if at any point you change your mind? We cancel and just come straight home. No matter what, we could make it nine hours in a car together.”

“Or ifyouchange your mind,” I say.

He gives me a sardonic look. “Sure. If I change my mind.” He studies his boots before bringing his gaze back to me and continuing. “But if we don’t, then I’d like to make a couple of stops on the way back together. Just us. We’d be away. No town, no playacting in front of Sam. No pressure from anyone else. Just you and me.” He steps closer. “I think you and I are worth seeing about. Even if all that comes from it is a… a happier ending.Closure.” He runs a hand across his mouth like he’s missing his facial hair.

“You shaved the mustache,” I say a bit dazedly.

He blinks, mildly surprised. “I’ll grow it back if you want. I’m growing it back right now as we speak.” His face fractures into a smile, and I have to white-knuckle the tray to stop myself from reaching up to poke a finger in that dimple on his chin.

I’ve always been weak against this side of him. When he’s intent on something, he’s… he’s overwhelming. Combine that with some concentrated, affable charm? Done for. Once he’s decided something, he’s relentless about it. It used to be one of the things I admired most in him.

An idea takes shape again, and this time, it’s like a recipe—multiple flavors transforming into one multilayered thing. “What if I wanted to work on my project at the same time? What if I made you go through it with me?” I keep a tight leash on the hope in my voice.

His hands hook into his pockets, and his head cocks to the side. “What project? What do you mean?”

“What if I wanted to go through the journaling thing together? What if… what if I wanted to go over us, the parts where we went wrong?” He might be in therapy, butwearen’t. I need to know if he’s trying to pretend the past doesn’t exist or if he’s going to be willing to share the painful stuff, too. Starting over isn’t working, but taking a trip through pretty scenery with nice, romantic plans doesn’t seem like the right setup to gauge a potential future, either. Not when you know exactly how unromantic it is to see forever reduced into shit you have to divide up between you. “I’d keep writing things—I don’t know what exactly, but whatever pieces come to me, I guess.”

“You’d let me read them?” he says.

I wince at that. I think maybe the journaling works because it’s for myself or for an unknown entity. I’m not entirely sure. “Probably not that. But writing will still bring up stuff for me, and… and I’d ask you how you felt about a lot of things. You’d keep me honest about it all, and we could correct each other if we remember things wrong or differently. Either way, we’d have totalk. A lot.” I infuse this statement with an appropriate amount of familiarity, reminding him that I know it’s not exactly his forte.

“I’d like that,” he says simply. Eyes a little wild, like maybe he’s restraining himself from being vehement again.