Page 28 of Left of Forever

“I want some!” Silas complains.

“What about me?” Sage chimes in.

I laugh at the three of them, then catch Ellis giving them a fond look, too, and a fissure runs straight through my heart. When his gaze tracks back to mine, it’s heavy with a million things. Memories of us all sharing what is now Sage’s house. Baby Sam passed around a table while we all ate in a rush and tried to get to wherever we needed to go. Silas throwing a dirty diaper under Micah’s bed until it stunk up the entire floor. Kids raising kids and juggling a million things we had no business trying to manage. Those were some of the happiest years of my life.

All of us are safe andhere, in spite of the shit we’ve endured.

But… the balance we’ve achieved in this family is safe again, too. The idea that we could harm that in any way by opening up old wounds utterly terrifies me. When Ellis and I got divorced, it felt like we were letting them down almost just as much. I don’t know if I could let myself get close to him again only to rip myself away, while still maintaining the boundaries that keep us all comfortable. If we couldn’t make it before, why would we this time? What would be different? I suddenly feel like I’m sinking into the grass with the weight of my doubts.

“I’ll make you a whoopie pie, sweetheart,” Fisher says to Sage.

Micah and Silas both gag, groan, and roll their eyes, just as I hear a mic check behind me. I slip into my seat between Ellis and Sage.

When the music starts a moment later and I see Sam and his classmates all gather by the stage in their awful mustard gowns, I feel winded. My throat stings, emotions tangling in knots. Ellis’s quick intake of breath beside me only makes it worse. I am dying to reach over and squeeze his hand, to thread my fingers with hisso we might celebrate the best thing we ever did together. When my knuckles accidentally brush up against his, I feel it in every other bodily joint.

Our entire row stands to obnoxiously holler and whistle when Sam is called across the stage early on. I don’t dare look at Ellis when we sit back down, afraid of what I’ll do.

My mom and Indy meet all of us in the gymnasium for the celebration after, where we take an inordinate number of pictures and eat an inordinate amount of cake. I am careful to maintain a safe distance from Ellis as much as possible for the rest of the evening, but when the kids have all left to continue their celebration down at Founder’s Point and it’s down to a few remaining adults on cleanup duty, I find him by a garbage bin.

Of course he’s one of the last here, too. Perpetually steady and reliable to a fault.

Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown that makes up my mind, since we faced the reality of Sam leaving the nest today… but maybe it’s that thread of hope again. Maybe it’s both. Whatever it is, my feet carry me his way. I make it to him in a blink, and before I lose my nerve, I quietly tell him, “Okay. Pitch it to me. How many days, what’s the exact objective, et cetera?”

Standing before me with a full garbage bag in each of his hands, it feels like he’s taking a moment to drink me in before he says, “One week. And I just want to celebrate with you, Wren. It’s your birthday, it’s a big change in our lives, and I…” He shrugs. “I fucking miss you.”

I miss you, toosounds glib.You have been missing from meis more accurate.There’s a void where you lived in me.

“And as far as objectives go, I was honest about mine,” he goes on. “One week to see if we want to, I don’t know, I guess dateagain?” His mouth turns down like saying that tasted bad. “Be together again,” he amends. “But even if you decide you don’t—”

“Or if you decideyoudon’t,” I say again, repeating myself from earlier.

He shifts restlessly. “Even if either of us decides we don’t. I still want you in my life… more. More than whatever this has been.”

Whatever we’ve been isn’t enough for me, either, no matter how much that scares me to admit. I’ve never gotten entirely over him, and I have to believe there’s a reason for that. Maybe it’s because we’ve always had Sam between us. Who knows if we’re really even compatible anymore? If we’d even want to be friends without the ties binding us? This trip could be closure for me, too.

“Okay,” I say. “Plan it.”

His eyes flare with muted triumph before he nods. The surge of excitement I feel in response to that look is unnerving, and I practically speed walk away.

And when I get home to a dark and empty house that night, my head and heart and stomach too full of way too many things, I figure I’ll try to relieve a bit of one of them and sit down to write, this time reaching for the journal I bought from Athena’s.

The first compliment I ever received from Ellis was in third grade when he told me my eyes reminded him of a cow’s. His compliments would not go on to become smoother or more flowery over the years, but that was what I liked about them. Ellis’s goodness was raw. Unpracticed and somehow totally exacting. Even when he proposed, he hadn’t made an elaborate plan. He’d just gotten home from working on a fire for threedays and came into our room, where I was taking an afternoon nap with four-year-old Sam. He sat on the bed and skimmed his thumb along my cheek until I woke up to his soft smile.

“Marry me,” he whispered, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

Still, sometimes I wished for a little more romance, and when I tried to coax it out of Ellis, he did his best. He usually found an alternate route of his own. Something unexpected and just as effective in the end.

When it came to us getting married, we knew our families couldn’t afford a wedding, but I still wanted us to write our own vows for the courthouse.

“I can’t do that,” Ellis had said, frustrated. “I’m sorry. I won’t get the right words out, and I can’t put everything I feel into some paragraphs that way. I don’t know what to say.” He gave me a broken look. “All I know is that if I found out heaven was real and got there first? I’d hang back in the waiting room and save you a seat.”

CHAPTER 14

WREN

Time speeds the same way it always does when there’s a deadline or an event approaching. The week between graduation and the Martha-Walter wedding gets bogged down by busyness until the day itself is upon us all.

Having Micah in town has been a boon, though. Sage and I have taken turns keeping him occupied with helping us set up for the wedding at Starhopper the last few days. Watching a gargantuan former professional baseball player petulantly cut sprigs of baby’s breath and weave it into a garland is almost worth the dent he already put in my dessert table.