Page 29 of Left of Forever

Sage comes to stand beside me in the restaurant’s dining space, and together, we watch him pick up a rose, give it a long sniff with his eyes closed, then scowl at it before he shoves it into a centerpiece.

“You think he’s doing all right?” asks Sage.

Micah came by my house last week with a bag full of hisbaseball gear and asked me to lock it away in my safe.“I can’t look at it anymore,”he’d declared miserably, nodding toward the bag.“I already know all of Ellis’s hiding places, so I can’t have him keep it away from me. I’ll find it in no time if all of it stays.”

“Yeah, he’ll be all right,” I tell Sage. “Just needs to find a new thing to love, I imagine. Hard to see a new path when you’ve only gone the same way for forever, you know. Give him time.” Hopefully, he can look at baseball and remember the good it brought him one day. “How are you?” I ask her. The space around us is stunning, largely because of all the floral designs. I smile at the room and then at Sage and her glowing happiness. “You look beautiful, friend.”

“Thank you. So do you. Bea was doing Martha’s and Silas’s hair and offered to spiff up mine, too,” she tells me.

“Silas needed his hair done? Seems excessive.” I laugh. I heard that he and Ellis would be walking Martha down the aisle, but still.

“Think he just likes having Bea fuss over him,” she says. “How areyou, though? How’d the talk go with you and Ellis?”

I’m momentarily jarred by being on this side of our dynamic again. And by the excited gleam in her eye. I don’t want to crush her hopes, but I’d rather subdue them now than let them build, only to make a bigger mess later if things don’t go well.

“It was good,” I say. “We just want to try to be better friends, I think. We’re both in a good place and want to be friends again.”

“Oh!” she says, her smile wobbling. “Oh, good.” She does a double take in Micah’s direction when she spots him wandering too close to the dessert table again.

“All right, back to work!” She claps at him and shoos him off, then heads toward her ladder, scooping up a bouquet on her way.

I finish reassembling the desserts, sticking spare greenery inthe places where Micah pilfered treats before I slip off to the observatory tower and find my seat for the ceremony.

Sam sidles in soon after, closely followed by Indy, Fisher, and Sage… the remaining guests not far behind. Butts fill in the chairs, and before we know it, the music begins.

When Silas and Ellis walk in with Martha between them, I draw in a breath that burns. The last time I saw Ellis in a suit was at our senior homecoming, and the sight of him in one now makes me feel like I swallowed a sword. The strong and broad angles of him that fill it out perfectly, the soft smile lifting across his rugged face. His eyes find mine immediately, like they always do, and I can’t stop myself from staring back this time.

Hope is cruel in its persistence. It’s a tease. I know that we chose to let each other go before and how devastating it was. The kind of pain no one would willingly risk twice. And yet knowing he wants to see if we should give it a shot again is continuously sending an electric current of hope right to my heart.

The vows force me to remember, though. Romantic atmospheres are dangerous. These scenarios no doubt have an influence over how we feel. I don’t need us to be encased in some hazy romance bubble to see if we could work again, knowing that’s not what we’d come back to.

I’m not sure how many glasses of champagne it takes me to work up the nerve, but an hour into the reception, I’m feeling bold and march up to where Venus has dragged Ellis onto the dance floor for a slow song. One dance can’t hurt.

“Can I cut in?” I ask. Venus’s entire expression breaks wide in shocked delight, while Ellis’s mouth parts in surprise. Shit, I looked at his mouth again.

“Oh! Yes! Of course, my dear. Here you are, yes.” She places my hand on my ex-husband’s shoulder and one of his on my waistlike we forgot how to do this. “I need another one of those lemon cupcakes as it were. Magical as always, Wren.”

“Thank you, Venus.”

When I eventually bring my eyes up to his, I can barely hear the song over the rushing in my ears.

“You look beautiful,” he says bluntly. It sounds like it’s causing him pain, which is probably me projecting. It’s agony to be touching him and not running my palms everywhere else I’d like, and I realize how much one dancecanactually hurt. I feel his fingers spread wide on my lower back like he’s having the same thought. His eyes trace the bows on each of my straps and the one at my waist.

“You always did like me in green,” I reply. Good Lord, why did I say that out loud? What’s my big mouth spilling next, unpermitted?I thought of you when I put it on. Remembered how you loved it when I wore things with ties and how it always made me feel like a gift when you’d unwrap me. Put all my hair up and messy because I know that spot on my neck below my jaw you liked, too. Do you still like my perfume?Fucking champagne.

“Um, I wanted to talk to you about the trip. I have to know what to pack at least. And we need to figure out a budget.”

“It was my idea, Byrd. I’ll cover the cost,” he says.

“No,” I say. “We’ve got to have even stakes in this.” I need to know that we are both equally invested and just as free to walk away. I dart my glance off to the side with a frustrated huff when I get tripped up over his dark lashes, a memory flash of them tickling my skin. “It was—not well thought out on my part. Telling you to make all the plans. I don’t think we should go do a bunch of romantic shit and use that as our case study for whether or not we move forward.”

He curls our hands around to rest lightly on his pec, the puffof his laugh brushing through my hair. “Shit. Guess I gotta rethink all those wax museum tours,” he says. He’s smiling again, and he’s got those damned lines around his eyes.

“Don’t be funny,” I say, mouth pulling taut despite myself.

“There’s nothing funny about tandem bike riding, Wren,” he says solemnly. “Or having chocolate casts made of our naked bodies. I had plans to make us into life-sized Easter bunnies.”

“It is genuinely disturbing that you were able to invent that just now. Have you thought about this before?Don’tanswer that. And don’t saynaked.” It makes me want to out-joke him and makehimblush and heat, like another old instinct trying to make a comeback.