Page 43 of Left of Forever

“You smell…” He trails off. “Fuck, you smell good.” He says it on a defeated exhale, like it’s some bigger confession ripped from him.

“It’s the same stuff I’ve always worn,” I say over my shoulder, bemused. Same lotion, same shampoo, same little dab of perfume. I’m sure the people next to us can hear, and maybe this should be a private conversation, but I don’t care.

“I know,” he says accusingly.

“I thought you didn’t like it anymore. You…” It’s too much of an admission for me in this moment, when I can feel his warmth through the thin cotton of his shirt against my bare shoulders. When I can still feel where his hands held my waist and the wiry hairs on his knees tickling the smooth backs of mine. I want to feel the hard jut of his hipbones drum against me.

“Smells… smells were the worst for me,” he murmurs, chin grazing my ponytail. “They hang on the longest, and you can’t see them coming, so there’s no way to avoid them. Like living with a ghost. I’d walk upstairs and swear you were there sometimes, it’d be so strong, out of nowhere. Worse after it rained, like some old sports injury or something.” His low laugh is devoid of any humor. “I replaced the bedding and pillows and our bed still smells like you.”

Want and something darker simmer low in my belly and sear up through my chest. There’s laughter burbling around us now, and I vaguely register an aquarium employee talking about the birds, but I can’t sense anything beyond Ellis’s voice and heat around me right now. I close my eyes and see him, too. Him alone in our bed in the dark.

“Town smells like you,” he goes on. “From a block away,I can smell the bakery.” The pressure of him increases slightly. “So, no. I didn’t like it anymore, Wren. It made me want things I couldn’t have.”

I hold my breath, straighten my pinkie, and touch his thumb, heart in my throat. He catches it and hooks it with his forefinger. We learn absolutely nothing about the seabirds, merely stand there breathing each other in. His heart pounds against the back of my head while mine races behind my ribs, and it’s ridiculous, how intimate it feels. I’ve tasted the palest skin on his thighs and know what he sounds like when he comes, yet touching like this intentionally, no sunscreen or excuses, fully clothed, feels like something brand new after all this time.

We meander around the aquarium for a while longer. Ellis is so captivated by the sunfish that I can’t stop myself from taking a picture of him staring at it, a look of awe on his face standing in the blue light. I send a bundle of otter pictures to Sage, who then asks me to send one of Ellis and me together, which I ignore.

We eat In-N-Out double-doubles on the way back to Santa Cruz, our knuckles brushing when we both reach into the fry tray. When it happens a third time, I know we’re doing it on purpose, which should probably fill me with some sort of chagrin and not this maniacal glee, but here we are. I surprise a bellow of laughter out of him when “The Power of Love” starts blaring through his truck speakers, and I practically preen over it. I round it out by playing theNew Moonsoundtrack in its entirety after.

“What are you gonna do with your free time?” I ask to cut through the quiet when we get off the elevator back at the hotel.

“Nap,” he says, punctuating it with a yawn. It’s comforting to know that he’s not getting fantastic rest on this trip so far, either.

“What’s the vibe for the liver-and-onions place?” I ask when I get to my door. “So I know what to wear.”

He scratches at his chin and smiles softly. “It’s… nice. Not overly fancy or anything, but I’ll be ditching the flip-flops.”

I give him a sarcastic pout. “All right. Sounds good.”

“Okay. Yeah,” he stumbles, his grin boyish. He rifles through his wallet for his room key. “See you in a few hours.”

I’m kissing the hell out of you tonight, I think. “See you in a few hours,” I say. “Oh, Ellis?” He pops his head back out of his door. “Can I have my journal back?”

The first time Ellis kissed me was on my sixteenth birthday. We’d been falling back into our regular, more comfortable friendship again over the previous month because for four months and three weeks before that, Ellis had been seeing Serena Lindhagen and had been more distant. To be fair, I had also stayed away. Whenever I saw them on the quad at lunch being affectionate, it gave me acid reflux.

Still, we seemed to stumble around each other a bit more than we used to. I’d catch him staring at me in ways that felt new. A few weeks into summer, we met in a big group down at Founder’s Point. All the Byrd siblings were there, even eleven-year-old Sage, whom Ellis wandered off with to collect seashells while the other kids tossed a baseball back and forth. It’s never truly hot in Spunes, but that day, there was patchy sun at least. I was lying on a towel on the sand reading a book when Silas and Ian Carver each grabbed me by an end and hauled me out into thewater while I thrashed and screamed. I came up sputtering, the water so frigid it knocked the words out of me. I ran back up onto the sand gasping and laughing just as I heard Silas say, “Oh shit,” from somewhere behind me and saw Ian take off in the other direction at a full sprint.

Ellis came out of nowhere from the corner of my vision, charged for Silas, and shoved him hard back into a wave. When Silas came up with his palms up in surrender, Ellis grabbed him by the back of the neck and spoke to him with a finger in his face, waves trying to knock them both over and churning around their legs. I couldn’t hear what was said over the wind and salt spray, but I watched as Silas’s expression went from scared to pissed to mollified.

“Ellis, I’m fine,” I said when they turned around and started walking toward me. “They were messing around.”

He looked at me, irate. “Did you say stop?!” he yelled.

“Well, yeah, but I think that’s a knee-jerk thing to yell when you’re about to get thrown in—”

“You saidstop, Wren. They should have stopped.” It was clear he wouldn’t budge on this, and I supposed he was right after all. He was breathing heavily, his entire body vibrating.

“I’m sorry, Wren,” said Silas.

“It’s fine, Si. I’m okay,” I said. I looked at Ellis and said again, “I’m okay.”

We all gathered up our things and started for the car, I along with them since I wouldn’t get my own foranother few more months. Micah and Silas bickered the whole way down the beach.

“You just gotta ruin everything, don’t you?” Micah had said. Silas pushed him, and he fell into the wet sand. Micah got up and shouldered him back.

“Enough,” barked Ellis.

“Each of you hold one of my hands so you don’t hit each other,” said Sage, stepping between her brothers. They complied even as they grumbled.