Left of Forever (Spunes #2)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

SPRING

WREN

When I met Ellis Byrd at age five, I thought he might be the most serious little boy that ever lived.

Later in life, I’d go on to learn that Ellis felt he had to be serious about everything, especially school, since he was starting a full year later than everyone else his age. I’d eventually learn how to make him laugh, though, and would experience the joy of seeing him be carefree.

Actually, I would go on to learn all sorts of things when it came to Ellis Byrd, and most of them would have something to do with love.

I’d learn how love could change; how it could grow from friendship into more, into something that felt infinite. Love could be loud and supernova hot, and something soothing and quiet, too.

Love could be miraculous and fulfilling. It could make you believe things would always work out for the best, because love really could conquer all.

Love could burrow into the loneliest places in your heart, but its absence would leave bigger, misshapen holes that are impossible to fill.

I’d learn how love could give you things you never dreamed of having, then trick you into wanting more.

“Shit.” I spot the time on the microwave and toss my pen aside with a growl, then haul ass back to my room to finish getting ready. Guess that’s as far as I’m going to get for the time being.

Beginning this little project right now was probably not my best idea, not when I’m already running behind for a date—regardless of how apathetic I feel about the date itself. Alas, I woke up this lovely spring morning with an otherwise free day ahead of me, and naturally proceeded to start (emphasis on start) about twenty-nine things that were in no way dire or pressing until I continued my lollygagging and landed myself here, direly pressed for time. I succumbed to Waiting Syndrome. I had the day to dick around, and I overdicked it. Insert another colloquialism for poor time-management skills.

It all began with one of my earlier footles of the day: my trip to Athena’s Bookshop. I was greeted by the smells of new books mixed in with secondhand, the sight of a big bouquet on the register counter—chamomile flowers mixed with tulips and tiny strawberries still on their vines. I smiled and let a finger tickle one of the blooms as I passed. My best-friend-slash-ex-sister-in-law, Sage, has been running a floral business on the side here in our small town of Spunes, Oregon (not to be confused with Forks, Washington), for the last few months, and that bouquet is just one of her many whimsical creations adorning our local stores.

I said my hellos to Athena and went on to meander among the shelves, where I quickly slipped into Bad Feelings over my dawdling and guilted myself into the self-help department. Ironically enough, I found that most of the books in that particular section were used—something I’d never noticed before, despite visiting this place multiple times a week and co-owning the bakery three doors down. A testament to how often I go anywhere near self-help, I guess.

But I got hung up on the “used” aspect of the books. Did this mean that these people got the help they needed? That’s why they’d turned in the books, right? Because they’d been successful? They must all be Untamed Badass Highly Effective People who’ve Mastered the Power of Now, presumably after they Washed Their Face?! Was that it? Did they wash their fucking face??!

“What is it you’re looking for, Wren?” Athena had asked when she found me sitting cross-legged on the ground a while later (seven open books and a general air of despondence around me). I looked up to answer, and my gaze caught on a poster behind her.

“Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.”—Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

The words practically glowed—a marquee sign lit up in a darkened room. The combination of the self-help books, that poster message, and plain old firsthand experience framed up an epiphany in my mind.

“Closure,” I said to Athena. I was—am—looking for closure. I want to figure out how to close the door on my divorce. On my ex-husband, the father of my son, and the man I loved in one way or another from age five to twenty-eight when we split… and maybe even a little beyond that. We grew up together, then kicked that growing up into warp speed when I got pregnant at seventeen.

I know that our story isn’t terribly unique. It leans more into a cliché, I’m sure. Had a kid too young, got married too young. Let life chip and file away at us until our edges were too dull to catch on each other and keep hold. And I suppose closure isn’t easily achieved in a town like Spunes, somewhere so small it can hardly contain the lifetime of memories between you. But it’s been half a decade since it ended and I still can’t seem to shake him.

We’re perfectly respectful and supportive for Sam’s sake, at least. That’s effortless enough when our kid is the definition of a Good Egg. Even at our worst, Ellis and I have always agreed that Sam is the sum of all our best traits. He’s got my loose curls and easy laugh, with Ellis’s height and protective spirit. Neither of us knows how he got as smart as he is, though.

The problem—well, my problem… My problem is that I’ve never been able to stop measuring every prospective romance I might have against what I once had with Ellis. That, and I’m worried the true issue is Me. Like, maybe only the unsettling, strange men with an affinity for puka shell necklaces, and the ones who take me to their ex’s place of work because I’m “blond and thick in all the best places, the exact opposite of her, and it’ll definitely make her jealous” are the only ones who show an interest because these are the ones who can sniff out a sliver of brokenness in me, too.

Don’t forget the one that made you feel something again without ever meeting , I think. Another point for the Maybe It’s Me column.

I wince in the mirror as I try to pile up my hair, then give it up with a sigh and brace my hands on the bathroom counter.

Shit. I’m about to talk myself out of yet another date if I keep replaying the blooper reel that is my love life of the last few years. Especially if I think about my more concentrated efforts since last fall. That’s when this journey for closure truly began.

My eyes snag on my vanity drawer, where the handwritten evidence of that misadventure still lies. I should probably find those letters embarrassing now, given how they abruptly ended. But, in the same vein as so many of the journaling suggestions I found in those self-help books this morning, writing had been an excavation of my feelings. A portal through which I’d been able to examine and understand them better. I was painfully honest in them, unabashedly myself because there was something safe in writing to an unknown.

I have this tiny ember of hope that sparked while I was in Athena’s today that writing out mine and Ellis’s story might help me unearth everything still buried in me. I might figure out where things began to go wrong, too. So much of it toward the end is a blur, like I’d been doing my best not to feel anything while I’d been living it. Looking back, it’s still hard to make out the shape of things.

I’ve been trying to start over, to tuck the past away and open myself up to something new, but it’s like I’ve got a heel stuck in the door and can’t close it all the way.

Although, if recent experience is any indication, the market is also just plain-fucking-bleak.

Actually—come to think of it, fuck this date. The last time I met this guy, I drove an hour outside of town (I know better than to date within a sixty-mile radius of Spunes) only for him to show up either drunk or eminently hungover, carrying an entire baguette that he unceremoniously plopped onto the table before proceeding to devour it throughout the meal. It speaks to the veritable cesspool that is dating in your thirties that this seemed like no biggie compared to some of the other maladaptive male behavior I’ve been subjected to.

I grab my phone, but before I can call the bread-busting buffoon, it starts to ring. I smile when I see Sam’s contact photo.

“Hey, bub,” I say. I’ll greet him with a pet name until the day he complains.

“’Ey, Mom, where you at?”

I can tell he’s in the middle of chewing something. I can’t think of the last time I saw the kid not eating, and yet he stays as lanky as a beanpole. “At home. What’s up?”

“All right, good,” he says. “I’m on my way.”

My doorbell rings just before he adds, “I told Dad to come over, too.” My stomach dives. “Just wanna show you something—together,” he continues. “Don’t worry. It’s a good thing.” I hear the smile in his voice, so I take a deep breath and do my best to gin up one of my own as I walk back down my narrow hallway and open the front door for Ellis.

I avoid direct eye contact as I let him in, pretending to study something on my phone instead. His presence feels too big in this tiny house. His shoulders alone take up all the room in the entryway.

“Uh, I gotta make a call,” I say, flashing him a tight smile. “Sam’s on his way, though.”

He only nods, and I scuttle back down the hall, shutting myself in my room before I dial to cancel my date.

“He-llo?” Lyle says, and in a way that suggests it’s the wildest thing in the world that his phone actually rings.

“Hey, Lyle. I’m so sorry to do this, but I’m not gonna make our date. Sorry if I wasted your time.” I try to be as concise as possible, at least, because my mama always taught me that politeness is a grace that costs very little.

“I’m at Chili’s” is Lyle’s slurred reply.

“I’m—okay? Well… I’m sorry?” Especially since we were supposed to be meeting at a sushi restaurant.

“I got queso dip.” He says it like an offer.

My head tilts with a considerate frown. “Tempting as that may be, I’m gonna have to pass, still.” And then another thought occurs to me. “Hey, Lyle, are you at the bar?”

“I’m at the Chili’s.”

“Yes, got that. But are you sitting at the bar, at the Chili’s?” I ask patiently.

“Oh.” He pauses to let out an impressive belch. “Yeah. I ran out of chips, but I found a spoon.”

“Right. We’ve all been there, Lyle. But hey, do me a favor? Can you pass the phone to the bartender?”

He slurps. Coughs. Burps once more. “Mmsure,” he says.

“Thank you.”

I hear my front door open again and try to make out the muffled sounds of Sam and Ellis talking before the bartender picks up the phone on the other end. I make sure she knows to put Lyle into an Uber or some other designated ride, then promptly block his number when we hang up. Another one bites the dust.

And yet, I feel lighter. Relieved, like I do every time one of these things meets an abrupt end.

I take a few breaths and head out to my living room.

When I round the corner, Ellis’s eyes find me first, because of course they do. They always have and probably always will. Even if it wasn’t him finding me first, I think I’m helpless when it comes to his gravity, like all the life between us created some fundamental reflex. It’s not until those eyes trace the length of me and his casual expression dips into a hard frown that I remember I’m in date attire. My cheeks heat, and I tug on the hem of my short, black sundress—suddenly self-conscious, like I’m maybe too old to be wearing it. Becoming a mom too young throws off your perspective on these things, I think. On the one hand, I feel ancient. I have a nearly grown son. On the other hand, I’m only thirty-three, a woman with a great deal of life ahead of me. I lost all sense of “appropriate” fashion when I was nineteen and in the throes of potty training a little boy. I hastily kick off my heels.

“Plans get cut short?” Ellis lightly asks.

“Not at all,” I say, using my polite “in front of the kid” voice just like he has, one octave too high to be natural.

His chin dips in a perfunctory nod, and we shift our focus to Sam. Another familiar step in our choreography.

Sam pulls out the chair across from Ellis, motioning for me to take the open one beside him. I comply, my hands clutching each other beneath the little round table that Ellis made for our fifth anniversary—back when we tried to stick to a traditional gift theme; the wood year. Ellis’s sharp inhale pulls my attention up, his nostrils flaring as he leans away. He once loved this perfume, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that his feelings for that have changed, too. I spot something at the base of his neck in the movement, though. There on the back of it, the tip of something on his skin. A tattoo?! It had to be a shadow or a trick of the light.

Whatever. I can’t afford to go on a mental bender over his potential midlife crisis right now. Or any woman that might’ve inspired it.

By the time Sam settles into his spot across from us with a grin, we’ve both recovered. I note the bashful splotches on his cheeks, and my heart hiccups in my chest, my brain rapidly slotting the pieces together.

He pulls out a large envelope from somewhere behind his back, turns it, and slides it our way.

“I got in,” he says. “I got into Davis.”

My greedy hands pull the papers closer, the words Pleased and Congratulations and Accepted blurring beneath quick-sprung tears. And then Ellis and I are shoving out of our chairs in tandem, rounding the table with celebratory sounds before we crush our son in a hug, a tangle of limbs and laughter.

“You did it,” I say to Sam with a happy sniffle. His dream school, for their viticulture and enology program. He always loved gardening with his aunt Sage when he was little, and since learning about all the ways science could get involved, he’s been set.

“ We did it” comes Sam’s reply. He peels his trapped arms out of our embrace and scoops me and Ellis into a hug of his own, forever pulling us together. When he spins back to look at his packet again, Ellis and I lock eyes.

“We did it,” he says quietly to me. And suddenly, it’s my eighteenth birthday again, a sleeping baby in the middle of our bed, he and I watching raptly as Sam’s chest rises and falls. Equal parts fear and adoration emanating between us.

“He’s so perfect,” Ellis had said, gaze blown wide while he’d studied one of Sam’s hands. “I have to get this right, Wren. There are no mess-ups when it comes to a kid. Think of how much all parents fuck up their kids.”

“We won’t,” I’d said, determined. I’d braided my fingers with his, our thumbs each holding one of Sam’s chubby feet at the same time. “We can do this.” We had to.

A few more hot tears spill down my cheeks. I bat them away and turn to lean over Sam, palm landing on his shoulder. In the corner of my eye, Ellis hesitates before he does the same.

Now, when our hands accidentally brush across the surface of Sam’s back, I immediately pull away.

“I want to move down there in June,” says Sam.

My face snaps into a frown. “June?! The semester doesn’t start until August,” I say.

“Yeah, but I need to get a job and get settled and all that. I can sign up to sublet something until I can get into the dorms. I already saw a bunch of forums for housing.”

My hand goes to my chest like it might steady the gathering rhythm beneath. June feels too soon. I hazard looking at Ellis for help, only to find him contemplating the grain on the table, solid as a statue.

“We’ll have to follow you down with the truck,” Ellis says, patently avoiding my stare and going rogue instead.

Shock squeezes tight around my lungs. “ We? ” I ask incredulously. I see Sam tense and immediately regret it.

Ellis shrugs stiffly. “He can’t fit all his stuff in the Jeep, and he’ll have to keep that down there with him, anyway. And you’ll want to see his place, too, yeah?” he asks. “See him get settled?”

I suppress a snort. He knows I’ll want that. “Of course.”

“We’ll make a trip out of it,” he adds, deceptively casual.

I give him a sidelong glance. Bare my teeth in a smile. “You mean take Sam on a trip together? Like a grad trip.”

Sam’s shoulders inch up. “Ehh, no offense—I’d just rather get down there. A grad trip with your parents sounds…” He makes a face in lieu of an explanation. “No offense,” he repeats.

It’s Ellis’s turn to shrug again, but his is jumpier. “That’s fine,” he says, still studying me. “You and I can celebrate on our way back with our own trip.”

I feel my eyes round. He’s gone preternaturally still, gray-and-brown-flecked irises leveled on me with an intensity that has my heart racing.

We keep things no less than perfectly pleasant with each other in front of Sam. It’s a point of pride for us both, I think. I’m trying to find a way to dial back this conversation in a subtle, friendly manner. My smile weighs a ton.

After a stilted pause, I come up with, “Oh, I’ll probably have to just catch a flight back. Not sure I can take the time off, you know?”

“It’ll be after Walter and Martha’s wedding,” Ellis parries. “Since Sam will be expected to go to that”—he nods at Sam in confirmation now—“and before tourist season. Don’t you still take your vacation around then, anyway?”

My jaw falls open softly, and I try to find a reply. How dare he push this in front of Sam! Sam, who keeps smiling innocently between us now. And yes, that is when I take my only true vacation of the year, a week over my birthday, but like hell am I going to spend it torturing myself with him. Holidays and family occasions are hard enough, but I can’t bear to give up the rest of the Byrds altogether.

I’m not going to ruin this night for Sam by arguing with Ellis, though. We’ve made it this long successfully shielding him from our mess.

“Yeah! Yeah, that’ll be great!” I concede temporarily. I’ll have to find an alternative solution later. For now, I want to pull out the honey cake I’ve got stored in the fridge and redirect the attention onto celebrating our son.

After we manage to do just that and they’ve both left for the evening, I let out a few more happy tears and uncork a bottle of wine.

But when I take a sip, I spot the paper again—my paper. My fledgling project from earlier, folded neatly onto itself in even, crisp thirds, tucked next to my whiteboard calendar.

For the life of me, I cannot remember folding it.