Chapter 14
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.
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 his baseball 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 are you , 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 in the 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 waist like 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 dance can actually 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 puff of 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’t answer that. And don’t say naked .” It makes me want to out-joke him and make him blush and heat, like another old instinct trying to make a comeback.
It also calls his naked body to mind. My cheeks are on fire.
His eyes soften. He swipes his thumb down my wrist. “Your son’s the one who keeps telling me to take you to a winery.”
“Sam’s talked to you about this?!” I ask too loud. “Ellis, I—I don’t want him to get any ideas. I—”
“I reminded him we were celebrating him and told him we were just getting used to being friends without him around. I think I was convincing,” he says, maddeningly calm. It’s disturbingly close to the fib I told Sage, an echo of the way we once knew each other’s minds.
After searching for any signs that he’s stretching the truth, and coming up empty—who knows if I’d recognize them anymore, anyway—I let out a sigh. “What’s with Sam and vineyards? He can’t even legally drink. How does he know he’ll even like wine enough to make a career out of it?”
“He’s a weird kid.” Ellis chuckles. “He’s like you.” I give him a droll look at this, and he presses on. “Think about it. He likes the science behind it. Using the same stuff with slightly varying methods to make a whole bunch of different things. A lot like baking, really… He likes how different environmental factors can affect the taste, too.” He snorts. “He read me a whole article about how last summer’s California fires will affect grapes for years to come.”
I barely suppress rolling my eyes. “ Please. He thinks it’ll get him girls.”
He barks out a laugh, his chest shaking under my hand. “You’re probably not wrong,” he says.
The song fades to an end, and I force myself to step out of his embrace.
“I’ll email you,” he says.
“What?”
“I’ll email you a loose outline of an itinerary and you can write back anything you want changed or if something doesn’t work. And as far as the rest of the trip details… I promise I’ll keep it… unconventional. We won’t go to any of the major, well-known places. No national parks.”
I give him a puzzled look. “Have you ever emailed me before?”
He frowns, hands bracketing his hips. “I’m sure I’ve had to before for something?”
“I literally cannot think of a single time you sent me an email. Maybe you forwarded things before when I needed to print them out and stuff, but…”
He drops his chin to his chest, then looks up his brow at me. “Guess we’ve got a few firsts left in us.”
I let Sam drive me home later, still too bubbly from the drinks to drive myself. My house is less than two miles away, anyway, so I’ll walk to grab my car in the morning if I have to. When I get undressed, I see the edge of something poking out of my jacket pocket. I groan, disastrously warm when I pull it out and see an origami bird made from one of the wedding programs. He’s approaching full Ellis on me.
And after I’ve completed a too-long bedtime routine and spoken an incantation over the two ibuprofen I take to ward off tomorrow’s hangover (there is no predicting it after age thirty), I decide to give my phone one last look for the day. When I refresh my inbox, I’m fizzy all over again.
From: [email protected]
Subject: (Completely Unromantic)((and very generalized)) Itinerary for the Byrds
Day 1: 9-hour drive down to Davis. Unpacking Sam. (Trying not to think about this one too hard yet. Fuck, I’m already crying??) Drive over to Santa Cruz after (2.5 hours).
{2 Days, 3 nights at the Dream Inn (separate hotel rooms)}
-I have almost no plans for the first day that we’re here. I’m sure after being in the car so much the day before we’ll just want to relax. We could go to the theme park next door or hang out at the beach. Day 3 of the trip (Day 2 in Santa Cruz), I thought we could go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. You mentioned it once, like, a decade ago when we talked about doing a road trip down to Disneyland. (I’m sorry we never ended up doing that, by the way.)
*Will make sure any dinner reservations are unromantic options only (will search for liver and onions, specifically)*
Day 4: Drive up the coast to Montetesta Ranch & Vineyards in Gualala (3.5 hours).
1 night (separate cottages)
-Activities here: Sam’s choice. He made the plans here for your birthday, so you’ll have to take it up with him. Have a hunch it’ll involve grapes.
Day 5: Drive up to McArthur-Burney, CA (5.5 hours’ drive time).
2 nights
Day 6: Hike? I’m fine just relaxing and enjoying the campground scenery.
Day 7: Drive home to Spunes.
Activities to ensure unromance: First, all the drive time. I know you do your best contemplating in a car, so we won’t need to be chatty. You can ride down with Sam if you think that’d be best. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to your unromantic playlists. Do you still listen to the New Moon soundtrack once a week??
I also know you don’t like hotels because you don’t think it’s natural to sleep anywhere without a kitchen close by. Unfortunately, our son had to go and be great and got himself into college and now that we have to foot that bill, renting villas throughout our stay is out of budget. Fortunately, everywhere we stay is lacking a kitchen, so I’ve already put us in a good romance deficit as far as that’s concerned.
And , the most unromantic thing of all: Camping.* With separate tents. Ending the trip with camping seems pretty unromantic! (Emphasis on the no kitchens!)
*Disclaimer: The place in McArthur was recommended by Fisher, so I actually can’t adequately speak to the romance of it.
The very first thing I do is smile like an idiot into the glowing light of my phone. This playful side of Ellis is rare and special, and I feel a dizzying thrill over him taking charge of a plan like this. I missed this. The seamless way he could manage something while giving me just as much control.
I have got to stop and get a grip. It’s the champagne making my stomach flutter…
The second thing I do is click on all the links at the bottom of the email. The Santa Cruz hotel is quirky, elegant, and midcentury modern. It’s also right on the beach. Dammit, Ellis.
The second takes me to the ranch’s website, where I see that the term cottage has been applied generously. They are more like sheds that have been renovated, with tiny covered porches and corrugated tin roofs. They sit lined up in tidy rows across from swooping hills of grapevines. The rooms themselves are pretty simple, but the grounds are gorgeous. Gardens and terraces and even a quaint pond. The main manor is a giant white stucco facade that looks like it was plucked straight from the Mediterranean countryside. Terra-cotta tiles on the roof, all of it tucked lovingly around a courtyard decorated with string lights.
I’m dubious about the unromance of it all, but I guess ending the trip on camping should keep things grounded…
The final camping destination is even worse somehow. It’s glamping in every sense of the word. The white canvas tents have wood-burning stoves and puffy cloud beds. There’s a trail that runs through the forest up to the camp store and the cliffside restaurant, which are— yep —both fancy as hell.
I’m stabbing the Call button on his name before I give myself time to lose steam.
“Hello?” comes his sleepy, grit-filled greeting. At the sound of that gruff, hushed tone, a riptide of memory yanks me under. Under him , in that very bed he’s lying in right now, my hands holding on to the spindles of our old brass frame above me. Him on his knees between my legs, the deep drag and thrust of him inside me and the feel of his grip on my hips.
“You can be loud, baby, it’s just you and me.”
I hang up the phone. I am never touching champagne again.
He calls me back.
“Hello?” I choke out.
“Uh, yeah? Did you call me?”
I consider lying. Fuck it. “Every single one of these places is romantic as hell, Ellis.”
His sigh makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, like static electricity through the phone. “I can make anywhere feel as unromantic as you want, Wren. I’m not taking you on a helicopter ride through a waterfall or some shit.” He laughs softly. “Might see if you wanna hike to one.” My growl makes him laugh harder. “It’s your birthday. I’m not going to spend it in a pop-up Coleman down on Founder’s Point.”
My heart lurches. “I liked that birthday,” I say weakly. I liked that he’d planned it.
He’s quiet for a moment too long. “Yeah, well, we couldn’t afford anything else back then, I guess. But I meant it when I said I’d cover it now.”
“It’s not that. It’s…” God, what is it? He’s planned something. He’s put in an effort. What am I afraid of? How badly I want it to work? “I’m just trying to stay as clearheaded as possible about this.” I recognize the irony of making this statement through the buzz still sparkling in my brain.
He’s quiet again for a beat. “I know. I want that, too, but… I really don’t think the background is going to affect the rest of the picture. It’s you and me, and we’ll make the rules as we go along. I promise not to back down from going through the hard shit.”
After a protracted pause filled with nothing but soft breathing, I say, “Okay.”
When we get off the phone, I email him back.
Yes, I do. “Rosyln” is the song of my generation.