Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
ELLIS
When my eyes slit open, daylight is blazing through the room, and a sunny Wren is sitting cross-legged on the bed, chin in hand and watching me sleep.
“Apparently, you snore these days, too,” she says. “Good morning.”
I close my eyes and growl appreciatively. “Must have been extra tired.”
She gives me a sympathetic cluck and ruffles a hand through my hair. “You did work very, very hard last night. I’ve got the beard burn to prove it.” I can hear the blush in her tone.
“Yeah?” I blindly grab at her ankle and lift up her skirt to see. She bats my hands away.
“Nah-ah, we don’t have time for that. We’ve gotta pack up, and we’ve been invited over for breakfast at Bernie and Bob’s, who also comped our stay. I ran into them on a little walk a bit ago.” She escapes my wandering hands again and glides off the bed.
“Hey, Byrd?” A yawn rolls out of me and I stretch. Something crackles in my knee.
“Yeah?” she says, trying to manage her wild hair.
I sigh happily at the sight of her concentrated pout in the mirror. “Why is there another man in our room?” I ask.
She grabs the inflatable doll propped up against the wall beside her and spins around with him. “Oh, do you mean him?”
“Mm-hmm.”
She gives him a jovial shake. “When I was on my walk, he came drifting across the road on the breeze, like some sad tumbleweed of depravity,” she explains with a sigh. “I didn’t want him to end up in the pond or for some sort of animal to choke on him or something. Between this and the groomsman I saw passed out on one of the porches, my best guess is that the other cottages are occupied by the bridal party.”
I’m still slow on the uptake, I think. “What sort of animal is gonna choke on a whole-ass inflatable doll?”
She gives a bratty scoff. “I mean if it, like, popped or something,” she says. “Why, you jealous of my new friend?” She hugs the thing a little closer.
I’m so happy I feel sick, actually. “Wren, I can still taste you in my mustache. I can’t think of a single person on the planet to be jealous of right now.”
Her mouth falls into a little O and her eyes go round, cheeks and chest blushing a pretty pink. “We need to go to breakfast,” she says, husky and unconvincing. At whatever my face is doing, she adds, “I mean it, Ellis. We haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. We’re supposed to be there already,” with a laugh.
I unfold myself from the bed and scratch at my chest. When I catch her ogling me in my briefs, I lift a brow at her like a final offer. The color on her cheeks heightens.
“I’ll be outside,” she clips, rolling her suitcase behind her.
Breakfast ended up being a delight. For Wren and me, at least. Bob and Bernie intercepted Tabitha and her future groom somewhere and wrangled them and their crew into joining us, and I got to be smug over the fact that, after calling me old, the youngsters all looked like they didn’t think food would ever be good again. Meanwhile I was upright, feeling great, and wolfed down my omelet and fried potatoes with enthusiasm.
We’re now more than four hours into our five-hour drive time (predominantly spent in companionable silence or, if you’re Wren, snoring softly), and it’s flown by with ease.
Which, naturally, has started to make me uneasy.
It’s just that we’re headed for the last stop on our trip, and that means decisions have to be made for where we go after this, for what we are after this. Are we… dating? Are we together, but going to live separately? It’s a weird concept to wrap my brain around when that house I still live in always felt like it was possessed by her. Maybe I’m getting too ahead of myself, but it feels like it’s my last chance to prove something. I know it’s not rational. I know that all our real tests are still at home waiting for us, folded in between the daily regularities of life.
But it’s all the mundane stuff that I can’t wait for again. That’s what this trip has made me realize the most. Like having a candlelit meal with her in a beautiful, romantic setting made me remember how special it was to share a meal at our kitchen table, or even standing up and eating over the stove. Laughing with her drinking champagne in a vineyard made me miss laughing with her in our backyard, sitting on lawn chairs and sharing a beer and a bag of salt and vinegar chips between us.
I want her sad music playing in our house and her shit all over the bathroom counter. I want the chance to be lazy with her on a day off. I want our boring life back.
She lets out a happy hum from the passenger seat, arching and knuckling the muscles in her back in a way that does something very distracting with her tits. I grip the wheel a little harder and stare out at the road.
“We should go through some more questions, shouldn’t we? The ones we didn’t do. I only had the one made-up one designed to seduce you,” she says, tracing a line down the arm closest to her.
“I’m in. You’ll have to read them off.”
She snorts. “Of course you’re in. You already looked them up.”
“If it helps, I had no answers for most of them, and there were plenty of them left that I am still nervous for you to ask.”
Her head tilts in the farthest corner of my eye. “Fine, then. I’ll just try to pull up a more obscure list.”
“Go for it, Byrd.”
“Do you have any hunch how you’ll die?”
“Oh, so we’re keeping things upbeat today.”
She’s chuckling. “It was the first one I saw. Let’s pick a different one.”
As much as I’d like to prove I’m game for this and show that I’m committed to these things, that’s the last question I want to think about. I’ve always had this lingering, buried feeling that makes itself known now and again—like some sort of recurring nightmare I can’t forget even when the dream itself bleeds away. I can’t remember the details, but it still leaves me edging panic the whole day after. I’ve always carried this illogical fear that everyone I love will die before I do. It’s not exactly a hunch, but that’s all that question brings to mind. And I think… I think if Wren goes before I do, my body would probably give out. I can’t imagine I’d be long for this life.
“All right. Here’s a new one,” she says. “What’s your greatest accomplishment?” We chuff a single sound in unison because we both know our answer.
“Sam,” I say, anyway. “For all our faults, we’re good parents.”
She blows out a dramatic breath. “Okay, enough with the weepy ones. Let me find a happier one.” She clicks her tongue, scrolling on her phone. “All right. Complete this sentence. ‘I wish I had someone with whom I could share…’”
I scratch the back of my neck awkwardly. This is one I tried to come up with an answer for that didn’t sound overembellished and couldn’t. Oh, well. “Er, everything,” I say nervously. “I know that sounds corny, but really. I’ve sorta learned to be fine with being alone when it comes to a lot of the big, shitty stuff that takes up more space in your head than it should. Taxes, taking care of the house.” She smiles when I look at her briefly. “I miss sharing a bed, and not just for the reasons you think.” I turn back to the road. “I, uh, started sleeping on your old side for a while because it felt like the mattress was caving in on mine.”
When she’s still quiet, I look at her again and find her eyes shining. “You could have bought a new mattress,” she says through a wet chuckle.
No. Too many memories on that one. Maybe we’ll get to buy a new one together. “What about you? How would you finish that sentence?”
“Everything, too,” she breathes. “Everything, everywhere. I want to be able to call someone and share what I’m worried about or puzzling over at any given point during the day again.” I grab her hand and kiss it. “Sometimes just sharing helps, even when the other person can’t fix it.” She says the last part very pointedly. I guess I do have a tendency to jump in and try to fix things. “I want to do this kind of stuff more,” she goes on. “Trips. Going places, even if they’re not far. It’d be nice to share that with someone.”
“We should… we should try to do this more.” It’s such a casual thing to say when it’s meant to be anything but. Make plans with me forever , I mean. Hitch your life to mine again and we’ll go places. We’ll share every plan, every heavy thing together, and all the good stuff, too.
Through the speakers, the phone instructs us to get off at the next exit, and I almost think she’s not going to respond.
“I agree, by the way,” she says. “We should try to do this more.”
I nod a little too animatedly. This is where the old me wants to dive in and ask if she wants to move back home and be together and maybe even remarry me and if I should book another trip and for exactly when. I swallow down the urge and recommit myself to what’s been working so far. Taking it slow. We’re only ten minutes away from our last stop.
She looks at the questions again. “What’s your most treasured memory?” she asks.
I saw this one before, too, but didn’t have to consider my answer. “Sam’s fifth birthday party,” I say, grinning.
“When he sat in his own cake?” Wren laughs.
“Yeah. It was a perfect day.”
I feel her studying me. “What made it a perfect day?”
The road curves sharply through redwoods that get taller and taller the farther we go from the highway. It gives off the illusion of the day passing in a sped-up video, the sky getting darker around us the thicker the forest grows. “I just remember feeling light, I guess,” I say. “Sage had just graduated and knew what she was doing next. Silas had started at the fire department with me. Micah was doing great in Double-A and was home from spring training for a few days. I guess I felt like I could relax with them a little more, like all of a sudden we were all our own people and had made it and I didn’t have to worry as much. Getting everyone through high school was like… like my primary parenting role with them was coming to a close.” I remember it being a rare sunny day. We’d just moved into our house and hardly had any furniture, so we kept it to a small family party in our new yard. We played lawn games and barbecued. Sam was in a phase where he would do anything for a laugh, even to the point that it got obnoxious at times. Wren brought his cake out and put it on the picnic table we had at the time, and before we could even light his candles, he’d jumped up to the bench, felt everyone’s eyes on him, turned around, and sat on it.
We all stood there with our mouths gaping. But then I started to laugh at the complete absurdity of it, which made everyone else join in. The cake was unsalvageable, and no one cared.
“I remember being happy, and I remember it being easy to be happy that day. I think that’s why it was perfect,” I say. “What about you?”
She falls quiet again, pensively staring out her window. “I’m not sure. I have a lot of those. When I think about it now—when I make myself think about all of it, I remember feeling so much happiness. So much that I feel fucking mad that those things weren’t big enough to outweigh the bad stuff at the end.” She raises her hands, shrugging before they fall back to her thighs with a small clap. “Like, I don’t get it. Why’d we let the bad stuff win?”
My nose stings and my throat knots. “I actually have an answer for that,” I manage to say. “Per my therapist.” It comes out stiffly, but I feel like credit should be given where credit is due.
“Tell me.”
I clear my throat. “Because when it comes down to it, on a physical level, feeling happy doesn’t take priority over surviving,” I say. “We’re programmed to remember the bad so that we know what to stay away from and how to keep going. That’s why the shit that hurts stands out in our minds. That’s why holding on to the happy takes work.”
Her eyes are wide and her lips press together tightly. “What’s your worst memory?”
My lungs constrict in an instant. “Wren.” I don’t know how to put that sort of helplessness into words. The real fear that she could die. The guilt I couldn’t explain that went with it.
“Ellis,” she says, wobbling at the edges. “We have to talk about it at some point.”
But we’re pulling into the parking lot now to check in. “Let’s get unpacked and get out of this truck first. We’ll go on a walk,” I say.
“It’s the last time we can stall on it,” she says.
“I know. I know it is.”
We get out of the truck and head to the counter and check in. Neither of us is surprised to find out that we’ve been switched to a single tent reservation. We smirk at each other and take the map with the directions to our tent location.
It takes us another few minutes to get to our site. An off-white canvas tent with a wooden deck out front and a little chimney popping up from the top greets us. Past it, I can see that the dense trees give way to a clearing that narrows into a trail leading out to a rocky beach.
A few notifications start chiming from both of our phones when we pull in to park. We must not have had service deep in the woods. My phone was the one hooked up to the Bluetooth today, and I forgot that I have the Read Text setting option on, so it’s jarring when Siri reads out, “From Silas, to you and Wren Byrd: This time, it was me.”
Wren cocks a brow at me with a crooked smile. “The tent,” she says. “Kinda excited to tell him we were going to, anyway. Wipe the smug look off his face.”
Before I can reply, Siri starts up again. “From Kirby,” the robotic voice says. “Did you tell her yet?”
I feel the blood drain from my face. I watch it leave Wren’s.
“Tell me what?” she asks.