Forever
FOREVER
WREN
I’m laughing at myself in the full-length mirror, watching my reflection contort and struggle to reach the top button on the back of my dress, when a soft knock comes on my bedroom door.
“Oh, thank god,” I mutter. I hurry toward it, passing my favorite worn-in boots on the floor, tucked beneath the wall of windows looking out onto a drizzly day. My bouquet is sitting on a dressing table there, too. Sage designed something uniquely perfect, of course. Thorn-free stems of unripe marionberries ranging from green to pink to reddish purple sit between trailing eucalyptus, delicately spiky pieces of smoke bush (to represent Ellis, she’d said), coral nasturtiums, and dark cosmos… among a few others whose names I can’t remember. Despite being meticulously curated, it looks like something collected at random. Little pieces of life—familiar and new and yet to reach full bloom.
I’m assuming it’s Sage herself at the door now. Either her or my mom, who’ve both been wringing their hands ever since the forecast called for rain and all our plans for today had to shift.
“Perfect timing,” I say, unlocking and opening the door.
“That’s a first,” says Ellis, leaning onto an arm on the doorframe.
I breathe out a surprised laugh and quickly try to tuck myself behind the doorframe. My entire face heats at the sight of him in expertly tailored dress pants and suspenders cutting over a crisp white shirt. An undone tie dangles loosely around his neck. “Haven’t you heard it’s bad luck to see the bride?” I ask playfully.
His mouth curves gently, and he shakes his head. “Nah. You and I make our own luck, Byrd.” He pushes himself up straight. “Besides, I think our bad luck quota got met with the rain. Let me see you, baby.”
I open the door wider to let him in, hear the sound of him shutting it over my heart thumping hard in my ears. I turn my back to him and lift my hair off my neck.
“Can you do up the last button?”
I feel him step closer. His swallow is audible before his knuckles brush my skin to draw the clasp closed.
“Perfect,” he grits.
I smooth my hands down the dress. It’s ivory and simple, fitted over most of my shape, loose enough on the bottom so I can move my legs to dance. No lace or embellishments on it, just gauzy, transparent sleeves that start off at the shoulder and end at my wrists. No jewelry other than my mom’s teardrop pearls and my former ring, a little band of emeralds, because he really has always liked me in green. I left my hair down and wild and decided to skip the veil. We know exactly what we’re getting into, and I don’t want anything pulled over my eyes.
I turn to face him, and he puts a splayed hand to his chest. The bare emotion in his eyes is about to ruin my makeup.
“So perfect,” he says again, a choked whisper.
I take him in and have to swallow twice. “I don’t care what they say. I feel so lucky right now.” I chuckle, tears pooling in my eyes with just how much I mean it. “Need me to help with your tie?”
He looks down like he just remembered it was there. “Oh, yeah. Not sure where everyone else went.”
I knot his tie with shaky hands, the weight of his gaze chasing over me. He idly traces a fingertip down one of my sleeves. I press my palms into his firm chest and grin up at him, utterly punch-drunk in love. He tucks a piece of my hair behind an ear and goes on cataloging me with his eyes.
Just then, we hear a noise from outside and peek out of our bedroom window. Sage is down below, on the gravel walkway leading from our house to the stable. Fisher’s holding a clear umbrella above her while she sprinkles petals all around the path. We watch them kiss after he plucks a stray petal from her hair. In the open doorway to the stable, we spot Silas pacing side to side, clearly reciting something to himself.
We hear a car door shutting and scurry across our room to look through the windows on the opposite side, out front. Micah is there, greeting Venus and Athena and handing them their own umbrellas. They visibly coo over him and kiss his cheeks.
Martha and Walter pull in next, followed by Lennon Kirby, Bea Marshall and her mom, then Serena Lindhagen and her fiancé, Peter. Turns out, Ellis had spotted me talking with Peter at the Starhopper grand opening the New Year’s before last, and he’d assumed he was my date. These days, it’s easy to laugh and get a kick out of the things that were badly timed in our lives.
Ellis threads his fingers through mine and leads me back across our room, where we watch the people we’re closest to all filter into our little stable.
“Thank god we kept it small, huh?” he says.
Another knock sounds on the door, and then Sam is opening it and stepping into our room. Ellis and I let out the same happy sigh at the sight of him.
When he came home for Christmas last winter, he’d been a little gaunt but seemed genuinely excited about school, inspired by everything he was learning so far. As far as we can tell, he’s happy and handling himself well in California. I’m secretly pleased that he keeps coming home over his breaks, though.
“Hey, there you are,” he says to Ellis with a smile. He passes him a navy jacket that matches his own, and I notice a few Band-Aids on his fingers. “Gram says you gotta get down there now. Almost time to start.”
“What happened to your fingers?” I ask.
Sage flutters in through the open doorway. “There you are! You gotta get down there!” she scolds Ellis. “Go, go!” She starts making a sweeping motion with her arms, and I note a bandaged finger on her hand, too.
“What did everyone cut themselves on?” I ask to no avail.
“All right, all right, I’m going,” Ellis says, laughing. “Give me ten seconds with my bride.” He pulls my hand up to his lips before either of them have a chance to say anything more. “I’ll save you a seat, Byrd.”
I warm all over and watch him walk away.
“Think they expect you to stand,” says Sam, frowning.
Sage dives for me and lays a quick peck to my cheek. “You look incredible.” Her shoulders rise with glee. “I can’t wait for you to see it. I mean, it’s not outside like we planned, but… I think we managed.”
“I love you, friend. Thank you.” As long as these people are there and that man is waiting for me, I couldn’t care less about the rest. We wanted to do this wedding to celebrate what we’ve already earned together. What we know we have, for however long we have left to keep it.
My son comes to stand beside me as we watch everyone else head into the stable. Ellis looks up from under his umbrella and blows a kiss our way.
“You ready?” Sam asks, offering me his arm. I loop mine through his and grab my bouquet.
“I am,” I say. “I’m glad we get to have you be a part of it, too.” I wouldn’t have it any other way. He smiles at his feet before he gives me a wide-open look.
“You look beautiful, Mom. I’m so happy for you. I’m so happy for Dad.”
“I’m happy for us, too, bub.”
Sam walks me past his old room, over the stairs he once fell down and broke his wrist. Through the kitchen where I used to perch him on a stool beside me to bake. He touches the table we took back from my former house, where he told us about school and his first grown-up dream coming true.
I momentarily let go of his arm when we step out back so he can open up an umbrella. My mom’s boyfriend, David, waits at the sliding stable door, music floating out from within. David nods to us both at the appropriate point in the song, then pulls the door away, taking the umbrella from Sam.
The aisle divides two narrow rows of seats, only two chairs wide by ten rows long. A pile of flower petals makes up the path that leads to the love of my life. The person I’d choose, every time. In every life. Our beautiful son guides me a few more steps, and everything else comes into focus.
Sage, waiting on my side of the aisle now, smiling while tears roll down her face. She’s decorated the areas she could with more beautiful arrangements. There are wreaths on the stable doors. Bud pokes his head out of one now and snorts softly at me. Ellis and I debated whether or not we should even take him back after Sage had held on to him for so many years, but she insisted it was fine. Plus, after last fall turned out to be another bad fire season, more animals were displaced, and she wasted no time in taking in two new additions. Major and Kelpie’s owners decided that they’d rather risk hurricanes than fires, and relocated to Florida. Given their age, they wanted their horses to find a home that could give them the love and attention they deserved. Sage and Fisher drove out to Colorado and fetched them the very same day I saw the post.
Not long after that (not having learned my lesson about remaining in these groups, apparently), I saw a local shelter post about a single horse who’d lost her home and gone unclaimed. When I saw her name, I told Ellis through tears that I knew she was meant to be ours. Hope’s dark head emerges from her stall now, and she whickers happily at Sam and me.
Strands of bulb lights are strung from the ceiling, but more than that, everywhere, dangling from different heights, all different sizes and varying colors, are origami birds. I turn to Sam and find his eyes shining. I look down the aisle and search for Micah’s hands and, sure enough, see them decorated in Band-Aids, too. Silas appears to be unscathed, grinning broadly with tears falling freely down his handsome face. All my best friends. My family, my people. My Byrds.
“When did you guys manage this?” I ask, laughing wetly.
“Last night,” Sam says, his first tear slipping away. “Dad said he’d keep you busy.”
I look down the aisle and find him. I can’t believe I ever thought he wasn’t romantic. And he did keep me busy. Took me on a one-night camping trip down on Founder’s Point. Same old Coleman tent, with a new, upgraded air mattress.
Ellis isn’t smiling at me. He looks like he’s afraid to blink, like he wants this memory branded onto his soul. The three of us hug when Sam and I make it down the aisle, before Sam takes his place next to Micah at Ellis’s side. Ellis takes my hands in his, a tear falling right from his eye and onto my ring finger.
“Hi, everyone,” Silas begins. “We’re all family here, so I won’t waste time on introductions. Especially because the first time these two did this, I was robbed of the opportunity to give a speech. I’ve had years to build up to this, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be robbed of my moment.”
“ Silas ,” Ellis groans.
“Robbed of my moment to tell you all about my heroes, Wren and Ellis Byrd,” Silas adds.
We both look at him now, and his beaming grin turns downright smug.
“You see… my brother was always my hero. And you might think there’s nothing special about that; every younger brother looks up to his sibling. I think sometimes that’s a by-product of proximity and that person being older and cooler than you, but in my case, Ellis was never even remotely cooler, so…” The room chuckles. “Ellis taught me how to tie my shoes and how to shave, but above all else, he taught me what kind of man I should aspire to be. I know everyone thinks he’s this calm and careful guy. Hell, he’s the first one to say he thinks he’s been too careful in his life. But I’ve always seen the truth.” Ellis looks at me, his eyes blue from tears, and Silas presses on. “When Ellis fucks up, he owns it. Even if it takes him a little while. And when he does, he fixes it with singular determination. He is unfailingly there for anyone who needs him, even”—he clears his throat—“even when they have a hard time letting him. He’s why I wanted to become a firefighter to begin with. I knew he’d stand against a wall of flame if it threatened someone else, so I thought maybe he should have someone watching out for him, too. My brother has saved my life in the literal sense, more than once, so when I fell off a mountain in a ball of fire, all that went through my head was holding on long enough for him to find me. It never once occurred to me that he wouldn’t.” I think I can hear Ellis’s heart keening. “The reality is I’ve never known another human more unflinchingly brave than Ellis. Save for one.
“It was easy to admire Wren from the beginning, if only for the fact that she was the one person who could really shake Ellis. In all my memories, I realize that her mere presence in his life made him a more adventurous kid. He was braver about trying little things, and I think that probably trained him for the big things he’d end up taking on later, like when he had to take on raising all of us when he was only eighteen. And about that… he never truly did it alone. My siblings and I saw Wren courageously step into a role that included so many hats. Each of us called her to bail us out of trouble and to go around Ellis.” Ellis levels a confused pout at me, and I sputter a laugh. “She danced between being a new mom, being a parental figure to us, to becoming our very best friend with more grace than anyone could ask. Wren thinks we absorbed her into our family, but she’s the one who made us into hers.
“Watching you two lay the foundation for a life together and then go on to build a beautiful one was one of the most inspiring things I’ve experienced. Seeing you lose it for a while was…” He shakes his head, visibly struggling. “Seeing you lose it for a time was gutting. Some of us, who shall remain nameless, were too scared to hope you could figure it out again. Those unnamed people should have known better. Hoping with one another is how you two got so brave in the first place. After all, what is bravery if not hope in action?
“I love you. I’m honored to stand here with you today and help you both get this shit right.” The whole room boils over with laughter.
We recite the vows we inked into our skin.
We eat food that Fisher makes, including cake. Ellis and I surprise attack Silas and shove it into his face.
We dance. Oh, we dance. Half in the stable, and half outside in the rain when it’s faded to a mist.
Since it’s such a small party, we get everything cleaned up and everyone headed out just as the sun starts to set. Sam tells us he’ll be staying at Micah’s for a few days. We make plans to go over to Sage’s for a family dinner before his spring break is over.
And later, in our quiet and warm home, after we’ve made slow, rocking, gasping love once, and fast, clawing, loud love another time, I’ll fall asleep the same way I’ll fall asleep a million more times in this life. I’ll run my fingertips over the vows on his skin and the birds on his back. A hummingbird for Sage, a crow for Micah, a red-tailed hawk for Silas, a swallow for Sam, and a wren for me. I asked him if he knew that wrens mated for life when he got it, to which he laughed and said no. I got a matching wren on my hip last Christmas, because if he can carry all of them, I can carry him.
At sunrise, we’ll take Bud and Hope on a ride. We’ll make plans and we’ll tease. We’ll flirt and we’ll fight. One day, when we’re very old and gray, one of us will open our eyes to a day that the other won’t, but we’ll smile knowing how full life has been, knowing how we spent forever. Everything left of it, together.