Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
TAYLOR
T he tide doesn’t change for Taylor.
Every morning, aching for renewed purpose, he goes out to the beach in his wet suit with his board. The first two days, he paddles out, waits and breathes and tries to soak up some shreds of vitamin D. Still nothing surfable rolls in on the SoCal coast. It’s better than sitting alone in his bed, wallowing and watching crappy TV, but not by much.
On the third day, he camps out on the sand and just watches the waves. His board falls from its staked upright position with a clunk as if even it is tired of this repetitive nonsense. He goes back to his apartment with his many roommates and his tiny room, shuts the door and fires up an online search for a new job.
On day four, restless from writing a million cover letters, he leaves the surfboard strapped to the roof of his car and quietly sits on the beach, curious if this might be one of those umbrella-versus-the-rain situations. If you bring one? Sunshine all day. If you don’t? Torrential downpour. This method proves unrewarding.
By day five, he doesn’t even deign to bring a board at all. In his tie-dyed hoodie and his Birkenstocks, he trudges out onto the beach, sits crisscross, places his hands on his knees and breathes in time with the whooshing winds that stroke his cheeks and jostle his hair.
Minutes pass. He enters a meditative state—a serene room previously locked up in his mind—where he asks himself all the questions that have been keeping him up at night.
Do you regret what you did?
No.
Do you miss Ethan?
So much.
Do you miss Samara?
Yup.
Do you miss Amy?
Actually, yeah.
Do you wish you could have your job back?
An answer to that one is harder to come by. Instead of digging for a response, he tunes into the crashing of the waves, sniffs at the fresh briny scent in the air. He can’t recall when he’s had this much free time before.
What do you want to do?
Considering his situation more closely, he’s not destitute. Thanks to smart planning, he’s got a sizable amount of savings. If need be, he could always ask his siblings to float him, to be paid back with interest later. It’s the least they could do after he’d sewn Halloween costumes and administered medicine for them over the years.
What do you want to do right now ?
His brain goes blank, but his shoulder muscles respond, stretching back and down. His hands float up from his kneecaps and take aim midair. Before he can second guess the impulse, he’s walking back to his car and firing up an internet search.
Twenty minutes later, he’s entering an archery and fencing studio not far from where he lives in Encinitas—the land of murals and smiling dogs. He must’ve passed this place dozens of times but never bothered to look closer. Today the swish of the door swinging open signals a fresh start.
He texts his sister: I’m signing us up for archery lessons
She’s excited when, two days later, he drives them to the studio for their beginner class, equipment provided. She’s wearing bright pink leggings and a stretchy headband that pulls back her brown hair. “Here, I brought an extra,” she says, slinging a matching one at him as they take their spots among a bunch of teenagers.
He really should get a haircut, but every time he goes to make an appointment, he stops. Ethan ran his hands through this hair. Something about shedding it feels wrong, and yes, that’s ridiculous, but so is the polka-dotted headband he slides on in preparation for class.
The instructor is not a tall, burly man, but rather a young, slender woman with brown skin and a warm smile. Good, he’ll focus much better this way. Just getting the bow and arrow in his hands snaps him back to those moments out on the field at Storybook Endings, how free and safe he felt under Ethan’s watchful gaze and how at-home he felt on those grounds.
At the end of the class, when it’s his turn to shoot his shot, he does so with gusto. Every teenager and Sasha’s jaws are on the floor when he hits just shy of center.
“Well done,” the instructor beams.
Taylor beams, too.
ETHAN
A week later, Ethan’s hand is finally healed. He can’t say the same about his heart.
The damage inflicted upon his physical body while Taylor was around has vanished, but that book and that sock still sit on his coffee table, placed there by Samara. He looks at both of them and resolves to do something about them. Mail them back or get rid of them—those are his options.
Yet both seem infeasible.
Christ, it’s not like he’s about to start a shrine to the guy. It’s just that he sort of wants to keep the illustrated book of fairy tales as a token of remembrance and it would be ridiculous to mail back a single sock. Taylor’s probably just thrown away its match by now.
Thrown away its match . Is that perhaps what Taylor did when he walked out without fighting for them? Sure, they’d had no discussions about feelings or longevity, but there’s no doubt in Ethan’s mind that Taylor could sense his intentions surging through the air with every word, every touch.
Five years he’s lived alone in this cottage that he built for a family that has dispersed. Five years he vacuumed the carpet, fed Nana, pruned the garden out front and made dinners for one. A king inside a castle that’s not quite crumbling, yet it no longer holds the magic or fortitude it once did.
It may be time to abdicate the throne.
Out on the archery field an hour or so later, an acute wave of loneliness crashes over him. Teaching solo has always been most comfortable to him. Assistants just get in the way. But Taylor was more than an assistant in that week. He was an eager student, a positive presence, someone who balanced out Ethan’s more spacey qualities.
Before a new crop of young guests at the resort arrive, he braces against the chilly wind and tries to take on some of Taylor’s more sociable qualities.
Whatever his reserve, it’s freeing to reunite with the bow in his hands, the trusty one he’s kept since his late teens. The resistance in his shoulder blade as he draws back is an ache he’s missed. The tension builds and builds to a pointed release that he’ll never grow tired of, never stop wanting to share with others.
Not long after returning to the cottage, still puzzling over the Taylor memorabilia on permanent display in his living room, Facetime Samara blinks up onto his phone.
When he accepts the call, Amy’s face in her home office takes up the full screen.
“I was worried if I called from my own phone you wouldn’t pick up,” she says by way of greeting.
There’s no use rebuking that, so he sits down on the couch and pops in his earbuds. Nana comes up onto the couch, poking her head into the frame. The dog gets a warmer greeting than he does, but no use pouting over that. “I don’t have long because I think Samara will combust if she goes without her phone for more than an hour, but I’m calling for two reasons.”
He makes no comment about how she’s acting like she’s running down an agenda at a business meeting, a habit of hers that he’s grown used to but only barely.
She connects the phone to what is surely a standing ring light on the edge of her desk, folds her hands in front of her face and sighs. “First, I want to say I’m sorry for the way that I acted toward you. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way nor accused you of trying to hurt me. I realize now that I was hurt, and it was easier for me to make your intents malicious than acknowledge that maybe there was something true happening between the two of you.”
Ethan clears his throat. “I’m sorry, too. We— I —should’ve been up front with you. Sneaking around made us look guilty. No wonder you were hurt.”
“I’ll admit that hoodie wasn’t a brilliant disguise,” she says, a knowing smirk shifting to the left of her face.
“You get caught up in someone, and suddenly even the worst ideas seem like gold,” he says.
“You must have real feelings for Taylor,” Amy says after a practiced, loaded beat. Ethan struggles to find something intelligent to say. Even when they were together, they weren’t well-versed in openly sharing. Perhaps that should’ve been a bigger red flag, but when you’re young, in love and starting a family and a business, there’s only so much time to talk. Now, five years gone, Ethan is still speechless over the wreckage of who they used to be.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to respond,” Amy says, sounding borderline wistful. She runs a tentative hand through her silky hair. “I’m sorry if I’ve been distant for the last year or so. It’s not easy trying to prove yourself as a woman in this industry. It didn’t even occur to me that I’d be treated differently in meetings once we divorced. I’m working hard to make this business everything it can be.”
“You will,” Ethan says. Their relationship may have ended, but his belief in her and her vision is limitless.
She smiles. “Once the Lake Tahoe resort is opened, I’ll be taking a long break. Samara and I will move up there for the summer to oversee launch and then be back in time for her to start her junior year.”
“That’s amazing.” And he means that. Sincerely.
“Thanks. It’ll be a nice change. A good change, I think.”
Nana huffs a bit, her head resting on Ethan’s thigh. It forces him to look around, inspect Taylor’s book and Taylor’s sock and the walls and the chairs, investigate the feeling sitting heavy in his chest. “I think I could use a change, as well,” he says, surprised to be confiding in Amy of all people.
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Anything I can help with?” He can tell the offer is genuine.
He nods slowly. “Maybe.”
“What did you have in mind?” she asks.
He takes a breath, whips up some courage and launches into the plan that’s been brewing in his mind for some time now.