Page 1 of Left of Forever

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 bouquetis 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 oneway 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,myproblem… 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 keepreplaying 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 thisseemed like no biggie compared to some of the other maladaptive male behavior I’ve been subjected to.