Page 26 of Left of Forever

I feel my jaw loosen before I snap it shut. “I wouldn’t want to plan any of it, either. You’d have to make all the arrangements.” The final few years of our marriage, any time it came to any sort of event outside of our typical day-to-day obligations, I was the one who planned it. Weekend trip? Me. Date night? Me. I bore the mental load of making sure we were on track for so long that the moment I couldn’t anymore, we drifted off the map.

“Done.” He crosses his arms and curls an eyebrow my way in challenge.

“I’d control the playlist,” I say, certain this will elicit some kind of flinch.

“Sounds great,” he says plainly.

“I’m gonna want to listen to a bunch of sad folksy shit that makes it feel like we’re in our own little indie film. So much acoustic guitar. Maybe even a mandolin,” I threaten.

“Perfect.”

I’ve got it. The trump card. “I’m going to bring a list of those prescribed questions along with us. The kind with some title like ‘Twenty-Six Questions to Make You Fall Back in Love’ or something.” I smile triumphantly. Hehatedthose kinds of things. Anything that put him on the spot for something hedidn’t have time to think through carefully or consider long. He’d get nervous and agitated and didn’t like conversations that had parameters.

“I’ve been finding that sometimes prompts can be helpful and fun,” he says. “We’d better start loading all this up if you need time to set up?” He gestures at the desserts, but I’m still scrambling.

“We couldn’t have sex!” I blurt.

Both of his brows go up. He pivots away, grabbing a box from where he remembers they’re stashed, then makes quick work of assembling it before sliding the cake inside. “That’s not what this would be about for me,” he finally replies, his voice a thick scrape.

He lifts the cake from the metal island and starts toward the door to the back alley where I park, so I move ahead of him and open it. “You’re telling me you’d have zero expectations as far as that went? You wouldn’t push for any of that on a trip with just you and me?”

His gaze narrows. “I didn’t push for it when we were married.”

“You know what I mean. I didn’t meanpush, per se.” I suck my teeth. “You know what I meant,” I repeat.

He stops in the middle of the doorway and looks down his shoulder at me. “I’m not gonna promise I won’t give in ifyoupush for it.”

I scoff from my sinuses. “That won’t be an issue. For me.” It would be far too distracting to partake in that with him. I know better. He continues past me and waits for me to open up the van before he slides the cake into a designated slot.

“I managed to go almost five years without your baking.” This statement is shaded in innuendo. “Don’t underestimate my self-control, Wren.”

CHAPTER 13

WREN

Ellis helps me finish loading the desserts into my van while I consider everything he’s put forth.

My heart feels like it’s sprouted brand-new wings—naked ones without feathers—and is being pushed toward the edge of the nest. Ironic, given that I am close to being an empty nester. My budding panic must be obvious because as soon as I shut the final door, I find him giving me a wary look.

“You don’t have to answer right this second,” he says. “We’ve got a few weeks.”

I let myself look at him.Reallylook at him. I used to keep a mental tally of the laugh lines that’d deepened around his eyes, secretly excited each time a new one would appear. I don’t think he’s gained anything new over the last few years, and it makes me unbearably sad. He still looks good, though. Painfully so. He’s put on some weight again, all his sharp lines strengthened ratherthan chiseled down. A healthy man in his prime, going gray at the temples.

In my peripheral, I spot Athena from the bookshop walking by, accompanied by her sister, Venus—our town’s head librarian. I raise my arm in greeting.

“Hi, ladies,” I call out.

“Hey, kids,” says Athena, no matter that Ellis and I are in our thirties. “You tell Sam congratulations from us tonight.”

“Will do,” Ellis says.

“Tell him to come by the library for his gift!” says Venus.

“No problem!” I yell. Our smiles fade the farther they get down the sidewalk, watching them whisper back and forth while they throw glances at us over their shoulders. Ellis and I sigh at the same time, catch it, then laugh.

“You can practically hear the rumor mill start to crank,” he says.

“I wouldn’t want to get their hopes up, Ellis,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to getanyone’shopes up. No one can know anything more than the fact that we’re co-parents taking a detour on the way home to celebrate successfully sending our kid off to college.”