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“I can’t do that,” Ellis had said, frustrated. “I’m sorry. I won’t get the right words out, and I can’t put everything I feel into some paragraphs that way. I don’t know what to say.” He gave me a broken look. “All I know is that if I found out heaven was real and got there first? I’d hang back in the waiting room and save you a seat.”
I had the bleak, terrifying thought that it could be a goodbye in more ways than one. Maybe Ellis and I will come back and be worse off. Maybe I won’t be able to be near any of these people without feeling him and I won’t be strong enough to stand it ever the same.
Hope, hope, hope. Hope is my Tell-Tale Heart, thumping away no matter how hard I try to silence her.
She kisses me. She’s kissing me. It takes me a second to get my bearings. I’m frozen for a moment, with one of her hands clasping mine and the other cupping the back of my neck so she could pull herself up to me. I boomerang in and out of my body before it comes together.
She’s kissing me. Her lips are on mine after five long years. Five hundred years. She’s kissing me. I’m home.
“No … sex. Not this first night. Going to do this right.”
“God, I don’t care. I just need—”
“I know, baby, shh.”
“I know. I need, too. I need you. Let’s … let’s just slow down one notch.”
“Are we stupid to do this? Is this a bad idea?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he whispers back. “We’re just us.”
For a second, I think he’s just confirmed our stupidity. We are us. Two small-town nobodies that got knocked up at seventeen and eighteen. It certainly wasn’t the smartest thing anyone’s ever done. But then I realize he’s just right. We’re what we are and what we’ve always been to each other. The alchemy of our bodies and the way my skin still remembers his is a part of that. He said it himself before: he’s altered my very DNA.
“Are you okay? It’s just me, Wren.”
That’s exactly it, though. It’s Ellis. It’s been five years. It’s been too many other men’s arms and not a fraction of this even if you compiled them all together. It’s been disappointment after disappointment and feeling emptier and emptier, wondering if there was something wrong with me. If something broke inside me. Every step I take with him gets me further away from those lofty ideas of comfort I had and closer to this. This overwhelming, gutting, soul-rendering feeling is so dangerous. And I’m watching myself dive for it with so little caution.
“Let me kiss you some more,” he says against my temple. Like he needs it just as much. “Let m...
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“Fuck, I missed you.”
You’re indomitable in every way when it comes to the people you love. I’m grateful you saw me. Thank you.
I think it’s strange when people act like there’s no room for secrets or keeping anything (excluding nefarious shit) in a marriage. I’ve known you my whole damn life, and you still surprise me.
“I’ll give you a velvety mouthfeel,” says Wren into my ear. I give her my best scowl over my sunglasses. This evil woman cannot make me get hard while listening to Ferret Face. Her full lips slip into a grin, and I hook my foot around her chair to haul her a few inches closer.
“I missed making you laugh like that.”
“What’re you thinking about?”
“You, naked,” I admit. To her flattened look, I add, “And how I missed making you feel anything. Turning you on, making you happy. Even missed annoying you.”
Like some small, pathetic part of me realizes how much power she has over me. How much she owns me. I’ve known I belonged to her since I was six, in one way or another, no matter the years I resisted it beyond being friends. I’ve never felt like I deserved her back. The rest of me is a brute that wants to take and push and claim again.
“What’s your most treasured memory?” she asks.
“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?”
“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?”
If you won’t have me back anymore, then I’ll find you in the next life. You are the only thing that makes me believe in that. In something bigger than myself. The way I have felt about you has been the only thing that’s felt like … like it can’t be contained in one body or lifetime.”
“But are you about done trying to prove yourself?”
“I don’t know,” I say, heart in my throat. “You tell me.”
“I wanted it to be you, anyway,” she says wetly. “I wanted it to be you.”
“That’s okay, baby. Be mad at me forever,”
“Would you be offended if I asked you to bring me home a day early?” she asks, punctuating it by nipping my jaw. “I want to come home now.”
I disappear into the feel of her lips, the scent of her mixed with all the smells of home, and it’s like I’ve finally come alive under my own skin again. The version of me I was meant to be, misshapen heart finding its matching piece.
I’m not sure at what point he drifts off, but when his hand loosens over mine, I bring it down to trace over the words in his skin, just before I feel myself slipping away, too.
If you’re lost, I’ll find you. I’ll give you my body, my heart, and my soul. I’ll cherish every bit of yours in return. I’ll fight with you. I’ll fight for you. I’ll love you for everything left of forever, in every lifetime we get.
