Page 52 of Wren's Winter

“A promise.”

As the gravel road gave way to pavement and the lanes widened, I knew we were getting closer to the cabins. The clock was ticking between us. I had two more nights. The sun was setting behind the oversized cedars. One more full day with him.

And then it was back to my parents’ empty house. To seeing familiar faces on the street and having nothing at all to report when asked, What have you been up to?

Back to a place where I had nothing waiting for me.

Adrian

Between dinner and sex on the couch and then dessert and me going down on her the kitchen floor, the night was a success. We drank a bottle and a half of wine before we headed up to the bedroom, our clothes discarded in various spots around the cabin.

While most of my experiences were one-night only interludes, I had a few flings with women. Long weekends, where we stayed together and had sex all over the place in their rented condos or vacation homes.

At the end of the long weekends, I was ready to leave. Ready to return to my life.

Not with Wren. Every time with her opened up new sensations. I got to learn her body. The way she liked it when I scraped my teeth against her skin or the little mew of pleasure she let out the first time I entered her. Responsive in my hands, my need for her grew, not decreased. How could one weekend ever be enough?

She needed to stay with me. I wanted her beside me in a desperate way. I had never wanted another person.

As a child, I got up in the middle of the night a lot. I would wander around the house. The stillness of my parents’ large home, cold and forbidding. I’d go into their office and touch their leather chairs, the blotter under each of their keyboards, and flip through their Rolodex filled with important phone numbers of important people. This office that they spend hours in. The office I was supposed to take over some day.

I wish I was important enough to be seen by them for who I was. I knew they loved me in an off-hand way, more like a precious pet. They showed up for the important stuff, but it all felt for show. Back at home, it was their office, their den, with their cocktails.

Tam would complain to me about his parents making him go on long road trips with his family. Places like Yellowstone, Fairmont Hot Springs, and The Badlands.

My parents would take me to five-star resorts in tropical locales, leaving me in the kids’ club while they would sun by the pool.

Tam would complain, but he had inside jokes with his family about the time his sister ate a whole can of Pringles in five minutes. Or when his brother joked to a border agent that his parents weren’t actually his parents. An easy camaraderie that I would never have. I didn’t want to want those things. But sometimes, I wondered.

“Tell me about your home?” I asked.

Wrinkling her nose, she considered the question. “Ridgewood? It’s okay, I guess. It’s the closest thing I had to a hometown, but it’s never really felt like it to me. Maybe it’s because I only have a few friends I still talk to from school. It’s a beautiful place on the water, and they have adorable touristy stores on Front Street and a great bakery that makes these huge donuts shaped like a person, doughboys.”

“I like donuts.”

“But I always felt like a tourist there. Never a resident, never a home. My mom used to tell me I needed to bloom where you’re planted. Something she read on the front of a Mary Engelbreit card, I suspect. But to use a flowery analogy, it’s not that simple. Flowers don’t bloom wherever they are planted. It takes a myriad of factors, sunlight, soil pH, amount of water, and seasons. To plant one without care will only cause it to wilt and die.” She ducked her head, her cheeks coloring. “That’s a terrible analogy.”

“No, it’s not. I get it. Certain flowers can spring up between sidewalk cracks, but you—that’s not you. For someone like you, it takes more to bloom.”

She nodded slowly.

I didn’t want to be happy about her not feeling like she had a home. It was a terrible thing, but selfishly, I reveled in it. If she had no home in Ridgewood, maybe I could be her home—maybe… I sighed. What was I thinking? It was too soon, too fast. I was being foolish.

“So, what’s your plan now?”

With a glance away, she chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t know. I’ve never been able to put down roots before. Sorry for the plant pun again. With the person not to be named, I was going along with what he wanted to do. He wanted to live in Seattle, so we did. He wanted me to be home for him, so I got a job that worked from home. But now, I don’t know where to go or what to do.”

Stay here with me, I thought. But I couldn’t say that. It was too soon. She was still hung up on the ex, no matter what she said. I had no idea how to be there for someone else. My grandparents had taken care of me, while my parents ignored and chided me. What were the first steps in commitment? How do you know when it’s right?

How could I give Wren what she needed when I wasn’t sure was capable of that in the first place? A weekend of sex and pretty words weren’t enough. Even I knew that. I saw what other people had, and as much as I wanted that with Wren, the words to get there. The actions felt so far away.

The clock was ticking faster on us. She had nothing to stay for if I didn’t ask her, but how do you say those words?

Holding her closer in bed that night, I told myself the next morning we would talk. Surely, there was an option where we could see each other again? I could visit her, and she could visit me, and eventually, we’d…what? A momentary gasp of panic seized me. What were the steps, move in, marriage, kids? Is this what you did when you cared for someone?

It wasn’t a panic because I couldn’t picture it. All too easily, the images flooded my mind. The way she might redecorate the cabin. A small ceremony at the riverside and a reception at the diner. The way my old room could be turned into a nursery.

These ideas came unbidden and strong. I could picture myself with Wren. From the moment I saw her on my front porch, it was exactly as my grandfather had explained it. There would never be another for me. There was never a serious girlfriend before her because the universe knew all I would need was her. Would I be enough for her? Could I be her home?

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