Page 18 of Sunrise Arrows

I want to get lost in her all over again. Let her come in and turn my world right. Get wrapped back around her finger. Feel the soft, warm press of her body molded along mine. Have my fingers tangle in her hair and my lips on hers. Reclaim the pieces of her that were once mine alone and erase the memory of anyone else having had a share of them. Give her back the things I’ve never shared with anyone else.

Even knowing how it ends, I want to do it all over again. Relive it all. Love her as I did then and have it grow with who we are now.

The wreckage would be worth it. It always has been. Because the pain means it’s real.

“I’m gonna tell ya now what I told ya then, and maybe this time you’ll listen to me,” Ryder says, scraping the last of the shortcake onto his fork. “I think you should go after her.” He slaps the outside of my knee with the back of his hand before standing. “Don’t let her get away from you a second time, Arch. The regrets you’ve been carrying for ten years will be your only comfort for the rest of your life if you do.”

“It’s not that easy,” I quietly reply.

“Did you say somethin’?” Ryder asks, turning back from heading into the kitchen.

I shake my head and answer, “No.”

“‘Kay, if you say so.” He starts to walk away but before he enters the kitchen where our mom and Hunter are doing the dishes, he says, “Ease doesn’t matter if you want somethin’ bad enough. And I know you never stopped wanting Tinsley. I also know there’s no way that girl ever stopped wantin’ you. The only thing that has ever been in y’all’s way of being together is the two of you.”

That’s Ryder. Always ready with buckets of unwanted, sage wisdom and an outlook of boiling things down to their simplest form and solution. But how am I supposed to go after her when last time I wasn’t enough?

“Archer, honey?”

“Yeah, Mom?” I answer, getting up from the loveseat and following Ryder into the kitchen.

Our mom, Eleanor, has dark hair that is streaked with gray and is often tied back in a ponytail. At hardly more than five foot two, we all tower over her by a foot or more, our height having come from our dad, Bryce. Hunter’s greenish-blue eyes come from her, but all three of us have been told all our lives we have her smile.

I lean over the island where she’s wiping down Ryder’s counter while Hunter starts the dishwasher behind her. She stops what she’s doing and evaluates my face.

“You’re not sleeping, sweetheart. And when was the last time you took out those contacts? Your eyes are completely bloodshot.”

At the mention of my eyes, I can’t help but rub at them. I normally take them out an hour or two before bed and read until I go to sleep. Since my mind’s been too keyed up to sleep, however, I’ve forgotten to remove them the last three days.

When I don't immediately answer her, she tsks, “If you have to think that long about it, it’s been too long.”

“I’ll take ‘em out when I get home,” I placate. She doesn’t say anything, just continues to stare at me. “And I’ll wear my glasses all day tomorrow.”

“Very good. Now, why aren’t you sleeping?”

“You know, I’m thirty-one; I don’t need you keepin’ after me.”

“I’m your mother—it’s what I do. You three may be grown, but you’ll always be my babies and I’ll worry about your health and how well you’re taking care of yourselves until I die.”

She’s interrupted by a loud vibration coming from the drop bucket where we deposit all our phones and tablets before family dinner.

Mom snaps her fingers and says, “That’s why I called you in here. Your phone has been buzzing up a storm. First texts and now it sounds like calls.”

I reach in and pull my phone out, its screen lit up with Ames’s name.

“What’s up?” I answer.

The rowdy Friday night crowd and too loud music at Dark Horse—Ames’s bar and restaurant—blares through the phone.

“Archer, you there?” Ames yells back.

“Yeah man, what’s up?” I shout.

“I’ll be right back,” he says to someone, and a moment later things on his end quiet down enough for him to speak at a normal volume. “You need to get over here.”

“What’s goin’ on?”

“Your girl and that smoke show of a blonde are here.”

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