Page 106 of Now to Forever

I bite my lip as a warm realization ripples through me. “A sleepover?”

He shrugs, eyes smiling. “A sleepover.” Then, “If that’s okay.”

“Yeah.” I swallow. “That’s okay.”

“I’m starving,” Wren says, oblivious to what’s happening. To the fact she’s watching me fall so deep in love with her dad I’ll never be able to come back from it. It’s not like it was when we were teenagers; it’s more. Like I’ve unknowingly carried all those feelings with me for all these years and now it’s morphed into something so gigantic it can’t fit into any one place. I don’t know what to do with it—don’t know how to tell him or show him or be any sort of lover he deserves. I might never be able to say it, but the way he looks at me, it’s as if he knows this is it. He’s it. The thing that I can never untangle myself from. Whether I’m in a desert orhe’s in another city—we’re it. And more: I don’t want to leave him . . . or her. I want them both—this feeling of us—for as long as I’m allowed to have it.

Then: What if I didn’t leave at all? What if I stayed and this was just my life? Me, Ford, and Wren in an A-frame on Lake Ledger. Could it be this easy?

Instead of saying any of this, I take the turkey out of the fridge and pull a recipe up on my phone, reading through the steps.

“Four hours!” I shout, stunned, internally swearing at June for making me do this. “What the hell kind of food is this?!”

Wren and Ford laugh behind my back. As I preheat the oven, Ford orders a pizza. It arrives at the same time I put the turkey in.

We sit on the floor and play cards, laughing as Ford retells the story of seeing his beloved warbler, and eat pizza while we watch a movie. Wren rolls her eyes every time Ford kisses me.

For dessert, we have turkey. It doesn’t taste half bad for sitting in an oven for hours and hours.

The night, in short, is a domestically boring experience and exactly like the kind of magic I’ve never believed I’d be privy to. Never believed could exist for me.

And when it’s late—so late Wren has already fallen asleep on the couch—Ford kisses me good night and crawls into a sleeping bag on the floor as I go upstairs. I last five whole minutes in Archie’s bed before the short distance between us starts to feel like a million miles. I scoop up all my blankets and drag them down the steps, making a bed on the floor next to Ford. His fingers interlace withmine as we stare at each other in the darkness, a moment more intimate than anything I’ve ever felt naked.

“Ford,” I whisper when it looks like he’s fallen asleep.

“Hm?” he says, not opening his eyes.

“How freaked out would Wren be if she woke up and I was in your sleeping bag.”

A sleepy laugh rumbles in his chest.

“Ford,” I repeat.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

He squeezes my hand. And then, we fall asleep.

Together.

Thirty-Eight

“Howdiditgo?”I ask Wren as she gets in the passenger seat and buckles her seatbelt.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” I mock as I back out of the space in front of the therapist’s office. “You wanna talk about it?”

She shrugs.

“You tell her you took up hard drugs and started hanging out with the demon spawn of Jessica Letts?”

“Can you not?”

“Can you not?” I echo in a namby-pamby voice.

We’re quiet for a full angry violin song, her snapping the rubber band on her wrist the entire time.

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