Page 42 of Now to Forever

His eyes on mine feel gravitational, like if I look at them long enough they'll suck me right to him. I force myself to look at the water, both of us quiet until we reach the shoreline.

At the canoe, he flips it over and kneels next to it, rubbing his palm along the bottom then looking up at me with a grin. “What are you doing the rest of the night?”

“Taking a bath in an outdated bathtub. Reading a book about a devastatingly handsome lizard.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “Why?”

He stands, holding out a paddle. “Let’s see if she floats.”

Every warning alarm in my body goes off as I look at the paddle wrapped in his fingers. The way I immediately want to. The speed at which the instant shot of warmth and excitement zips through me. How my heart immediately pounds at an unusually fast rhythm.

“I shouldn’t,” I say, not convincing either of us as the lake sits feet away, painted in gold, looking like a scene made to be in.

“Ahh.” There’s a teasing quality to his voice. “I get it now.”

My eyebrows pinch.

“I got old and ugly,” he says with a knowing smirk. “But you, Scotty Armstrong, got boring.”

He’s goading me; it works.

With a glare, I snatch the paddle out of his hand. “I hope a bird shits on your head.”

With a victorious smile: “Some things never change.”

He pushes the canoe into the water and tosses his keys and phone onto the shore. I step in, taking a wobbly seat at the front.

He chuckles from the seat behind me; I wave a middle finger in the air without looking at him.

I have no doubt he knows I’m also smiling.

Fourteen

I’minacanoewith Ford. It takes thirty minutes of us being on the lake and him pointing out birds to me like a nature guide for this to sink in. Every sound synonymous with the lake—birds, bugs, and boat motors—mixes with the soft splash of the paddles cutting through the water to form a surreal and soothing soundtrack.

The sun is low, the lake has emptied. It’s peaceful. I’ll never admit it to Ford, but it’s better than a bubble bath and any book I own.

“Tell me how you got the crematorium,” he says from the back of the canoe. “And the name.”

I tuck my chin to my shoulder, not fully looking back at him. His paddle cuts into the water; I rest mine on my lap.

I hesitate and think of him being so open about Wren. Himself. His job.

I take a deep breath in, forcing the words with my exhale.

“The police told me when my dad got the call about Zeb, he told them to burn him.” A bird cuts through the sky; I wonder if Ford knows what it is. “So they sent the body to the crematorium and did just that. I was on that trip for college—you remember it. Two weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail with that earth science class. Seems stupid now.” I pause to watch a bass boat troll by, knowing I didn’t need to tell Ford that part. I had talked to him on the phone just before I left.“I’ll miss talking to you,”he’d said.“You’ll find some boy and live in those woods forever, I bet,”he teased. Then the ones that lingered the longest and hurt the most after he was long gone:“You knowI’ll still love you even if you do.”I laughed then. I’d never once called him my boyfriend, never once told him I loved him, but he had to have known both those things were true.“Yeah, yeah, Golden Boy. Have fun with my brother this weekend, and I’ll see you when you pick me up if I’m not shacked up in a tent with Sasquatch.”That was the plan: he’d be there at the trailhead and pick me up. While my brother stayed in Ledger working a job putting up fences, Ford and I went off to college. Him at a big state school in Raleigh, me at a small college close to home. Only an hour away from each other, we were together nearly every weekend.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, I didn’t even know he’d died—June couldn’t connect with the teacher in charge. Cell phones were shit then, and the group SAT phone was down, but it didn’t seem that important. What could go wrong, you know? Little did I know as I was eating beans from a can and laughing around a fire, my brother was being burned alone, not a soul there to say goodbye to him orplay a good song.” I laugh softly, but even to my own ears it sounds sad. Like a cry from the bottom of an empty well. “My dad went to get the ashes a few days later—after spending God knows how long pouring liquor down his throat—and Zeb was in a glorified trash bag and cardboard box. My dad was so wasted he drove right off the bridge into Crow Creek. Sometimes I wonder if it was on purpose—not that it matters. Dad drowned. Zeb’s ashes washed away.”

Giving those words life is all it takes for me to viscerally relive every moment of that story like it was the day it happened. The way I dropped to my knees and my muscles seized when I saw June’s face at the trailhead. She was bleach white, crying as she spoke.“Zeb died,”she blurted through her sobs.“And your dad.” I was dirty, smelled like I hadn’t had a shower in two weeks, and couldn’t even get my backpack off before I vomited on her shoes.

I went into the woods for two weeks and the world fell apart.

I happily hiked on day one; Zeb got arrested.

I signed a logbook with a smiley face at a trail checkpoint on day two; Zeb somehow got released on bail.

I stacked rocks in a creek with my classmates on day four; Zeb lost his job, shoved one more needle into his arm, and took his final breath.

I finally figured out how to start a fire with a piece of flint on day nine; Zeb was getting cremated. Alone.

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