Page 33 of I’ll Paint You a Sunset Someday

October 2045

Hallee

The air has shifted back to cold winds, bringing along frost-filled mornings. The leaves are saying goodbye to us—changing colors in a loving farewell. We’ve all enjoyed the fall festivities, but playing tag in this corn maze is my personal hell. Matt insisted it’d be fun, but fun is continuously getting more and more subjective.

Twenty minutes have passed and I still haven’t found my way out, loud shrieks keep startling me, and if one more person runs in front of me too quickly, I’ll throw a punch. Flighter turned fighter , real quick. Even the smiley scarecrow is starting to give me the creeps. Paranoia made its eyes move on my third pass by.

Are the sloshing footsteps approaching my aisle friendly? Are they hunting me? Realistically, it’s one of us, but reality is blurring with the horror movie Avery made me watch last night, so I sink into the corn and camouflage myself like a child.

“Hallee?” My shoulders relax as Dean slides around the corner. “I know you’re here. I followed your footprints.”

Wearing white tennis shoes to the pumpkin patch was one of the greater lapses in my judgment, and my stomach falls as I gaze at my mud-covered feet. Messes are the worst. They make me feel like there are a hundred little ants crawling on my body. Sometimes I lean into the feeling. Sometimes I run from it like a squirrel crossing the street. It’s rarely a linear journey—healing.

Today we’ve passed the point of no return, so as Dean tiptoes past my hidden body, I put all of my strength behind a lunge and tackle him to the ground.

The smack of our bodies hitting the mud flips our laughter switch, and we slide a good five feet before settling and sinking into the mud. Dean blocked the majority of the damage so my shirt is still pretty clean . . . until he does the meanest thing he has ever done. Reaching out, he plasters his handprint across the front of my chest. Now it looks like we were fooling around in the freaking corn maze. Thank God my arms catch my fall before the back of me is painted completely brown.

“Oh! Ah!” Avery squeals, catching us unaware. Couldn’t hear her and Hudson’s footsteps because of Dean’s overly exaggerated laughter.

“Sorry, Mom and Dad!” Hudson yells, snapping a picture and then dragging Avery away before we can explain.

He fought us for the camera this morning. Like, he literally took us to a fake court in our living room where Matt was the judge, Marlowe and Avery were the jury, and we were the witnesses. We carefully weighed the odds of him breaking it versus providing the funniest pictures ever taken, and Matt gave the verdict that it was a gamble worth taking.

“That’s going to be one interesting picture,” Dean says, grinning and staring at me like he’s making a wish on me again. His happiness is a drug I never want to quit.

“I’m going to have to sneak that one away before he tries to use it as blackmail.”

He tips his head back, and his laugh is a choir singing the melody of our memories. With each verse, another laugh joins in and replays years and years of this angelic sound.

My senses have clocked overtime hours, working tirelessly to piece back together our puzzle, leaving me high on the history of us, starving and raiding my mental pantry for more. As I suspected, I can only remember things we’re repeating, mixed with a slight glimmer of memories connected to his laughter . . . his smile . . . his eyes.

Reaching up, he draws eyeblack onto my cheeks, and I see us covered in blue paint, recreating a scene from my favorite book. I draw a mud heart on his arm and remember the time I drew it in pen, desperate to tattoo him so he’d never forget how to love me. We’d just learned that it is, in fact, possible to forget how to ride a bike, and it made me realize that it’s possible to forget love, too.

The sun shining on his hair blurs the lines between laughing now, and laughing then. Then, we were sitting in The Marmotte, we were skipping on the street, we were walking to work. Now, we’re covered in mud, beaming with joy, and saying fuck you to time. She’s a greedy little bitch, turning my life into a constant coin flip of the good days of then versus the crushing fears of now. Although, on the nights I can’t sleep I’ve been held by the memories filed away in my mental archive of comforting things.

“Why don’t you lead us out, Sunshine?” Dean asks.

As he helps me up, my grip tightens subconsciously, and he smirks at the secret that reflex revealed.

“Unless . . . you can’t?” he taunts.

“You’re really gonna make me admit it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Ugh. Dear knight in shining armor, I’m trapped! Please, come rescue me,” I call like a damsel in distress. Makes me realize how rarely I feel like one these days.

“The smartest woman I’ve ever met couldn’t find her way out of a silly corn maze?”

“Okay, was that totally necessary? Felt a little personal.”

“I was hoping you had, because I couldn’t either.”

Smart man, admitting it before I was too hurt.

“Well then, shall we?” I ask.

Sifting through the mud hand in hand, we retrace old steps and pass the smiley scarecrow. There’s no rush to our stroll and no panic in my pulse. Seems silly that there ever was, but being stranded alone is so much different than being stranded together. Everything’s better with him by my side—I am better with his hand in mine. Always will be.