Page 25 of The Now in Forever

W e catch a shuttle downtown, and Ed takes me to a tall stone and stained-glass church, with a looming bell tower.

“You need to confess?” I instantly regret my choice of words.

He shakes his head, smiling. “Come on.”

There's a small set of concrete stairs around the back, a slat wooden door at the bottom that looks older than Portland itself. Ed opens it, and the thumping sound of PJ Harvey’s “To Give You My Love” pours into the night.

The bar is dark, with long wooden tables like something you might see in an episode of Game of Thrones , two pool tables, a Medieval Times pinball machine, and a jukebox in the corner.

Ed leads me to the bar, and we wait our turn. Ed orders two Pabsts.

I whisper in his ear, “Can I get a wine?”

“Not a good idea here unless you’re a fan of Carlo Rossi.”

“A whiskey, then.”

Ed nods and changes my order.

We take our drinks to the corner of one of the long tables. A small candle in a red glass holder flickers between us, and the question hangs in the air like a thought bubble in a graphic novel. Where were you that night? Why didn’t you meet me?

Ed takes a swig of his beer, and it feels like he’s buying time. I run my thumb over the smooth glass in my hand and don’t say anything. I wait. I’ve waited for ten years to hear this. What’s a few more minutes?

“I wanted to be there. I did. It just…wasn’t possible. Do you remember that night we were together how my mom was home?”

I nod.

He sighs. “She lost her job. At the time, she said she was laid off. But part of me knew she was lying. My mom has a problem with pills. It wasn’t the first job she lost. But this time, she couldn’t find another one.

While I was at the residency, she accidentally set the house on fire.

I’m not even sure what happened. I’m positive she was either drunk or high or both.

She says she had a seance with all these candles, and the spirit got out of hand.

” He runs a hand over his face. “She was already behind on the mortgage. She had to sell the house. Then she met a guy online. He lived in Seattle, and she moved in with him. He was a big drinker. So, they would just get fucked up.”

He turns his can on the table; the condensation runs off the aluminum.

“Toward the end of the residency, I got a call from the hospital. My mom fell off the railing of her deck trying to hang Christmas lights from the roof while drunk and high. I went to Seattle to take care of her. Moved her out of that place and into a friend’s for a bit.

She was so pissed at me. We all lived there in this tiny apartment.

Broke as fuck. We were in Portland on the day I was supposed to meet you.

It was all such a mess. How could I meet you and bring you into that?

That day we spent together, we felt so connected. Like you really saw me.”

“It felt that way for me too.”

He reaches across the table and runs his fingers along mine. “When you’re trying to do everything you can to survive, the last thing you need is to be with someone who sees straight to your soul.”

My chest feels heavy, my breaths shallow.

He couldn’t come.

It all makes perfect sense. He needed to be with his mom.

Somehow, it feels like there’s something missing from this story.

I can’t put my finger on it. But maybe it’s just that I’ve been waiting so long to hear the reason, built it up in my head, that now that I have it, it doesn’t feel like enough. Like the end of Lost.

“Did you ever get my message?”

I look up into his face. The light from the candle kisses his cheek, catching his green eyes and making them sparkle like sunlight on a lake. “Message?”

He runs his hand on the back of his neck. “I couldn’t help trying to find you online. I sent you a Facebook message and a friend request. When you never responded, I figured you were pissed.”

“I’m not on Facebook.”

“Now, but I sent this like the day before we were supposed to meet.”

My brows knit together. “I was on Facebook in high school, but I deleted it before we even met.”

“No, it was you. It had to be. How many Harriet Stevens are there? And the profile picture was a book.”

With a swift movement, he whips his phone and scrolls down, down, down. “Here it is. Shit. Now it’s blank and just says Facebook user. I swear it said Harriet Stevens and had a picture of a leather-bound copy of Pride and Prejudice .”

He hands me the phone. The date says December twentieth. He’s not lying… He really did send it before we were supposed to meet. I read the gray bubble.

Hattie. I think this is you. I hope this is you.

I know we said no texting, and I get it.

But I wish we had exchanged numbers just in case.

I can’t be there tomorrow. I wish I could.

Please know that I truly, deeply wish I could.

But it’s just not possible. My life is a mess.

I wish I could explain more, but it’s not completely my story to tell—or maybe it is and I’m not ready to tell it.

Please know I’ve thought about you every second of every day since we met.

I wish I was going to be there tomorrow, but I just can’t. Text me.

His number is in a separate bubble. I can’t stop staring at the screen, too bright in this dark bar. Our lives would be so different if this had been me .

Ed breaks into my thoughts. “I was sure you read it and ghosted me.”

He moves his hand from mine, running it over scratches in the table. “Do you think you can forgive me?”

I can hold on to this hurt over him not being there that day, like I have for nearly a decade, or I can let it go like a balloon floating up into the atmosphere.I can feel the string of the balloon slipping through my fingers, but at the last moment, I yank it back down to earth.

“What about the signing? I even gave you my name. You had no idea who I was.”

Ed lets out a long breath. “That whole tour was a shit show. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you, though.”

I reach up to tuck my hair behind my ear. “My hair was short and blonde that day.”

Ed raises his eyebrows. “Blonde, huh?”

I nod. “It was my breakup hair. I was very into the movie Sliding Doors at that time, and I took a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow from that movie into the salon.”

“Never seen it. I’m sure it looked amazing. I wish I could remember. I was behind on my second book. Then my mom went off with some other guy. She moved to New Mexico. I wanted to cancel the rest of the tour, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“Sleep Walkin” by Modest Mouse comes on. Ed fiddles with the tab on top of his beer.

“How’s your mom doing?”

Ed shrugs. “We don’t talk anymore, but she and my buddy we lived with stay in touch. He says she’s doing alright. Off the pills. Working at some bar near Roswell.”

I want to ask more when he says, “Tell me about this breakup that had you hacking all your hair off…”

I take a tiny sip of the whiskey. A nearby table filled with dudes in flannels and girls in black tank tops erupts into laughter. We are definitely overdressed for this bar, but no one seems to care. When the noise dies down, I say, “His name was Chad. ”

Ed makes a disgusted bleh noise.

“Yeah. It wasn’t just a breakup. It was a divorce.”

There’s a hefty pause before Ed says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. We don’t have to talk about?—”

“It’s okay. I thought we were going to have kids, be together forever. He was also a teacher, so we both had summers off. I had this whole vision for our lives together. Traveling in the summers. Camping trips with the eventual children. But he was cheating on me. With one of his co-workers.”

“No.”

“It was a long time ago.” Even as I say it, talking about him brings back the old feelings. Not the love that was the first to fade into oblivion, but the sting of betrayal.

“What a dick.”

There’s a long pause where neither of us speaks.

Ed finally breaks the silence. “Hattie, can you forgive me for not recognizing you when you were impersonating Gwyneth Paltrow?”

I laugh, and he reaches for my hand across the table again. His skin is warm, his fingers catching the light of the candle, all except the inky black letters ofhis tattoo.

“Seriously, can you forgive me for not showing up that day in December?”

I inhale deeply, the stale beer scent catching in my throat, but underneath it is him, his citrus clove musk the same from our day so long ago. I let the balloon go and watch it float into the atmosphere, feeling as light as it. “Yes. I forgive you.”

Ed’s rugged jaw cracks into a wide smile.He finishes his beer and looks at me. “Want another drink?”

I shake my head. “Let’s get out of here.”

His smile is so bright, it lights up the room. He takes my hand and leads me out the door. Night has settled, but the air is still muggy. My skirt billows around my legs as we walk down the sidewalk.

We stop at a crosswalk, and I turn to him, putting my arms around his neck.

He leans down, and I meet him halfway, reaching my lips up to meet him.

Our kiss feels inevitable. Like we were always meant to be here on this street corner, on this muggy night.

He runs his hands over the soft fabric of my dress, and my body immediately responds, goose bumps covering my arms.

The chirp of the crosswalk chimes, and we part. Ed takes my hand as we walk down the street. “What do you want to do?”

I look him square in the eye, my voice unwavering. “You.”

He swallows hard, a nearly cartoon gesture. When we get across the street, he pulls me close and kisses me deeply; the city falls away—his lips, his scent, his body the only things that exist. He whispers in my ears, his lips brushing my earlobe, “The hotel is just a couple blocks this way.”