Page 39 of Moving Forward

I swear, there’s something about this girl. No one else in the world could lose the person they expected to spend their future with and still have such a positive outlook. Even if Max says she’s been drowning, I think she’s been fighting like hell to stay afloat.

“You have to make up for that terrible attempt. Tell me about us. What do we look like to people driving by?” she asks.

I rack my brain for our story, trying to see how we must look from the outside in. No one can see our pasts or know what we’re feeling. To a casual outsider, we’re just a happy couple. “We’re newlyweds. We got married as a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

She looks up at me, wrinkling her nose. “Like Elvis and Vegas?”

“No, you’re way too good for that. Maybe just a small church thing. We only invited close friends and relatives. I don’t think it was too over the top, you could have been wearing your pajamas and I’d have thought you looked just as beautiful.” I pause and she sighs contentedly. “We just bought a house. An old fixer-upper because we like the idea of making broken things whole. I’m afraid that even in an alternate universe that would still be part of our lives.”

She nods in agreement. “But I can handle fixing broken things. It’s better than doing the breaking.”

“Exactly. We’ve been married about a month, and it isn’t total bliss—we’ve probably already argued about the colors of the walls—but we’re really, really happy and content. We want kids, but we don’t plan on having any for a while, so we’re going to have a trial run with an animal. You keep saying that you don’t think a pet turtle will work, and I’m allergic to cats—”

“You’re allergic to cats?”

“I’m not actually, I just don’t like them. They’re kind of creepy. Anyways, we’re on our way to buy a dog. Not a puppy, but one of the middle-aged, sad-eyed dogs that have trouble getting adopted. You want to name it something food-related, like Tic-Tac or Pepperjack, and I want to name it Squirrel. Although, it’s impossible for me to say no to you, so in the end I’ll cave.”

She stays quiet for a few miles. I squeeze her hand and she squeezes it back, sniffling. She buries her face between my shoulder and the seat. She mumbles something and I can’t help but chuckle. “What?”

She pulls back and repeats, “I just really like Squirrel.”

The GPS tells me to take the next right off the highway, dropping us off in the middle of her hometown. When I called her up, I hadn’t exactly been thinking about meeting her parents. I just wanted as much time with her as possible before she leaves. Now that I’m about to meet them, reality is beginning to set in. Interacting with people is usually a nightmare for me, but this is worse. These are important people I want to impress. What if I’m not enough for them?

I’ll never be Ethan.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MAX

As Cain parks the truck in my parents’ driveway, I disentangle myself from him and reach up to plant a soft kiss on his jawline. He’s barely said a word for the last ten minutes. Slowly, he unlocks his eyes from the house to give me a slight half smile.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “They won’t hate you.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he admits.

“Then what—”

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