Page 35 of The Road to Finding Us

“This is beautiful. Have you lived here long?” I take in the wraparound porch that I could only dream about having one day.

A look of love passes through Ed’s face before he responds. “Ever since we first got married.”

Aspen’s eyes find mine. The look on his face has me wondering what he’s thinking but I look back over at Ed. “I love it.”

Ed smiles, then limps up the front steps before ushering us inside.

“How did you guys meet, if you don’t mind me asking?” Aspen asks.

I’m too busy taking in their incredibly stylish interior, which definitely looks straight out of a magazine.

“I don’t mind at all. In fact, I love telling this story. I wish Helen was here because she always tells it better than me, at least in her opinion.” Ed winks, making Aspen chuckle. “I’m actually younger than her by two years, though you probably can’t tell by our looks now. She’s aged better than I have.”

Ed pauses to pull out a chair at the kitchen table for me, gesturing for me to sit. I do so, mumbling a thank you while he and Aspen take a seat as well.

“We were in Houston, Texas. It was a few weeks before her high school graduation. She was eating dinner with her friends at the restaurant I worked at when I first laid eyes on her. I swear I fell in love with her right then. Helen and her friends were all laughing, while I was trying to muster up the nerve to go talk to them. Mind you, I was their server so I had to talk to them, but I was still so nervous. When I got to the table, Helen was the first one to notice me. The instant connection was undeniable. I hung around their table longer than necessary to talk with them, but mostly, I just wanted to talk to her.”

He smiles at the memory. “The restaurant got busy and before I knew it, they were gone. I’d never felt as disappointed as I did right then. I cursed myself for not getting more information from her. I’ve always been a shy guy, and I was no different at sixteen. The rest of the night dragged on and I thought my shift was never going to end. I locked up the place and on my way out, I heard a familiar voice. I turned around to see her waiting there. Long story short, we talked all night while I walked her home, then she invited me inside.”

Aspen and I both snicker as Ed waves his hand in dismissal. “Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. People were very conservative back then. No funny business happened. We talked all night until she had class the next morning. I made sure to get her information that time and we said our goodbyes. I was walking out when she grabbed my hand and pulled me to her, giving me the best kiss of my life. I knew in that moment I’d do whatever it would take to keep her. She mentioned that she was about to move away during our talks, but I fell in love with her after that kiss.”

My gaze absentmindedly drifts to Aspen, who’s sitting forward in his chair, hanging on Ed’s every word.

“We spent the next few weeks together, falling more and more in love. She never told me she loved me, but I knew. Sometimes you feel it in the heart before the head.”

Aspen’s eyes flick to me before he looks back at Ed.

“The night before she was supposed to move, I proposed to her and asked her not to go through with it. She said yes and made me the happiest man in the world. When we told her parents the next day, they weren’t happy at all.” He chuckles and then, “I won’t give you the details, but it wasn’t pretty. We decided to pack up our few belongings and move away together. We didn’t have much money at all, so we worked any place we could find. We traveled for about a year before we ended up here. We made friends with the person selling the café, and the rest is history. She blessed with me five beautiful children and we lived happily ever after. I thank my lucky stars every day that she ended up at that restaurant I worked at.”

“That’s so beautiful,” I manage, between the tears trailing down my face. I’m a sucker for a good love story. I glance over at Aspen, but he’s looking down and picking nonexistent lint off his shirt.

“Thank you. I love her very much. When you know, you know. You have to fight for that kind of—”

“Where will my room be?” Aspen interrupts. He pushes his chair away from the table, the sound of it squeaking against the hardwood and making me flinch.

“Well, we currently only have one room that has beds in it. It’s a bunkbed—what our grandkids requested years ago. The other room has been made into extra storage for the café. Will that be okay? I figured you guys were, you know…” Ed’s face pulls together in suggestion as he analyzes me and Aspen.

“That’ll be fine,” Aspen replies.

Ed gets up and Aspen follows him up a set of stairs. I sit in my chair, giving them some space, still thinking about Ed and Helen’s love story. I want a love like that. I want somebody to love me and fight for me. But for now, I’ll have to settle for only finding those kinds of stories on Netflix. And from the mouth of an elderly man, apparently.

Chivalry seems to be dead in my generation.

While Ed and Aspen figure things out upstairs, I take the time to call Veronica, stepping out to the front porch to do so.

I pull out my phone, finding her name in my recent call log.

It rings twice before she answers with, “Hey, bitch.”

“Have you been talking to Aspen?”

“Well, hello to you too, sunshine,” she says.

“Have you?”

I hear her sigh through the phone. “Of course I’ve talked to Aspen, Lil. He’s my friend, too. Why are you asking?”

Even though that’s true, I still feel weird about the way Aspen had slipped earlier, as if he was trying to hide that he’d been talking to her for some reason.

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