Page 23 of Born in the Spring

I pause, then flick it on, the light almost too bright in the too quiet and too empty feeling space. My breath catches and stalls in my lungs. I was never bothered by the stillness, by the only noises being softer and my own, because Shepherd was always around the corner, ready to burst in with his fast, pounding footsteps, his jingles and clangs, his laugh, his booming voice, hislife.

But I am the only sound, the only life stepping through the door. Because now Shepherd’s never coming back.

My breath whooshes out of me as I drop back against the wall. The open floor of the living room and the kitchen looks the exact same from when I left it. I tidied up some before I packed—to distract from my thoughts, to wait for Jasper to take back what he said, to prepare to leave—and the dishes I washed are still in the rack, the last plate still set off to the side from when my hands became too shaky and tired to keep washing.

I forgot to fold the blanket. It’s still hanging half on, half off the middle couch cushion from when Shepherd flung it off of us to answer the beep from the microwave. I can remember how he pulled me more into him every time he laughed at the funny parts, that were worth just a snort to me, in the movie we were watching. But I can’t remember what he had in the microwave. I try, but I can’t remember.

It’s something small, but I’m already starting to forget things.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as a tear rolls down my cheek.For everything.

Shepherd! Stay and talk to me.

Those were the last words I said—shouted—to him.

But he left, and now I’m just talking to an empty space.

I gather myself and drag my suitcase to the bedroom. I repeat my movements, setting my suitcase just inside the open door and pausing my hand on the light switch. The space here is dark too. We kept the curtains closed, because Shepherd preferred them that way. And I liked them closed too.

My hand slips from the light switch as I walk toward the window, toward the faint glow from outside, and spread the curtains open, letting in the light from those around the resort and the snow.

The memories that rest behind me aren’t as glaring as I turn around.

The bed’s still made. I didn’t unstack the pillows—his stolen from his side and piled with mine when I tried to sleep that night.

Some of our photos still stand up on the side table, and on the dresser. The same ones of us we had on our phones. It was my idea to print them off and frame them.

It registers that I’ve been walking around once I’m at the side of the bed. I drop down, unbuttoning my jacket and pulling my arms free from the holes as another tear rolls down my cheek. I swipe at it as a tear rolls down the other, and I swipe at that one too before removing my phone from my jeans pocket to check my messages.

I squint at the light and see my mom’s responded to my check-in with a smile and a heart.

Davis has left me onread. And I have a feeling that’s the last message he’ll read from me.

I stare so long the screen goes black, and I set the phone on the side table when a knock sounds on the door.

Hurrying from the room, I pull down the bunched up sleeves of my turtleneck, make sure my face is dry, expand my lungs with a few deep breaths, then open the door, to Jasper, who’s half turned away, as if I answered his knock to come in before he could finish changing his mind.

I lift my features into not quite a smile, but the opposite of a frown. Or they lift themselves, not having to try very hard at the sight of him.

But I know the minute he sees through my front when he moves closer, an urgency in the couple steps—then he stops, a sort of jolt, like there’s an invisible wall between us in thethreshold. And that off feeling settles in again, as his distance has seemed to do. I know what’s happening, why it’s still there, his words six months ago coming to me and putting me back in that mindset of fixing this.

I don’t have the exact words yet to try to assure him, but he talks first anyway.

“My timing still sucks here,” he says with a tease in his voice, and it almost catches me off guard, like his knock, and a soft breath of laughter escapes my lips. He’s speaking to my perspective, and Shepherd’s, of the last time we both saw him on this porch.

God, that feels like so long ago.

Probably because it was.

“Or your timing is perfect,” I tease back, speaking to his perspective of that moment, but the minute his gaze turns searching, trying to find meaning in my words, I step aside for him to come in, and bring us back to now. “At least you knocked this time.”

“I wanted to check on you,” he says, not coming in. “But if you wanna be alone. . .”

“I don’t wanna be alone,” I tell him. I want him here.

I want them all here.

He sighs as he steps out of the cold. “I don’t, either.”

---