Page 79 of Finding Home

The reverent way his hand caressed her cheek reinforced that his want wasn’t just about the sex either.A soft longing in his gaze telegraphed that he had the same burning desires that rattled unspoken within Elle.

What if she asked for his tomorrows? What would that look like?She couldn’t ask him to leave with her and she wouldn’t stay.

She finished her shower silently, and then stood in front of the bathroom mirror, wrapped in a towel, drying her hair. Clayton appeared in the mirror’s reflection dressed for work, the sleeves of his green striped shirt rolled up.

“Have a good day, baby.”He pressed his lips to hers, as though they were an old married couple.

Elle turned back to the mirror, Clayton’s image lingered there, watching her, his throat bobbing as if he had something else to say.Their eyes danced with each other in the mirror.

“I like not being normal with you,”Clayton murmured.

“I like not being normal with you, too.”Elle’s heart spoke first, not letting her logic clamp its hand around her mouth, nagging her that she didn’t get to keep him.

As Clayton disappeared, his footsteps growing faint, Elle let out a shaky breath.It was Friday. Tomorrow would start her last week here, her last week with him.

Elle knew they needed to have this conversation. She had put it off too long.

If this was just them playing house until next week, she was okay with that. She would be okay with as much of Clayton as she could have until she left Perry…until she left him.

THIRTY-ONE

“When I fall in love, it will be forever.”

~Jane Austen,Sense and Sensibility

Elle walked quietly through Hope Cemetery. The baby blue sky was clear, not a cloud to mar its brightness.

Somberly, she strolled on the cobblestone path looping through the graves, a bouquet of pink roses picked by Aunt Janet in her right hand. The area she sought was toward the back of the cemetery in the middle of a row of other long gone loved ones. Some kind soul had positioned a stone bench across from her grandparents’ final resting places. A perfect spot for the living to visit the dead.

“Hi grandpa.”Elle smiled sadly as she placed her hand on his smooth gravestone.

She’d been so little when he’d passed that she’d never grieved him like she mourned her grandma. Grandpa seemed like a wispy, cloudy memory, but grandma was her sun; warm, nourishing but sometimes able to burn. Walking carefully around his marker to avoid stepping on his actual grave, she crouched placing the pink roses at the foot of her grandma’sgravestone beside another arrangement of pink tulips, a gift from Uncle Pete, she was sure.

“Happy birthday, Grandma. It’s Elle…Eleanor.”

Grandma had only ever known Eleanor.

“I know it’s been a long time. I’m sorry. I don’t know if mom ever visits you, but we’re not talking.” Elle’s voice cracked. “I don’t want to talk about that, though. I’m doing good, Grandma. I have a career that helps a lot of people.” She traced a finger over the starfish bangle she’d worn since Clayton clasped it on her wrist. “I live in California. Remember my friend, Viet? I told you about him last time I was here. He’s still my best friend and I have another one, Willa. You’d like her. She really embodies ‘let me be me.’ I have a…”she trailed off, her gaze pulled to the moss-covered brick wall surrounding the cemetery.

They were so similar to the walls around her heart that kept the living out, and the dead in.Had she been a ghost merely haunting this world instead of truly living in it? Sucking in the late summer air, its freshness filled her lungs, reminding her of the reinvigorating citrus scent of her Clayton.

My Clayton. My boyfriend. My everything. My love.

She exhaled, finally naming that feeling inside her. The feeling she refused to see, that she fought. It had been slow and quiet, but she’d fallen in love with Clayton. Each moment with him was a step to this realization. His off-key voice singing to her as they slow danced in the hallway outside the ballroom. Their first run together, neither seeming to want to let go of each other’s hand. It started even further back when beside her in Spanish class he murmured his apology for their interaction at that Winter Ball. Had she known even then that she loved him?

She refocused on the headstone, a tender smile curving her lips. “I have a boyfriend. It’s Dr. Owens’ son. His name is Clayton and I love him so much.”An errant tear rolled down her cheek. “You used to say boys don’t like fat girls. Well, he liked me whenI was fat. I just didn’t like me for a very long time. I think even now. I think you’re part of the reason why. I know you meant well, but you sometimes left me feeling like I was unlovable.”

People can love you and hurt you at the same time. They only have that power because you love them. It was something Willa had once said.

She sighed. “You hurt me, but I still love you. I still miss you…”Elle bent down to place a gentle kiss on the engravedGrandmotheron the gravestone. “…I forgive you.”

Forgiveness takes the power away from the words that bound her, allowing her to try to be free.

Wiping her eyes, she sat back on her heels. Her cell phone pinged with an incoming text. Slipping her mobile out of her dress pocket, a tiny thrill swept through her at the message from Clayton.

Fitz’s Human: How are you?

Elle: I’m visiting my grandma for her birthday.

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