Page 48 of Revelry
We laughed so much.
Wren was goofy, and she always found new ways to make me smile. I loved her energy, her wit, her unapologetic approach to everything in her life. For the first few days, I’d leave her place in a trance, wondering what it was that was coming over me. I smiled all the time, even when I was alone in my own cabin. I sang 90’s songs I hadn’t thought about in two decades. I researched fashion on my phone before I went to sleep so I could have more meaningful conversations with her about her passion. And she was making me think aboutmypassion, too. All of it was so foreign to me that I couldn’t even begin to figure out what I was feeling.
It wasn’t until a full two weeks had passed that I realized it.
I felt alive.
Not alive in the sense that I could breathe, or that I got up out of bed every morning and somehow made it through another day. No, I feltalive—like there was something to live for.
And if I thought we had eyes on us before, it was nothing compared to what we dealt with now.
A few days after the anniversary of Dani’s death, Momma Von had a barbecue at her cabin. When I’d walked in with Wren, it was like a symphony of jaw drops, one falling after the other until they all hung wide open. It was weird, and I mostly kept to myself or talked to Davie or old man Ron. But the more we hung out with the crew, with the people who used to be my best friends, the more comfortable I became. It wasn’t so much a chore anymore. I looked forward to Sundays spent drinking beers by the river or riding our bikes around Alder loop.
Still, my favorite nights were the ones spent with Wren. Nights when we’d lounge by the fire, her head in my lap as she told me about her favorite things in the world or the history of her boutique and the designs she’d brought to life over the years.
I hadn’t realized how big of a deal she was. Hell, the truth was I had absolutely no idea who she was atall. But after talking to her more, I’d asked Momma Von if she’d ever heard of her before. Julie had been over at her cabin and told me all about Wren, about her unique eye, her gift for feminizing women with smaller frames and slight curves. I didn’t know anything about clothes, but I knew this: Wren impressed me.
Sometimes, when the mood was right, we’d open up like we did that first night together. She’d show me a wound on her heart left by the man who last held it, and I’d show her the bruises on mine left from a death seven years old yet still too fresh to scab. Sometimes we fucked, hard and fast, with her pinned against the wall or riding me like she was meant for it—but not on those nights. No, the nights we opened ourselves, those were the nights we touched each other just to feel grounded again, to numb our pain and set it on fire all at once.
I talked, too, on the nights we spent together. I learned over time that I actually had a lot to say. Not just about Dani, though she was frequently brought up in our conversations, but about things I hadn’t thought about in years—like my dreams, my aspirations, the things that made me happy. I was thinking again, wondering, feeling.
It never even occurred to me to stop and ask myself how long that happiness could really last.
“What were your parents like?” Wren asked one night after we’d finished dinner. Her feet were propped up on the coffee table and I held her under one arm, our eyes on the fire slowly burning in front of us. I’d fixed the stove door and a few logs burned much longer now. It was getting hotter, some nights she didn’t even need the fire at all, but tonight it was cool, thanks to the low clouds and rain that had hung around all day.
“Honestly, I don’t really remember,” I answered, searching my memories. “My dad didn’t stay long enough for my umbilical cord to fall off and my mom left me here with Aunt Rose not too long after my fifth birthday.”
I shrugged, not really feeling any kind of emotion toward that fact. I used to, but now it was almost like saying it was raining outside. Just a matter of fact—no more, no less.
“I look a lot like her, I know that,” I continued. “I’ve seen pictures. She has dark hair and the same blue eyes as me. And I’ve heard my irresponsible side comes from my father. Which makes sense, I guess.”
Wren snorted. “Oh, sure. You.Irresponsible.”
“Trust me, before Dani died, I was. I had no regard for the people around me, even if I loved them. I did stupid shit because it was fun. That was about as far as my thought process went—will this be fun?If the answer was yes, then I did it.”
“So why did that change?”
I shifted, uncrossing my feet under the coffee table and crossing them the other way. I wasn’t ready to go there—not yet.
“What about you?” I asked instead. “Were you close with your parents?”
Wren leaned forward, tucking her legs underneath her so she could face me where we sat on the couch. She eyed me for a moment, but didn’t press.
We had a deal.
When one of us didn’t want to talk anymore, when it was too hard, we just changed the subject—and the other one let it happen. It was an understanding, one I didn’t realize I needed so desperately.
“If bycloseyou mean we had the same address for eighteen years of my life, then yes.” She chuckled at her own joke, leaning her cheek against the heel of her hand on the back of the couch. “I don’t know. My dad and I never really talked much. He worked all the time and we didn’t have much in common. Mom and I were closer when I was younger, but when I got really into fashion and started throwing myself into sketching and sewing, she didn’t understand. She thought it was a waste of time, and when I went to her in tears the first night I realized I didn’t want to be with Keith anymore, she chastised me for putting mylittle hobbyabove my husband.”
“That’s fucked up.”
She shrugged, seemingly as numb to her parents as I was to mine. “She didn’t mean it as maliciously as it came out. That’s just really how she feels. My grandma cooked all night and day for grandpa and his harvest crew out in Kansas. When Mom married my dad, she fell into her own role as a wife; hosting parties for Dad’s clients, taking care of his books before he had the money to hire someone else to do it, running charities when that became important to the business.”
Wren chewed her bottom lip before continuing.
“I don’t know, Anderson. In a way, I kind of envy that. Her and my dad’s roles in their marriage have always been so clearly defined. I never had that with Keith. We just both went after what we wanted and loved each other. That was enough for me, it was what I wanted. But it hadn’t been what he wanted. I didn’t realize once he married me that I needed to change, so I didn’t. And to be fair, I don’t think he realized what he wanted was different until after the wedding, either. At the end of the day, we just grew apart, I guess.”
I nodded, not really understanding fully, though I tried. I had never been married, never even been in a real relationship. I’d had girls in my bed, and in my truck, and in many other places in town—but I’d never been interested in investing more than a night or two in any of them. Sarah had been my most consistent, but only because she was the same kind of crazy as I was back then. We worked. At least, when I was younger.
