Bird After Bird (21 page)

Maybe I’d been wrong about the whole thing.

“You sleeping?” he said, after about an hour of lying still in the darkness.

“No.”

“You really want me to move to Chicago?”

I turned to face him. “I know I want to see you every day. I know video chat isn’t enough. I know there are no jobs here in Birdseye that pay like Parker & Bash does. And I know you could do anything you want in the city. Down here you’re…”

“I’m just a mechanic,” he said. I wasn’t sure if the sadness in his voice was a reflection of the way his mother had put him down, or if he was that offended by my suggestion.

“That’s not what I’m saying. You’re just
limited
down here, that’s all.” I hated myself for saying it.

Yeah, I was great with the business advice, but I wanted a man who was an equal. Not someone I had to tell what to do with his career. I disliked having to say it.

He sat up and switched on the lamp. “You think I’m limited by my surroundings? That sounds like self-talk, Wren. You’re the one who left Birdseye because you were too big for this town. You’re the one who needed a bigger canvas to paint your future on. Have you even been to the art classes I teach? Have you forgotten that I’m more than someone who fixes cars? Did you know that lots of artists have thriving businesses online? And even if all I did was fix people’s cars, do you realize how many people I help that way?”

I sat up, too. “Damn it, Laurie, I said I was sorry. I asked if we could talk about this tomorrow. Can we please just put it on hold for the night, like grown-ups? We’ll both feel better in the morning…”

“Did you just ask me to be a grown-up?
Really
, Wren? Where were you when I was picking up pieces of my buddy from an insurgent attack in Iraq? That grown up enough for ya? Oh, yeah, you were going to college, or maybe you were in an office already by then. Well, big whoopee-doo, Miss Ladypants. You went to college, and I went to war. And I lost the love of my life, Wren. I lost her and then I lost my best friend. That grown up enough for you?”

His words stung me like a horsewhip across my bare chest. I felt like my heart was bruised and bleeding, like he’d cut me wide open from breastbone to belly. I felt the tears coming. I had to leave.

As I pulled on my jeans and rooted around under the bed for my shoes, Laurie sat with his head in his hands on the other side. “I’m sorry, Wren. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“You didn’t mean that Sylvia was the love of your life? Don’t even try that on me, Laurie. I know I’m not the first girl you’ve ever loved, and chances are getting better by the second that I won’t be the last.”

I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. I stopped in his bedroom doorway. “I need some time. I’ll be at my Dad’s house.”

I was almost out the door when he ran after me. “Please, Wren, please don’t go. I love you so much. I’m sorry. This isn’t about you—it’s my Mom. It’s so hard for me to be around her and I’m sorry for being a dick. Please, Wren. Don’t go.”

I thought of punishing him. I thought of giving him the Business Voice and leaving anyway. It was a move I’d used before on lesser men, in less meaningful circumstances. I felt the temptation to hurt him rise up in me like the feeling of a finger on a trigger. I could pull that trigger and walk away. It was like muscle memory to me.

Instead, I turned. I took in his wounded eyes, his lanky build covered only by briefs in the moonlight. I could see him swallowing hard, his Adam’s apple moving. He’d been through a lot. This weekend had been hard on both of us.

I sighed. And then I walked into his arms.

“Laurie, one of the things I love most about you is the fact that you’ve lived. You wear 22 better than a lot of men wear 42. I meant everything I said at your parents’ house tonight. I adore the man you are. And part of that is that you
did
love Sylvia, and you did lose her—I’m sorry you went through that hurt, but Laurie, we wouldn’t have this connection without it. I just know we wouldn’t.” I wanted to tell him about the letters. It was time to confess all I knew.

But Laurie had other plans. “You’re right,” he said, and he kissed me. Then he kissed me harder. His hands roamed over my body, pulling up my shirt and finding my skin, kneading my back and caressing my breasts. His touch was healing. I needed it so badly. “You still have that headache?”

“Let me check,” I whispered, and I rose onto tippy toes to kiss him as hard as I could. He met my passion and doubled it, searching hungrily, until at last we were both floating, floating down the hall back to the bedroom, where we belonged.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Wren

I smelled coffee and bacon, and reached in my sleep for the sweet sensation of Laurie’s warmth, but my hands only skid across soft sheets to the place where his body had lain.

The sizzle of breakfast competed with the sound of birds outside as I opened my eyes to the filtered light of breaking dawn. I couldn’t wait to see what the day would bring. Whatever it was, I knew it would be golden. No bars, no family dinners. Today was just for us.

I pulled on a tee and slipped into my jeans.

I found him in the living room, sketching a goldfinch. His face lit up, nearly as sunny as the yellow bird, itself.

I recognized the work by now. His hand, his style. I wondered if he left room on the page for the letters—if the letters were planned or spontaneous. There was only way to find out.

“Laurie, I need to come clean about something.”

He said nothing, but looked slightly perplexed. He stood, leaving his work on his seat while he poured me a cup of coffee.

“Thank you.” I sipped it, waiting for him to speak.

“Is this about another man? I know you were seeing someone in Chicago…”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s about…” I reached out and took his sketchbook. Flipping it around so he could see his own work, I pointed at the page. “These. It’s about these letters, with the drawings inside. I found two of them. Well, two and a half.”

Laurie’s face turned crimson. He shook his head, nearly imperceptibly, as if he wanted to erase what I’d just said. “
You
found the letters?”

I nodded. “I should have told you awhile ago. It just never seemed like a good time.”

“Of course you read them.” He wouldn’t make eye contact.

“Yeah.” I reached out and rubbed his arm. He walked away from me, returning to his seat. He closed the sketch pad and tucked it under his chair. “How many have you written?”

“Enough.”

“The third one was mostly destroyed. For what it’s worth, I thought they were lovely. Beautiful work, and the intention…reaching out like that…it’s just a lovely sentiment, Laurie. I could probably do the same thing, you know. Write letters to my Dad?”

He crossed to the kitchen to flip the bacon, which was starting to smoke.

He said nothing.

“Those letters meant something to me even before I
met
you, but knowing all you’ve been through…” His silence worried me. “Laurie?”

Nothing.

“Did I say something wrong? Should I not have told you?”

He shrugged. “You want eggs?”

“I’d love some. Can I help?”

He handed me a bowl and threw two eggs into it so hard the shells cracked.

“Are you mad?”

He sighed. “Not mad. Just…feeling exposed.”

“So you never meant for them to be read.”

He shrugged. “I guess if it were that important to me to hide them, I wouldn’t have set them loose in the world.” He smiled and I felt like I could breathe again. “I just never dreamed it would be someone like you who’d find them.”

“Well, I saw one on Pinterest, too.”

“What?”

“Online.”

“Show me.”

The bacon was burning now and I rescued it while he booted up his laptop. I fried the scrambled eggs quickly in the bacon grease and found plates in his cabinet while he searched the site.

“Here, trade me,” I said, offering him a plate and taking over his computer. “I started a board called Bird After Bird and I know I pinned it there.”

He froze mid-bite of bacon and his eyes widened as he saw the pin. “How many people have seen this?”

“Um…” I glanced at the screen. The pin was of a collage: the main photo was the inside of Laurie’s letter, and other photos in the collage were of the bird before it was opened, and a pencil sketch of a robin inside. “Looks like 1542 pins.”

“Is that a lot?”

“I’m no social media expert, but I think it is.”

He laughed.

“You’re taking this well, anyway.”

He shrugged. “Looks like there are more.” In a few clicks, he uncovered a dozen other pins, eventually leading back to a tumblr blog devoted to piecing the story of the birds together. He pressed his eyes closed and shut the laptop.

“You know why I did these? Why I started?”

I finished the last bite of my breakfast and took both our plates to his sink. “Tell me.”

“I had an art teacher once who told me if you could fold one thousand paper cranes overnight, you’d get your wish in the morning. Or maybe she said you could do it over the course of a year, I don’t know. I liked the lesson, though. I never forgot.”

“I get it,” I said.

“Do you?”

“You were wishing for Sylvia.”

He smiled, put the laptop down, and stood to take me in his arms. “I was wishing for
something
.” He kissed me, and I knew deep down in my soul that we’d been wishing for the same things.

“Laurie, when I connected the dots between you and those letters, they only made me love you more. You know that? I bet you didn’t know this, either—we have the same name.”

“Yeah, you’re a wren and I’m a Byrd,” he said.

“More than that. My dad used to call me Birdy. He called me Princess Birdzilla and a whole lot of other nicknames. So when I read those letters, in a way I couldn’t help but put myself in your shoes. They did, in a way, feel like something I could have written. It wasn’t my loss, but it was a loss I could feel, deeply.”

He held me tighter. “Touch me,” he said. He drew my hands to his chest, and then placed them beneath his shirt.

I slipped my hands around to his back, and when it warmed, I moved on to his chest. He pulled his shirt off and took both my hands in his as he pressed them against his heart. “This is yours now. Do you feel it beat for you?”

I kissed him, and he let go of my hands to pull my tee off.

“I don’t want any secrets between us,” he said as he pulled me back into his embrace. “You fill this heart.”

He held my face in his hands, matching his breath to my own.

“Come with me today to art class,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Laurie

With Hap between us, Wren and I climbed into my pickup and set out.

I wasn’t sure how to tell her about the studio where I taught classes. I figured it was best if I just showed her. I had a Sunday night painting class, and it wouldn’t hurt to get there a few hours early to set up.

When I unlocked the space, Wren’s eyes lit up. “Is this where you teach?” Her voice had jumped an octave, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, this is the place. You want a lesson?”

She reached for an old soup can we’d recycled as a paint brush cup, and rattled the brushes inside. She chose a brush, then used it to trace a path up my arm, skipping my shirt sleeve and reconnecting with my neck.

“That brush better be clean,” I said.

“Let’s paint each other.”

I laughed. “Okay.” I pulled off my shirt and Wren’s smile went into megawatt mode. You could light all of Indiana with that glow.

“How much time do we have until your class?”

“Enough,” I said, reaching for her shirt and lifting it over her head. If there was any sight I loved more than those beautiful freckled breasts of hers, it was a short list. A list that included her eyes, her lips, her smile, her crinkled nose…

Hap sighed and plopped into a dog bed in the corner of the room.