Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mason was showing his mom the food trucks before her flight back to Chicago. Ella had all but told Boyd to disappear. For the first time in a long time, he was alone and unsure. The brewery was quiet and he’d wasted two test batches because suddenly he’d forgotten the basics of making beer. Forgot the yeast entirely for two rounds. He’d lost his mind. He loved Ella. He’d survived the balancing out on a cliff moment and said the words, but maybe that would never be enough—maybe he would never be enough. Boyd had been there and done that before. If she wasn’t the right woman for him, then he’d be fine.
“Heard you screwed things up.” Cade walked in eating again.
Is that a gyro?
“Not now.” Boyd pulled up his grain inventory and started a new order on his computer.
“I’m only saying that she’s your match. You’re crazy about her. How could you jack this up?”
“It didn’t work out. She thinks she’s sharing me or I’m not letting her in. Blame it on me if you want. Leave.”
“Nah, this is good.” He sat on a stool next to the work table. “Why does she think you’re not letting her in?”
“Because I didn’t invite her to his graduation and then she stopped by and we were having dinner with Claire. She’s on this kick that we looked like a big happy family.”
Cade took his last bite, balled up the napkin, and checked his breath.
“Does she know Claire is… strange?”
“She’s not strange. She’s Mason’s mom.”
“True. But she’s strange.” He circled his finger to the side of his head in the universal sign for crazy.
Boyd was not amused.
“Anyway. The general consensus is that you should have invited the love of your life to your son’s graduation, but I get how that could be weird with Claire deciding to show up in the last inning.”
“Yeah, well it’s over. Claire is going back to Chicago tonight, Ella is moving on, and I’m fine.”
Cade stood and shook his head.
“What? No funny comeback? What the hell does that head shake mean?”
“Quit saying that. You’re not fine. Fine is such a screwed-up word. It’s like… neat or nice. It says nothing. Being fine is like being barely alive. You know when you catch a fish and it does that flappy gill thing as it’s dying on the—”
“I’m fine. Now, get out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
Cade stayed put and Boyd met his eyes.
“What the fuck do you want to hear?” He threw his clipboard on the worktable and faced off with his brother. “You want me to tell you that I’m afraid if I screw up my kid that it’s all on me? That when I was younger, I had no idea if I could do it on my own and now he needs something I can’t give him? Do you want me to rest my head on your shoulder and tell you I love her so much that it grabs me right in the center of my chest? That I don’t know how to make it work or how to give her something I don’t have? That on top of it all, I love this place, love you guys, and sometimes I’m convinced it’s all going to end? One bad batch, some random asshole falls in the bathroom and sues us. Is that what you want, Cade?”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t want your big hairy head on my shoulder, but yeah, I want all of that. You need to get that crap out of you.” He hit Boyd’s shoulder. “Don’t you feel better?”
Boyd sat, put his face in his hands, and wondered how his brother missed out on the memo that life was complicated. For once, he’d like to see the world through Cade’s optimistic eyes.
“Well?” he said.
“Well what?” Boyd put his hands down.
“Do you feel better?”
“No.”
He took the seat next to him. “Oh, well then let’s figure it out.”
Boyd snickered. “Just like that?”
He nodded. “You love her, she loves you and your son. I mean this is practically a slam dunk. All you need to do is work through the whole thing with Claire dumping you and leaving you with a kid stuff.”
“She didn’t leave me with Mason. I wanted him.”
“Sure, you did, but she still left you. Packed up and basically told you to shove your ‘let’s be a family’ idea where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“That’s not quite how it went. We came to an agreement that I was going to keep Mase.”
“Damn it, bro. You need to quit being so amenable.”
“Amenable?”
“Like that? Picked it up watching Jeopardy. It’s another word for agreeable or doormat in your case. I like the way it sounds.”
“Older. Brother. You don’t get to call me a doormat.”
“If you admit it sucks that your college girlfriend left you with your newborn son then you can get on with it. Move forward and love someone else all the way. If you can’t do that, then you’re going to be a sad man who tries to Skype his kid in college.”
“That seems extreme.”
Cade raised his eyebrows. “I’m stating the facts. Let it go, man. Like the song in that snow movie.” His brother stood and started singing a song Boyd had heard because it was everywhere since the movie came out. When he twirled, Boyd laughed.
“Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my brother who barely knows how to use a napkin?”
Ella fell asleep with the afternoon sun on her face and woke to the tinkering of her wind chime. It seemed like she’d closed her puffy eyes mere minutes ago, but looking up at the swaying branches of the tree overhead, she realized she must have been sleeping for at least an hour.
She loved naps. When she was little, she craved the quiet and the cool sheets on her face in the summer or the warm blanket during the colder months. As she grew older, sleeping turned into a coping mechanism. When she was frustrated or sad, she napped. It felt like a reboot. Everything, no matter how awful, seemed to improve after a nap. It was interesting that she hit a point in her life after medical school when she rarely rested. She should figure out what that meant, the symbolism of it all, but she was tired of thinking. Tired of trying to figure out why she did the things she did.
Showering, Ella got ready for the next weaving class with Vienna. They had reached the next level now and it was time to make a place mat. She dabbed eye cream on, hoping to look less like a woman who cried over a man. How cliché, she thought and was about to come down too hard on herself one more time when she realized everything had changed from two years ago. She wasn’t running this time. She no longer had a cardboard life she could fold on the dotted line and run away from.
This time she had a home, friends, and a job she was good at. She would attempt to dangle from silk again next Tuesday, and today, before working a double, she was going to let Sistine teach her how to make a place mat. She was human now, heart fully melted. There was no turning back, and she didn’t want to anymore. She liked hugging and connection. She loved Boyd and Mason more than her heart could take, but if Boyd wasn’t capable of giving her his whole heart, she would move on.
Heartbreak was far from the end of the line this time around. Ella’s life would never again revolve around half of anything. She was simply too full of life for that now.