“I’m guessing from the red-rimmed eyes and the gathering of troops, it didn’t go so well?”Baylor asks.
“He brought dinner, which was not a part of the plan.We ate, mostly in silence, and then we talked.”I pause.“We ended up in bed together.”
“I want to high-five you, but you’ve been crying, so I’m going to wait for the coochie cobweb eviction celebration,” Courtlynn tells me, making me smile.
“It just happened.”
“You still love him,” Leighton says gently.
“And that’s okay,” Kinzie adds.
“Do you regret it?”Baylor asks.
“No, I mean, the only true regret is that I’m not on birth control, and we weren’t prepared.”
“I could get down with being an aunt.”Courtlynn smiles.Reaching over, she takes my hand.“All joking aside, no matter what happens, you have us.You know that, right?”
“Why, pray tell, are you not on birth control?”Baylor blurts.
“Well, dear sister, I’m not seeing anyone, and what’s the point?It’s been… far too long.”
“Did he freak out?Is that why you’re crying?”Leighton asks.
“Do I need to kick his ass?”Kinzie offers.
“No, he didn’t freak out.Not in the slightest.He was calm as hell when he looked me in the eyes and said we’d always planned to have a family.”
Silence.
Gaping mouths.
They’re speechless, so I keep going.“He left me all those years ago.He came back and saw me laughing with his friends and Kinzie, and just left again.He didn’t let anyone know he was home.He said he came for me, and when he saw that I’d moved on with my life in such a short time without him, he left again.He claims that he wrote me letters.”I look at each of my sisters, then at the phone at Baylor.“Do you remember letters?”
A chorus of “Nos” surrounds me.
“That’s what I told him.I can see one getting lost in the mail, but from the way it sounded, there were a lot of them, and I never got a single one.I wanted honesty from him.And hell, maybe he did mail them, and they all just never made it to me, which I find highly unlikely.He was here, in Magnolia Ridge, saw me with a smile on my face, and just left again.He didn’t make himself known.Didn’t fight.Just walked away for the second time.”
“Why did he go in the first place?His decision to enlist came out of nowhere,” Kinzie says.
I tell them about Chandler coming home, his choice to enlist for Macie, and Copeland wanting to do the same.
“I know everything seems jumbled right now,” Kinzie says.“But I’ve told you from day one that man loves you, Ellison.He never looked at anyone else.You were the only person in his orbit.”
“That’s how he made me feel,” I confess.
I can’t recall how many times I’ve closed my eyes just to imagine him looking at me like he did back then.I never doubted his love for me, not until the day he left.He told me he was leaving the night before.It was a blow to the chest, learning he’d enlisted.He’d never talked about the military outside of his brother, Chandler.I was blindsided.I cried, he held me, told me he loved me, and then the next day, he was gone.He promised to write, but those letters never came, and I thought he’d lied to me.Copeland never lied to me.That’s not who he is.
Tonight, standing here in this very room, when he said he wrote to me, I could see it in his eyes.It was true.My heart wants to rebel and say he didn’t, but I know that’s not right.I don’t know what happened.I don’t understand why the universe kept his letters from me, but he’s home, and he says he wants me.He says that he still loves me.
“And now?”Leighton asks.
“Now, I’m confused.How can I trust he’s not going to leave me again?How can I trust if tonight’s slip-up turns into something more”—I place my hands over my belly— “that I won’t be doing this all alone in the end?”I’d like to think he would stay, and I believe him when he says that he loves me.I love him, too.I always will.But I don’t know if my heart would survive losing him a second time.
“First of all,” Baylor says through the small phone screen, “you are never alone.Secondly, I think you both were young, there was a lot of miscommunication, and call me a romantic, but I believe him.”
Kinzie clears her throat, picks up her phone, and starts to read.She reads through tonight’s text conversation with Copeland.“We’re all here because your man didn’t want you to be alone, and he knew you needed someone.”
“How are you forgiving him so easily?”I ask my best friend, before turning my eyes to my sisters, silently asking them the same question.
