Ever After

The trees swayed gently in the distance as the smell of early autumn stole the attention from my evening walk back home. The gravel beneath my shoes brought back the memories of my childhood when my friends and I would ride our bikes over on Craney Loop, a narrow-graveled side road that led up past Old Man Jenkins land to a fishing pond where all the high school kids would spend the first few weeks of summer break, as though it were a rite of passage for surviving the year at TSS (Trentwood Secondary School.) Before you knew it, tents were everywhere, and the bonfires and ghost stories every night made it that much more exciting. Some of the best days of my life were up on that ridge during those two memorable weeks every summer. Those were the good ole days, though, nowadays it feels more like living in some technological zombified twilight zone.

After old man Jenkins died, the city auctioned off the land since he didn’t have any family to will it to, and the people who bought it fenced off the property and decorated the outlining areas with no trespassing signs. It was bittersweet the day it happened, but by that time, the 20-year summer tradition had dwindled to just a few of us trying to keep it alive. The summer of 94’ was the last time any of us went up there, we were all growing up, and life wasn’t slowing down. The gang had pretty much stopped hanging out as much. Lonnie’s family moved up north, Mark had to get a second job down at the Dairy Freeze because his dad left his momma, and they had a hard time making ends meet. Marnie’s kid sister got noticed in some talent show, so his family packed up and moved out west to the big time. Daryl had to transfer schools because he got adopted by a wealthy family over in Beaver, and as for me, well, I didn’t find a need to go trespassing on other people’s land by myself and end up getting thrown in juvie. In the early 2000s, they drained the pond and bulldozed it over because Laney Johnson, the family's daughter, fell through some ice and drown. Over the years, we all lost touch, and time had painted life with the whelms of adulthood. Life was much simpler back then when all the important decision-making was up to the parents. Now it’s a day-to-day survival on a wage that only profits the impoverished.

As I turned and started walking the dirt path my grandfather carved through the Daniel Boone forest on the west side of the farm, lightning bugs began dancing around the dusk-lit trees, and crickets sang their evening lullabies. They reminded me of the story my mother used to tell us about the old Apache legend of the sly fox who tried to steal the fire from the firefly village to keep warm against the harsh winter, but in the end, the feat was not in the fox’s favor. My mom would enchant our evenings with her stories as we sat around the fire pit in the backyard until the embers grew weary. If only I could rewind time and treasure those moments with her a little more, maybe the memories wouldn’t feel so lonely.

The alarm clock bombarded my dreams as my eyes opened to the light of dawn, beaming in from the east. “Another day, another chance to get it right,” I rumbled as the cold floor met with my bare feet. But unlike most mornings, something felt different, as though something good was going to happen. I stopped in the hallway, halfway between the bedroom and bathroom, “am I humming?” I smiled at the thought; humming was something I hadn’t done in years. It just added more hope to the idea that whatever was causing my morning to be so good would have a much better ending when the time came to say goodbye to the evening sun. The drive to work was long, and the rolling hills down route 10 seemed endless. I couldn’t help but think about my blind date for Friday; this would be the first date since Abby passed away.

Abilene Lee Brown was a five-foot-two bundle of dynamite that didn’t give a damn about much, and if she did, either she had a problem with you, or something sparked her attention. At first, she didn’t give me the time of day, let alone even notice that I existed. But by 10th grade, I had shot up like a beanstalk. Come to find out; she had a thing for tall, lanky boys with curly brown hair. We ended up going to senior prom together, and that’s when our dating settled down to something serious. After high school, I started working for her old man at his construction company, and she got a job at the local newspaper. Before she knew it, her journalism was garnering recognition, and it was some of the best in the state. She was even a guest on The Lissy Roberts Show, and people talked about it for months. The love that we shared was the kind that you only found in fairytales, and the life we built seemed unbreakable; she was my everything, my whole world, taken away in what seemed like an instant. “Abby would want you to move on and be happy,” my mother would reassure me from time to time when the slightest hint of sadness would linger in my expression. “I’m trying, mom, but it’s just so hard,” I would say, but she would dismiss it as though I was trying my hardest to run away from facing the fact that she was gone. “Friday will be good for me,” I thought as I pulled into my usual parking space. “Maybe mom was right; maybe I am afraid to accept the fact that she’s gone.” I pushed the thought out of my mind as I got out and started walking toward the dreaded 9-5.

“Mornin’ Devy boy.” Martin’s voice greeted me at the elevator as I watched the numbers count down. “Morning,” I replied, still deep in thought about Friday. First dates always make me anxious, especially a blind date that your friends think is the right thing to do by setting you up on one. Just because I like being alone most of the time and decline when the gang invites me out for drinks and Friday night karaoke doesn’t mean I’m lonely and in need of a social life with the opposite sex. I just like being simple. Plus, dealing with my wife's death never really paved the way for the coveted social life and weekend bar hops.

“Are you excited about Friday?” Martin asked impatiently. “I suppose,” I replied, but was I ready to face the fact that it was time to move on and let the past go so that it could heal? I know deep down that nobody will ever take Abby's place, but I just felt as though if I moved on, the world would forget her. Work was slower than usual. I sat at my desk daydreaming about what life would have been like if the old high school gang had stayed together or if Abby were still alive. It’s funny how life happens and the curve balls that it likes to throw your way. Loneliness began to loom in the back of my mind on my drive home from work, so I decided that my same 8-year-old evening routine could use a little life and stopped at Toddies’ Imports to grab a bottle of wine. A glass of Merlot always makes loneliness a little easier to handle.

The rest of the week slowly crept by; the closer Friday got, the more I thought about what everyone had been telling me. “Maybe they’re right, maybe I’ve been alone for far too long,” and before I knew it, my excitement began to grow, but I was so out of practice with dating, the whole thought of it scared me a bit. I pulled each piece of clothing from my closet until the hangers were bare, and with no luck, they all lay in a giant pile in the middle of the bed. I sat down on the edge of the mattress and rubbed my eyes. The need for sleep screamed inside my bones. I laid back in the middle of the pile and wallowed in my self-pity. I was a mess, and for some reason, I couldn’t control it. “Snap out of it, Dev, ” I told myself, and after a few minutes of collecting my thoughts, I stood up and began to search again. “Finally,” I sighed with relief as I laid the perfect first date outfit on a small chair in the corner. “I can do this,” I reassured myself. After hanging the rest of the clothes back up, I crawled into bed as the light of the moon embraced the windowpane. My mind raced with different scenarios of how tomorrow could play out. “What if she doesn’t like me?” I thought. “Get a grip, man,” I lectured myself and finally brushed it from my mind as I rolled over. My eyelids grew heavy, and as I closed my eyes, I welcomed the dreams that lay in wait.

My anxiety played with my emotions as I nervously put my favorite blazer on, this jacket has seen the ups and downs of my whole adult life, but it made me feel safe, in the same sense the dinosaur blanket that my Nana gave to me when I was a little boy did. “I wonder whatever happened to that old thing?” I thought as I headed toward Tombstone, one of the best steakhouses east of the Mississippi. As I handed the valet my keys, I walked to the entrance and stopped as I peered through the glass of the giant oak doors leading into what could be a fresh start, or at least that was the idea. The day was finally here, but I began to think that I wasn’t. The thought to turn and run popped into my head. “Why am I so horrible at this?” I said under my breath. In high school, I had no problem with dates; they came second nature to me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, “you’ve got this, Dev,” I reassured myself and finally walked inside.

There she was, her auburn hair glowing of deep embers to one side, flowing over her shoulder, and her skin like fine pearls, radiating from the beauty that I had envisioned from the description Martin had given me. “You must be Emma?” I nervously gestured as I placed my lucky blazer on the back of my chair and sat down across from her. “Yes, and you must be Devin, I presume?” Her voice was calm with an elegant nature as she spoke. My heart fluttered with excitement as my worrisome mind slowly eased. “Shall we order drinks?” I asked reluctantly. “A glass of Merlot to celebrate the occasion of our first date.” She agreed as we pulled the wine menu from the table holder. I finally realized that everything was okay, that all my worries were over. Something deep inside of me felt as though this is the way it should be and that my mom was right; this is what Abby would want. I smiled as I looked into her eyes; the essence of emerald tugged at my heartstrings, and as the evening grew fonder, I knew she was what my loneliness had been in search of for so long.