When You're Ready (Ready #1)(45)

“Okay, fine! Yes, I slept with him!” she snapped, before pulling us to into a dressing room and closing the door with a huff.

“And it was amazing. Like five times amazing, okay? I’ve been having sex with vibrators for so long I’d forgotten what an actual man felt like...and this one? Holy shit! He was like an Olympic gold medalist for orgasms.”

“So why didn’t you want to tell me?” I asked, still wondering why we were hanging out in a dressing room. And if we were, I was at least going to start trying on the dresses I picked out.

I start stripping down for my first dress as she took a seat in the corner and explained.

“Because I knew you’d make a big deal out of it. You’re in that ‘I just fell in love!’ stage, and it’s radiating off your damn body in waves. You’re naturally going to want everyone around you to feel that same exact thing. And this is the exact opposite of what you have. It was purely physical and a one-time thing. Okay?”

“I’m in love?” I asked, completely forgetting everything else she just said and focusing on the one thing I still hadn’t come to grips with.

“Well duh,” she snorted.

“Isn’t it too soon?”

“Does love have a time restriction?” she asked.

“Then why haven’t I opened the letter, Leah?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know,” she said, standing to pull me into a tight hug. We stood there in the small dressing room, holding and supporting each other, like we’d done for the last twenty years. With her head resting on my shoulder, Leah whispered, “You’re rack looks fabulous in this dress. You should wear this one. He’ll lose his shit when he sees you in it.”

“You always know the right things to say,” I joked.

“I know. I’m like a super-hot version of Yoda.”

I snorted, giving myself a long pause before saying, “You’ll be there Wednesday morning?”

“There’s nowhere else I’d be, Clare.”

I tiptoed into Maddie’s room, hoping to catch a few moments alone with her before she woke. The clothes I had carefully laid out the night before were laying across her rocking chair, and the CD I put on repeat was still chattering on about sheep and numbers. I gently sat on the edge of her bed, looking down on her tiny face, trying to remember how it looked three years ago today. She was barely into her toddler years, just starting to leave infancy. When I held her in my arms sobbing, I thought she looked so big compared her to the tiny baby we’d brought home. Looking down at her now, I felt that overwhelming lack of control every parent has watching their child grow before their eyes, unable to stop it, or slow it down. How had she gotten so big? She would start kindergarten next year, and he wasn’t here to see it.

He was gone.

It had been three years, today.

Maddie shifted in her sleep and made an incoherent noise before her eyes fluttered open and focused on me.

“Hi Mommy,” she mumbled, her voice still sleepy.

“Hey, baby.”

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Just looking at how pretty you are,” I smiled, reaching down to smooth out her tiny red curls.

“Are we going to go visit Daddy today?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do I get to wear my pretty dress?”

“Of course, baby,” I choked out.

“Do you think Daddy would like my pretty dress?” her voice filled with curiosity over a man she would never know again.

“Oh definitely. Green was Daddy’s favorite color.” It was the color of my eyes.

Just breathe, just breathe.

She remained silent for a second, pondering something before saying, “Mommy?”

Yeah, baby?” I said, my voice coming out in a whisper.

“I miss Daddy.”

Holding back tears, I nodded. It was all I could do. I pulled her in my arms and nodded again, because I did too. I missed him. So damn much.

We met in the late afternoon, which is the same time we met every year since we lost him. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but it was a tradition we had kept. That first year is a bit of a haze, but every year, on the anniversary of Ethan’s death, we gathered at the cemetery and grieved. My parents, my brother, Leah, and a few of his friends. Everyone who was still living and mattered in his life.

We huddled together, hands linked, and our heads bowed, letting the silence be our opening hymn. My father was the first to speak.

“Thank you all for coming again. Ethan wasn’t just a son-in-law to me, he was my son. He came to us without a family, and we gave him one. In return, he loved our daughter and gave us Maddie. He loved them with everything he had until his very last breath.”

His voice quivered as he struggled to continue, “So, with that...I think I’ll start.”

Every time we gathered, we each told a memory of Ethan, and then placed a seashell on his headstone, a small symbol of the surfer boy who left us all too soon.

“The first time I met Ethan was when Clare brought him home during Thanksgiving break. When she called us to say she was bringing home a boy from school, the warning flags went up, but she assured me he was just a boy from out of state who didn’t have any family. So, when I caught him in the kitchen with his hand up her shirt, I turned to Clare, asked her to exit the room to give the men a few minutes to chat.”