Words jumble around in my brain, and I try to organize them as I speak. “Cedar, honey, maybe you could wait—"
“Who are you?” Cedar has interrupted me once again. He is looking at Aaron the way Milo stares at a butterfly that’s balanced itself on a blade of grass outside.
“Hey, there.” Aaron comes closer to us, crouches down to Cedar’s height, and extends a hand. “My name’s Aaron. It’s nice to meet you, Cedar.” Cedar accepts the handshake with caution at first, but then he laughs when Aaron reacts in an exaggerated manner to the strength of Cedar’s grip.
“You can come in and check out the barn if you want,” Aaron says as he stands back up. “There’s not much in there right now, but I’ll be changing that soon enough.”
Cedar tilts his head up at me for permission. I pat his back to usher him forward. I tell him, “I’ll be right here.”
The sight of him entering the barn and gazing around inside, putting one foot slowly in front of the other as he explores, brings about that tingling sensation in my arms and legs that I had last night. He looks so much like River in this moment, I almost forget what day it is, what year, where I am in time.
“He’s something.” Aaron’s comment brings me back to the present, and I peel my eyes off Cedar to look at the man before me. I’m no less overwhelmed than when I first saw him standing in the doorway.
“Drew,” he speaks again. “I know this is a little late, and maybe you don’t even remember anymore, but I’m sorry about how everything went with our prom, senior year. With everything afterward, too.”
“Prom?” I feel my eyebrows arch. “Oh, no—that’s—there’s nothing to apologize for.”
“It’s one of those things that makes me cringe when I think about it. Really, it still does after all these years. I forgot to make dinner plans for us, and I guess you could say I didn’t know much about romance back then. I really liked you, but I didn’t know how to show it. I wanted to talk to you afterward, before we graduated, but I was embarrassed. I was afraid you thought I was a jerk. Took me a while to mature, I guess is what I’m saying.”
“Really, Aaron.” I’m almost laughing as I’m shaking my head. “You have nothing to cringe about. We were teenagers. I didn’t know how to express myself, either.”
His grin seems to possess relief within it. He looks toward Cedar in the barn, down to the ground, then back in my direction, but he is not making eye contact with me.
“I can’t help but notice you’re not wearing a ring.” His words don’t make sense to me at first, but then they do. Breath catches in my lungs, and I feel my grasp around the emerald ring tighten. Aaron cannot see it, clasped within my fist. “Are you married, Drew?”
I try to keep the sadness out of my voice, but I’m afraid that I completely and utterly fail. “No.”
Aaron’s gaze returns to the ground for a few seconds as he presses his lips together. He has that introspective, far-away look I remember from high school. Then those green eyes of his are aiming right into mine. He smiles, cautiously.
“This might not be prudent,” he says. “I hope it’s okay for me to ask. You know, I haven’t kept up with anyone from high school, really, so I don’t know what you’ve been up to, or what your story is these days. But I’d love to hear it. I don’t know if . . . maybe you’d want to get together sometime? Maybe tomorrow, for lunch, if you’re not doing anything? Cedar could come, too, if you’d like.”
The proposition flows into my ears like the breeze around us. I stand there, my mouth open, my eyes wide.
Aaron chuckles lightly, a self-conscious sound. He says, “What do you think?”
There is something in his tone, in his eyes, in his face. The cautiously held but sincere smile. The earnest green of his irises. I can see something in each separate piece of him, as well as in the entirety of him. I glance past him for a moment, toward Cedar, who is examining one of the open windows in the barn. I feel something come over me. It is acceptance—acceptance to check off that final item River wrote in the To Do List. But there is something else that comes over me, too—something like fortitude. I will go forth with determination, despite the risks, despite the potential pains that may come, despite it all. I glance toward the ground, see the dirt beneath my feet. We are more than dust while we are here. Between the dust, we are more. I look over to the apple tree in the distance, then back to Aaron, back to this man standing before me with a proposition that is simple, but only on the surface.
I match his careful smile and I say, “Okay.”
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