She looks into my cart skeptically.
“This doesn’t feel like enough stuff,” she says, matter-of-factly. “You’re sure you don’t also want to decorate some water bottles? Or make some t-shirts? Ooh, or friendship bracelets? I haven’t tried those for years but I remember them being really fun.”
“This isn’t for spirit night at the sorority,” I say. “This is…”
I stop, because I still haven’t fully explained to myself what I’m doing. It’s a craft? An apology? A you were right about some things? A you mattered all along?
“It’s a gift,” Lainey says, simply. “And the recipient isn’t really into friendship bracelets.”
“I mean, I’ve never asked,” I point out.
“I feel okay making that assumption,” she says.
“Okay, but at least get puffy paint,” Ava says. “Just a little? How can you come here and not get puffy paint?”
I make a face, and Ava just laughs.
“Joke,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m not ten. C’mon, let’s go make this dignified scrapbook for your man.”
When I bring the box out, Lainey and Ava are sitting at my kitchen table, waiting. All the crafting supplies are there, neatly organized on one side. Lainey laughs at something that Ava said, and Ava gives a wicked little grin.
“All right,” she says, standing up when I put the box down on the table. “Do you want to give me a run down of what I’m looking for, or should we just dive in and see what we can find? How are we grouping things? Chronologically, or thematically, or do you want to do some sort of chromatic organization? I know you’re an artist.”
Apparently my little sister has turned from Ava, sweet baby angel to Ava, sorority social chair. I’m starting to see how she climbed as high as she did.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not even totally sure what’s in here, I never really went through it, I just put more stuff in sometimes and then shoved it into the back of my closet.”
“We could see what’s in here and then decide,” Lainey suggests.
Ava nods, once. It’s very official. I have the urge to offer her rubber gloves, just to watch her snap them on and get to work.
The first thing out is a Loveless Brewing cardboard coaster, pilfered from Fall Fest two years ago. Then, hotel key cards. A bottle of hotel shampoo. (“You definitely can’t scrapbook that,” offers Ava.) Notepads. Printed directions. A receipt, the various odds and ends of our non-relationship that punctuated my regular life. The bright spots I kept going back to, even when I thought I shouldn’t.
There’s a cocktail napkin from the Harrisonburg Marriott, and underneath that, the photos. Down here it’s all jumbled together, a whole slew of stuff that I threw in this box all at once. Us in a formal prom photo, my fluffy purple dress so big it’s almost out of frame. Candids of us at my house, at his house, doing cute young couple stuff. Selfies from when I visited him at college.
Gifts: cards, a necklace, a bracelet. One of those bobbing-head drinking birds that he gave me once. Ticket stubs from movies we saw together, the ink barely legible. Letters he wrote me while we were apart, tchotchkes, all the flotsam and jetsam of a relationship.
There’s so, so much. There’s more than I remembered, but somehow, I know every single thing. I remember the necklace with the star on it, the eighteenth birthday card signed Love, Seth, the ticket stubs from when we went to see Avatar together and the 3D glasses gave him a headache.
And I remember the things that aren’t here: the first time we kissed, standing outside Sprucevale High, the football field in the distance. When I got my driver’s license before him and a new car from my dad, and we’d drive to empty parking lots and make out.
Holding hands in the hallway. Getting told at a school dance that we weren’t allowed to dance like that. The way it felt to see him from across the cafeteria for the first time each day, an explosion in my chest every single time.
The confusion and elation and startling pleasure of the first time we took our clothes off. The terror of buying condoms from Wal-Mart, afraid that I’d see someone I know, or that the cashier would announce it over the loudspeaker, or just the enormity of having to admit that I was probably going to have sex with someone.
When we finally did it, on the bed in my parents’ guesthouse.
All of it in this one box. It’s overwhelming. It’s exhausting. More than anything, it’s strange to realize that a decade and a half after we met, he still makes my heart leap.
Thank God for Ava and Lainey, who make it bearable. Ava attacks the ocean of objects with a curator’s methodical eye, placing things in context, deciding which decorative tape goes best with the key card from the Marriott. She doesn’t bat an eye at all the stuff from motels, nor does she even blink at the discovery of a single (still factory-sealed but very expired) condom.
I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve underestimated my youngest sister.
Finally, she climbs onto my couch and stands there, looking down at the timeline we’ve made. Lainey and I are both drinking canned wine and sitting on the floor, but Ava nods a few times, surveying what’s spread in front of us.
“I think that’s right,” she says. “I like the narrative this presents. It’ll get the job done. Though, you know, if you really wanted to impress him I know where I could get a confetti cannon —”
“No,” I interrupt her.
“Come on,” says Lainey. “Live a little.”
An hour later, they’ve both left. Ava kisses me and tells me that I’m a sparkling unicorn, and Lainey gives me a big hug and says she’s proud of me.
I walk back into the living room. I stand on the couch myself, frown down at everything we’ve put together: coordinated and well-thought-out, neatly put together. Properly in a timeline, each phase of our relationship coordinated by a different color of the rainbow.
As if it was neat. As if anything about this were orderly or planned, as if it was a smooth transition instead of starts and stops and ups and downs. I stand there, on the couch, for a long time. Thinking. Remembering. Letting myself be alone with all this for the first time in years and years.
Admitting the enormity of what I’m looking at.
Finally, I get off the couch. I get another can of wine from the fridge — Ava recommended it and she’s right, it’s totally good — and then I sit on my floor and get to work.
Chapter Fifty-One
Seth
I’m staring at the forest in my mom’s back yard when Caleb comes out of the backdoor and crosses to me, holding out a mug of coffee.
“Mom says hi,” he tells me. “She also didn’t even ask me why we were building this, just told me that anything in the shed is fair game to use.”
“I didn’t always like having three older brothers,” I say, still contemplatively looking into the trees. “But being fourth-born has its benefits.”
“You don’t even know,” Caleb says, grinning. “I think I got in trouble twice. They were way too tired.”
I hold up my coffee mug, and we clink them together, then both take sips. It’s hot, strong, and black, which is exactly what I need since the sun isn’t far over the horizon.