Fortuity: A Standalone Contemporary Romance (The Transcend Series Book 3)

by Jewel E. Ann

  I read a self-help book last week. It stressed the power of intention and thoughts. Words shape us in ways that affect us on a cellular level.

  Thankfully, I’m not missing you. In fact, not missing you has consumed me. It’s almost as time-consuming as not loving you. Not thinking of you. Not feeling your lingering touch. Not finding it hard to breathe at the idea of never seeing you again.

  I guess I hope you’re not missing me too.

  Your not lovesick ex-neighbor,

  Gracelyn

  I lean back in my chair and run my fingers through my hair that’s longer again and as scruffy looking as my beard.

  Hot single guy next door? I can’t even think about that right now. It makes me want to get on a plane, bang on her door, throw her over my shoulder, and steal her forever. I slide the photo of her out of my pocket. Yes, I carry her with me. I just … want her.

  It’s not that I wouldn’t wait eight years or a lifetime for her. I would. I just don’t want to. My love for her makes me antsy and completely unsettled. How do I erase the distance between us so we can stop not missing each other?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Gracelyn

  “Want to help?” I glance over my shoulder at Gabe as I mix the stuffing. The house smells of fresh thyme, parsley, onions, garlic, turkey, and apples and cinnamon.

  He shrugs.

  I smile. “I’ll take that as a yes. Wash your hands. I’m going to show you some kitchen skills that will turn you into a great husband someday.”

  “My dad couldn’t cook.”

  I chuckle. “I know. Grandma tried to teach him, but he was truly unteachable.”

  “He could do other things,” Gabe says in a somber tone that matches his partial frown.

  I wipe my hands on a towel and lean against the counter as he washes his hands. “Yeah. Your dad had a lot of talent. He was good at all sports. He was a good photographer. He could do anything on a computer. And he knew his way around a car. Grandpa had him changing tires and the oil on the cars at an early age. Not much older than you.”

  With his focus aimed at the towel in his hands, he nods slowly. “I know. He said when I turned twelve he would show me how to do that … change a tire and the oil.” He shrugs. “Guess that’s not going to happen.”

  I press my finger under his chin, and Nate doing the same thing to me flashes through my head.

  Gentle.

  Loving.

  A simple gesture that says look at me. See me. I’ve got you.

  “I’m here for you. If we need to watch some videos on YouTube someday and figure these things out together, we will. I’m not afraid to learn new things. You shouldn’t be either. Nor should you be afraid to have a moment.”

  He moves his gaze from my chin to my eyes. “A moment?”

  “A moment. Many moments. Whatever you need. When emotions hit you like this, where you realize your dad won’t keep a promise he made, when your crazy aunt is the only family you have on Thanksgiving, or just for no particular reason at any given time, don’t be afraid to say I’m sad. I’m mad. I’m down.

  “You don’t need an excuse. I lost the first man I ever loved over twenty years ago, and I still have days that I want to stay in bed and just … miss him. We can’t control how we feel on any given day, just how we deal with those feelings. Promise me you won’t ignore them. Promise me you’ll give them the attention they deserve. If you want to hit something, I’ll buy you a punching bag. If you want to cry, I’ll be the first to hand you a tissue. If you want to watch your favorite movie over a tub of popcorn and a whole bag of licorice … I’m your person. Okay?”

  “I want to see their graves. Morgan said she took flowers to her mom’s grave. I haven’t seen their graves since the funeral.”

  “Of course.” I hug him, resting my lips on the top of his head.

  He helps me finish Thanksgiving dinner. We leave the mess in the kitchen, throw on our coats, and find a grocery store that’s open. The pickings for flowers are slim, but we scrounge a small bouquet that will work.

  When we get to the cemetery, I let Gabe lead the way. He knows exactly where their headstones are located. Standing between them, he murmurs, “Where do I put the flowers?”

  “Wherever you want. The top of the headstones, the bottom. It’s up to you.”

  “Should I say something? Morgan said she read her mom a poem.”

  “Do you have a poem?”

  He shakes his head.

  I grin and take a seat in front of Kyle’s headstone. Gabe takes my cue and sits in front of Emily’s.

  “Hey, Kyle … Em … happy Thanksgiving. Gabe brought you flowers, but he didn’t save you any pie.”

  Gabe grins. A little laugh even escapes. “Aunt Gracelyn makes good pie, but not as good as yours, Mom.”

  I return the same grin. He’s got this. My cemetery experience is pretty extensive. I used to visit Brandon on a weekly basis. I’d eat dinner with him. Sometimes I’d bring a blanket and pillow and lie beside him, reading him a few chapters of whatever book I was reading. When life got really tough, I’d bring my planner and ask for his advice on what I should do with my life. He helped me make plans that I refused to make without his help. Sometimes he’d remind me to pencil in shaving my legs.

  Leaning my head back against the cool granite, I close my eyes and listen to Gabe tell his parents about his summer with Morgan, their trip to Disneyland, and all the goals he made during fall soccer. He laughs while telling them about Mr. Hans and the van that checked his private parts.

  I can’t help but giggle too.

  When all the giggles disappear, silence takes its moment. Then he whispers, “I miss both of you.”

  My tears have no self-control, but when I give him a sideways glance, I see his don’t either. It’s his first visit since the funeral. Reaching over, I squeeze his hand. “It gets easier … the visits … they get easier.”

  When we get home, I send Gabe upstairs to just chill … play games, whatever, while I clean up the mess. As I’m drying the last dish, I hear his voice. It’s not his usual yelling at the screen during a game. It’s a conversational voice. I hang the dishtowel to dry and head up the stairs slowly.

  “It was weird talking to them. Do you think they heard me?” he asks.

  “Yeah. I think so.” It’s Morgan’s voice.

  I smile at him when I reach the top of the stairs.

  “Here’s Gracelyn.” He turns his iPad toward me.

  Morgan smiles and waves. “Hi. Happy Thanksgiving. Ugh … I’m so stuffed.” She frowns and presses her hand to her stomach.

  “Happy Thanksgiving to you too.” I move a little closer and squint at the screen. “Are you home?”

  “Yes. This is my room.” She moves her phone in a slow circle, showing off her pink room trimmed in white and LED lights lining her ceiling.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Do you want to see everyone else?”

  “Uh … no … um …” I back away.

  “It’s Gabe and Gracelyn.” Her voice is a little muffled as the camera moves around from her feet walking out of her bedroom to the tall ceilings to a big room filled with people gathered around an impressive stonewall and fireplace.

  “Hi, Gabe. Happy Thanksgiving,” Nate’s mom says.

  “Happy Thanksgiving.” Gabe turns the iPad toward him again.

  “Hey, buddy.” Nate’s voice sends me into cardiac arrest. I’ve missed his voice. “I miss you. Are you doing okay?”

  Gabe shrugs. “I guess so.”

  “Did you have a good Thanksgiving dinner?”

  He nods. “Gracelyn made a ton of food. It was really good. I helped with the pies.”

  Nate chuckles and it nearly brings me to my knees. The state of fine is fragile. Fine is balancing a table on the end of a stick pin. The slightest movement can end in catastrophe. Hearing Nate’s voice isn’t a slight movement; it’s an earthquake.

  “I have to use the bathroom real quic
k. Here … you can talk to Gracelyn.”

  I shake my head a dozen times really fast.

  Too late.

  Gabe just sets the iPad on the sofa, giving Nate a nice view of the ceiling, as he makes a straight line for the bathroom. Taking a long, unstable breath, I sit on the sofa and slowly reach for the iPad. The anticipation unravels my heart.

  It’s been four months (or forty years) since I’ve seen him. My heart doesn’t know because it’s felt like eternity since the day he pulled away in the rain.

  I pick up the iPad, and emotion burns my eyes the second they land on him—his thick, wavy hair, the shine in his blue eyes, that beard that’s trimmed a little closer than the last picture I saw of him, and a fitted red sweater.

  He gets my scraggly hair, my weary face with no makeup, and the white hoodie I haven’t taken off since we returned from the cemetery. Basically, I’m the opposite of sexy at the moment.

  It doesn’t deter him from smiling like he’s always smiled at me—a slow growing grin, like tulips opening in the spring.

  “Hey, you,” he says.

  “Hey, yourself.” My smile has less control. It goes from nothing to a hundred percent in under a second, a lot like my heart rate.

  He’s in a room filled with family. What can we really say?

  “So … Thanksgiving dinner was good?”

  I nod, pressing my lips together because my grin completely lost control for a few seconds.

  “Yours?”

  “Yeah.” He nods.

  I nod more.

  We’re good at nodding.

  “Did your neighbor join you for dinner?” he asks in a way that no one else would question because they don’t know about the letter.

  My mouth twists to the side for a few seconds just to make him squirm. I know he’s hit his limit when he runs one hand through his hair before rubbing his jaw.

  “He couldn’t make it. Maybe for New Year’s.”

  “Oh!” Morgan grabs the iPad and Nate disappears in a blur. “On New Year’s, at midnight you get to kiss someone.”

  I grin. “I’ve heard that. Who do you kiss on New Year’s Eve?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Just my dad. It’s always a sloppy kiss. Then he tickles me until I have to go pee.” She lowers her voice and moves closer to the camera. “I don’t really have to pee. I just say that so he’ll stop tickling me.”

  I laugh. “I used to do that too when my dad or brother would tickle me.”

  Gabe comes out of the bathroom.

  “Gabe’s back. I’ll let you two talk. So glad I got to see you.”

  “You too.”

  Gabe takes the iPad and flops back onto the sofa. As they start chattering again, I head to the bathroom to run a hot bath and not miss Nate.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Two weeks before Christmas, I get a package from Nate. I tear it open and read the short note:

  Now you’ll know …

  Xo Nate

  It’s a thick stack of papers. The first page reads:

  Transcend

  By Nathaniel Hunt

  It’s his manuscript.

  I press my hand to my mouth. In an hour, I have to pick Gabe up from his friend’s house, but I can’t resist reading just a few pages.

  Nathaniel Hunt – Age 10

  “Nate and Morgan sitting in a tree … K I S S I N G. First comes love, then comes—”

  “Shut up before I knock your teeth out with my fist and you go crying to your mommy like a baby in a baby carriage.” Morgan spat on the kids below us as they marched toward the lake, fishing poles in one hand, tackle boxes in the other, dodging saliva bombs.

  I ignored their snickers and smooching sounds. Morgan didn’t ignore anything. Her parents called her Little Firecracker, but not me—I called her Daisy because her middle name was Daisy and she hated it when I called her that.

  “Have you ever hit anyone?” I asked as we continued our game of Go Fish, perched high in the old oak tree on the abandoned property a mile from our neighborhood.

  I like this story. He’s starting it from childhood with Morgan—the girl whose name his daughter bears. A firecracker … like his daughter. And they were ten … Morgan’s and Gabe’s age.

  I flip through page after page. I can’t read it fast enough. When my phone rings, I reach for it without taking my eyes off the words. “Hello?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Gabe?” I glance at my watch. “Shoot! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I’m leaving right now.”

  I fly out the door to pick him up. He doesn’t seem too bothered by my mistake. And just to make things right, I suggest we pick up pizza on the way home—my intentions not entirely selfless. As soon as we get home, I grab a slice of pizza, a can of lemon lime sparkling water from the fridge, and leave Gabe and Mr. Hans to eat the rest of the pizza and finish their chess game.

  I read Transcend, only taking two bites of pizza. At some point, Gabe knocks on my bedroom door and tells me goodnight. By three a.m., I drift off to sleep with the final page pressed to my chest.

  Spoiler alert: it ends with Morgan taking flowers to Jenna’s grave, kissing the top of her headstone, and whispering, “I’m home, Mom.”

  Nate chronicles his time with Morgan Daisy, including her death. How he met and fell in love with Jenna, the pivotal year after her death with baby Morgan and Swayze—the young nanny who knew everything about him. Part Two of the book is like a travel journal with dates and destinations—things that impacted them the most, the people they met along the way, and what he calls his Unknown Journey to Elvis. The chapter where we meet is titled Fortuity.

  Transcend is everything. I laughed. I cried … actually sobbed. The words are real; the emotions are raw. The ending … is perfect.

  This realization leads me to reply to him with a simple note on a piece of cream stationary. With a green marker, I write:

  Thank you.

  It’s an honor to be loved by you.

  Always,

  G

  I fold the note in half and slide it into an envelope.

  Over the next couple of weeks leading to Christmas, I hear Gabe and Morgan chatting a lot, but I don’t ask to say hi or see Nate.

  When he left, I thought fate might bring us back together. It seemed like the right thing. After reading his manuscript, I don’t know. The ending was bittersweet, beautiful, and … perfect.

  Maybe not everything in life dies with a final breath.

  Maybe some things just … end.

  Maybe it’s not forever.

  Maybe it’s for now.

  Letting go doesn’t hurt as much as the fear of letting go. I wore a bracelet around my wrist for over twenty years because I feared letting go. It ruined every relationship after Brandon.

  When I was ready to let it go … I let the fear go too. And now I don’t feel the pain. I feel free. The love is still there; it’s just not the kind of love that hurts anymore.

  If I hold on to Nate, the pain will cripple me. Hope shouldn’t shackle the heart; it should free it. Right now, I want him so badly, the fear of never seeing him again feels like I’m starting the Brandon grieving for a second time.

  We go to Montana for Christmas. I pour my heart into my family.

  “You look good,” my mom says. “I don’t know if it’s the longer hair … or you going back to your natural auburn color …” She twists her lips. “No, it’s something else. You just have a glow to you.”

  I grin.

  Her gaze falls to my wrist. “You let Brandon go.” A sad smile graces her face.

  Months ago, my hand would have gone to my wrist, needing that security of the bracelet. Not now. I slide my hands into my back pockets. “I let go of false hope.”

  Her eyes narrow a bit. After a few seconds, she nods. “You let go of Nathaniel too?”

  I nod, blowing out a long breath. The pain is still there. It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid; the sting lingers for a few seconds. “Missing people hurts t
oo fucking much.”

  Her eyebrows jump up her forehead. I don’t usually use that kind of language in front of her, but it’s exactly how I feel. I guess I want her to not simply understand me; I want her to feel me. To steal from Nate: Then she’ll know …

  *

  Over the next six months, Morgan sends me three letters. I respond to all of them. I continue to follow her on social media, but I don’t focus on the pictures she posts with Nate. He sent me a letter right after New Year’s. I didn’t open it. I just … couldn’t.

  It’s been six months since we’ve had written contact, seven months since I’ve talked to him, and almost eleven months since I’ve touched him.

  We died without a last breath.

  With no one to blame.

  Just … life.

  *

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  Gabe gives me a half grin. “Going to miss you too.” He hugs me.

  I don’t know how much Kyle and Emily hugged Gabe. I want to believe it was often. Over the past year together, I’ve hugged him more and more each day. And every day he hugs me back a little more. Now, he squeezes me so hard I feel it in my bones.

  “Have fun,” Mom smiles.

  She and Dad offered to take Gabe on a two-week vacation this summer—road trip up to Seattle. I couldn’t get two weeks off, but I’m taking my one week of paid vacation and going to Chicago for a friend’s wedding. I haven’t seen her since high school, but we’ve kept in touch on social media. This is her first marriage. I guess I’m not the only person who didn’t get hitched and pop out two kids before thirty.

  “It’s my first time in Chicago. I’ll definitely have fun.”

  “Don’t get mugged.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Good tip.”

  “Ready?” Dad comes inside after loading Gabe’s stuff into the SUV they rented.

  “Bye.” I give my parents hugs.

  “Have a safe trip.” Mr. Hans ruffles Gabe’s hair.

  I put on a brave face. He’s with my parents. He couldn’t be in better hands, except mine. Yes, I’ve gone from the hormonal mess who thought I had no business raising a child, to a mama bear. Still hormonal.