Us, Again

by Elle Maxwell

  Although she quickly got over her initial shock and dismay, she forced Griff to have a vasectomy shortly after their daughter Sky was born (apparently the threatened alternative was never having sex again). For my part, I love that we have kids so close in age. I hope that Sky and Violet will be best friends the way Shaina and I have become.

  “Hello?!” Marisa calls. I force myself to focus on my other best friend and her current crisis.

  “Okay, so you can’t marry him because of … consonants?”

  I’m trying to take her seriously—truly, I am—but it’s hard not to laugh at the panic she’s worked herself into since Derek proposed yesterday.

  The reason I find this drama laughable? I know Marisa, and I’m certain Derek is perfect for her. He’s strong enough to handle her, but soft enough to balance out her sharp edges, and always stays levelheaded when she gets carried away. He also not only keeps up with her quick wit and dry humor but actually holds his own and gives it right back. I’ve never seen her as happy as she’s been since she finally let him catch her after making him keep up the chase for quite a while.

  So, I’m well aware she’s going to say yes. Inside, she realizes it too. Her current rant is merely a nonsensical concern she’s fabricated because she needs somewhere to direct her anxiety.

  “It’s not just the consonants!” she huffs. “But I mean—it’s a terrible name, isn’t it?”

  “So, marry him but don’t take his last name,” I suggest evenly. “Or you could always go with Mrs. Guapo.”

  She lets out a sound of exasperation and rolls her eyes dramatically. Her accent always comes out more thickly when she’s agitated, and it’s in full force right now.

  “Of course I’m going to take his last name!”

  “Don’t you think you should tell him ‘yes’ first?” I sound smug, but I don’t care.

  “Violet, I hate your mommy,” she tells my daughter.

  “You love me.”

  “I’m only here for baby therapy. Give her to me!”

  Marisa rocks and cuddles Violet, who is already under the enchantment of her child-whispering aunt.

  “I bet Derek will be more than happy to give you one of those,” I tell her.

  She glares at me, but I sense her resistance softening. Though she won’t readily admit it right now, she’s itching to have a baby of her own. Marisa loves kids, and she’ll be an amazing mother.

  “I’m scared,” she whispers, looking only at Violet.

  “The best things in life are both terrifying and amazing. I think you’re the one who told me that.”

  “I stole it from a quote I saw somewhere,” she admits, a bit miserably.

  “Well, it’s still true. I get that you’re nervous, but you don’t have anything to worry about with Derek. If he hasn’t been scared off yet—despite your best efforts, I might add—he’s not going anywhere. That man loves you as much as we love chocolate.”

  That makes her smile. Marisa and I still have girls’ nights where we binge on our favorites: brownies, tacos and guacamole, and tequila when I’m not pregnant. Sometimes we let Graham join, but often we send him away so we can have quality BFF time.

  Then she sighs deeply, and in that exhalation I hear defeat. “I know.”

  “Maybe you should go see him and put him out of his misery?”

  I can only imagine Derek is on pins and needles. He’s probably a little hurt too since Marisa’s reaction to his proposal was far from ideal.

  “Yes,” she agrees sullenly, handing Violet back over to me.

  “I love you,” I tell my best friend.

  “I love you too, even when you piss me off by making sense.”

  * * *

  I’ve just gotten Violet to sleep when I hear Graham’s car outside. He’s been gone since the early afternoon, busy with some errand he wouldn’t explain.

  He enters our bedroom minutes later sporting a huge grin and a bandage on his arm. He wastes no time proudly showing off the new tattoo on his right bicep—it’s his first ink on this arm and very different from the grayscale design of his half-sleeve. The tattoo is a delicate flower in shades of purple, white, and yellow … a violet. It’s done in a style that looks like the artist used watercolor to paint right on his skin. It’s gorgeous. Almost too pretty for a big tough man, but if anyone can pull off the look, it’s my husband.

  “I love it,” I tell him as my eyes fill with tears. (I’m a lot sappier these days.)

  When I was pregnant, we considered naming our daughter Rose after his mother, but Graham decided it would be too strange. Instead, we kept with the flower theme. I suspect that somewhere in our house Graham has a little list stashed away of floral baby names for the future. (I know I do).

  I love that Graham is so proud of our daughter that he wanted to honor her this way. Whether he realizes it or not, this tattoo also means so much more—it represents how far he’s come from the colorless grief in his past. It’s a symbol of the fresh chance on life we have together, a blank slate we’re filling with vibrant joy and love.

  I wrap my arms around Graham’s waist and his hands come to rest on my back, folding me into his embrace.

  A bit later as we get ready for bed, he tells me that he plans to add more ink to the arm as we have more children, so someday he’ll have a whole garden. And yes, he follows this statement with extensive innuendos about planting, ploughing, seeds, etc. I stay quiet and let him get it out of his system. I figure he’s probably been waiting all day to share these little gems with me.

  Because that’s Graham Wyatt. Heart-wrenchingly sweet and hilariously strange, often within the same breath. Strong and vulnerable, sexy and goofy. The most loyal person I’ve ever met. He still makes my pulse race when he walks into a room—and he’s still the only man who ever has, as though my body and my heart recognize that he belongs to us. My love. My best friend. My first, and last, and forever.

  I no longer try to question it or explain it away with science.

  I’ve long since accepted that while there are many things about the human experience that can be rationalized and categorized, there are others that defy quantification. Some things are simply too extraordinary to be anything but magic.

  Like soul mates.

  True love.

  Fate.

  EPILOGUE

  Graham

  There’s a reason the phrase isn’t “perfectly ever after.” Life isn’t perfect and neither are we.

  We argue. Mackenzie can be a control freak, and I can be a caveman. I complain that she overthinks things, and she accuses me of being reckless. I prefer the word “spontaneous”—I mean, we hosted an animal rescue’s adoption event at the Center … who wouldn’t come home with a puppy?

  For the most part, we manage to leave our past behind us, where it belongs. Sometimes life throws us inescapable reminders that bring up old hurts, but we get through those tough times together.

  It works because our respective flaws balance each other out: Mackenzie loves that dog almost as much as she loves our kid, and though I grumble, I’m lucky that she keeps our life organized.

  She’s still the beautiful girl who caught my eye the first day of ninth grade, who I watched from afar for a year before finding the courage to ask her out. (Yeah, so maybe I’ve always had stalking tendencies when it comes to Mackenzie. But, really … look at her. Can you blame me?) She’s also the remarkable woman whose strength and compassion inspire me every single day. A woman I get to call my wife.

  Not a day goes by that I don’t thank the big man upstairs for everything I have. That’s one thing our past has done for us—we don’t take anything for granted. Mackenzie and I didn’t come by this life easily, and I like to think that remembering how close we came more than once to not having it makes every beautiful moment a little sweeter.

  In short, I’m the luckiest son of a bitch alive. (No offense, Mom!)

  I still wonder if I deserve to be this happy, and often suspect I don’t, but th
ose thoughts have very little power over me nowadays. Because what does that even mean? Who decides what we do or don’t deserve in this life, what invisible hoops we’re supposed to jump through before we earn the right to happiness?

  Life is about choices. Good ones, bad ones, and all the little moments in between. Every day, Mackenzie Thatcher Wyatt wakes up and chooses me, chooses us. And instead of questioning it, I accept her love and I choose her right back.

  One day, we’ll have to tell Violet and her (hopefully numerous) siblings our story and about my past. I won’t lie—I wish I wasn’t the guy who has to admit to his little girl that he went to prison. It would be nice if her parents’ love story didn’t include death and drugs, mistakes and broken hearts (or, you know, comas).

  But that wouldn’t be our truth. And our truth is something precious that I won’t hide, because somehow it all turned out pretty damn wonderful.

  So, we’ll tell our children what’s true about life: that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good people do bad things.

  At bedtime, the fairy tales in our house will just be a little different. They will include a princess who’s her own knight, and a prince who causes his own imprisonment by opening the gates to dragons that scorch his castle. A prince who tried to take on that hoard of dragons all by himself and almost didn’t live to tell the tale.

  Once in the not-so-distant past, I let my inner dragons win. Those assholes haven’t disappeared—they’ll probably never go away completely—but these days, they’re the ones who lose. I conquer them now, because I’ve learned that not every battle has to be fought alone, and I’m lucky to have an amazing wife and friends who will always have my back. I guess that will be the moral of the tales we tell our children—that asking for help is one of the bravest things you can do, and that they’ll never be alone. The best armor is love, after all, and we’re going to raise our kids wrapped up in it head to toe.

  So, perfectly isn’t in the cards for us as we live our ever after. But happily? Yeah, we’ve got that shit on lockdown.

  The End

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Honestly, I never thought I'd have an Acknowledgements page. Writing was always a solo, personal thing for me, and up until December 2018 it had been years since I'd written anything that anyone else read. But in putting myself and my writing out there, I found a support system I didn’t even realize I needed so badly.

  I began posting chapters on Wattpad thinking that if my book was somewhere public it might keep me accountable and force me to actually finish the thing. It quickly became so much more than that; I discovered a community of readers and writers whose enthusiasm and praise for Us, Again not only gave me the motivation to finish writing it but the confidence to follow through with my goal of self-publishing.

  So this is a shout out to every Wattpader who read, voted, or commented on Us, Again. Thank you for the amazing comments, telling me I’m funny (I still find this shocking!), and helping me choose epic chapter titles. You made me believe in my own writing and your love for these characters helped me connect more deeply with them as well.

  All of my love to the readers and bookstagrammers who read and reviewed advance copies and helped promote Us, Again on social media. Thank you for making me feel like a "real" author! I can barely express how much I appreciate every photo, message, and piece of feedback.

  Now let me raise a glass to my "Best Of" Instagram ladies. Thank you for the camaraderie, the feedback, all of the GIF's, and the endless hot man photos (keep an eye out for those thumbs!)

  Danielle Paul: Without you, this book might not even exist. (I've already told you this a hundred times, but it's only official if it's in the final published version, right?) Thank you for being reader #1 and for all of your encouragement, comments, and enthusiasm as I wrote this. You are, and forever will be, Graham's Fairy Cougar Mother. (But they made it official with rings and babies and everything ... so maybe it's time you stopped trying to steal Graham from Mackenzie?)

  And a million thank you's to Shauna McDonnell, the very first person to pre-order the eBook, my first Goodreads reviewer, and my one-woman cheering squad as I angsted endlessly over the process of self-publishing. Your belief in me means more than you will ever know. Shameless plug time: Check out Luck, book 1 in her 4Clover series, releasing on Amazon December 1, 2019.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elle Maxwell decided to be an author at the age of nine. She then spent the next twenty years letting life and self-doubt push that dream to the backburner, until she realized she was about to turn thirty and needed to get her butt in gear. Just to be dramatic, she self-published her first book on her 30th birthday.

  When she’s not writing, Elle is a dog mom, artist, binge-reader, and chai latte enthusiast. She is also in a long-term love affair with her adopted city of Boston.

  Us, Again is her debut novel (but definitely not her last … keep an eye out for Marisa’s book, coming sometime in 2020!)

  FOLLOW HER & GET UPDATES!

  ElleMaxwellBooks.com

  Instagram: @ElleMaxwellAuthor

  Subscribe to her newsletter for email updates about future books and access to fun stuff like exclusive bonus chapters!

  Reviews are everything to indie authors, so if you loved Us, Again please consider writing a couple of nice words on Amazon and/or Goodreads. It’s an easy way to earn the author’s eternal love and some major karmic brownie points!