Bo & Ember

by Andrea Randall

  While the girls talked about the last few weeks together, and organizing when they’d see each other again, I nodded to Regan. “When do you start recording?”

  A million-dollar smile cropped up on his face. I knew the answer, but seeing him so happy made me happy, too.

  “Tomorrow. Remember the lead singer from Sunset Mission? They played after us at the vineyard?” I nodded and he continued. “Apparently they were only together for that weekend, and Yardley was able to snag him. She signed a guitar player who just graduated from college, too.”

  His excitement was palpable and I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s awesome, man. Are you guys going straight bluegrass?”

  He shrugged. “It’s hard to care, really. I’ll play anything as long as it means I get to play.”

  The thing about Regan was, he meant it. Whether he was asked to play nursery rhymes for the rest of his life, or rock music, he really would be happy as long as he was playing. A true servant to art.

  After a few minutes, I nudged Ember, letting her know we had to navigate through security and get to our gate. Our flight was scheduled to have us in Boston by early afternoon, and we had to haul it to Concord.

  Ember and Georgia hugged. It was a sight that choked me up a bit, given where the two had started in their friendship.

  I looked at Regan, took a deep breath, and said, “Good luck, man. Keep in touch and we’ll see you soon, okay?”

  He nodded and we hugged. Not an awkward side man-hug. The real deal. He was the only person left alive who had loved Rae as much as I did. Saying goodbye to him felt like I was leaving a piece of her in California.

  “Get out of the way,” Ember snapped playfully. “It’s my turn.”

  She hip-checked me out of the way, and while she was smiling, I knew the quiver in her chin would melt into tears as soon as Regan’s arms were around her. I was right. Ember’s shoulders shook as she buried her face in the shirt of her best guy-friend.

  Georgia walked around the pair and shouldered up next to me. Well, her shoulder to my torso since she was almost a foot shorter than me.

  “Would you look at those two?” She rolled her eyes and then nudged my side. “Thanks for everything.”

  “Me?” I questioned.

  She nodded. “Star quarterback, cheerleader, band geek? It’s like The Breakfast Club with you guys, and I’m glad I get to be a part of it. I’ll miss you. Even if I will have to find a new diet routine since I won’t be participating in the barf-fest that is Bo and Ember for a while.”

  I laughed and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “No one has ever made me laugh like you do, G. That’s for sure. I won’t tell Ember you called her a cheerleader, though. She’d kill us both.”

  “Oh … right,” Georgia snickered. “Ainsley.”

  Ember and I finished our goodbyes with our friends, and two hours later we were taxiing toward the runway, ready for our flight home.

  Home.

  That had been a flexible term over the last year and a half, but I really felt like going back to Concord was going home.

  “What are you thinking about?” Ember asked as the plane hurtled down the runway and began to lift off.

  I hesitated, not sure if Ember would share the same sentiments about home as I did.

  “What is it?” she asked again, tilting her head in concern.

  Tears stung my eyes as I realized both the relief and the fear I felt about the next stage in our journey together.

  “You’re my home, okay? No matter what the next couple of years bring, it’s you. It’s me. It’s us. You’re my home, Ember.” I lifted my arm as she nuzzled her way into my chest.

  She kissed my jaw and rested her head on my shoulder. “You’re mine, too, Bo. I think you always have been. Even before … us.”

  Once the plane had landed, we got our rental car and started the drive to Concord.

  “It feels a little weird, doesn’t it?” Ember asked as she looked out the window. “Being back here and knowing it’ll be for more than just a few days? I mean, we’ll have to be in New York for a while, but … what?” Ember looked at me as I bit my lip, trying to stop myself from smiling.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re a horrible liar, so you might as well tell me what has you looking like a cat with a canary in its mouth.”

  “We’re not going to New York.”

  Ember scrunched her eyebrows. “I beg your fucking pardon? Did something happen with our contract I’m not aware of?”

  I chuckled. “Yes, but not in the way you think.”

  “Jesus, what now?”

  I’d been holding this in for the last three weeks. Once we got the okay from Adrian that the contract was good as it stood, I went to Yardley with another proposition.

  “Our contract is for just the two of us. There’s no band. It’s just us.”

  “Right…” her impatient tone made me grin.

  “Grounded Sound’s offices and studio might be in New York, but we don’t need to be there all the time if we can secure approved studio time elsewhere.”

  Ember rolled her eyes. “Great, where will we—” she cut herself off as her eyes grew wide. “Your house?”

  “Our house,” I corrected.

  “They went for that?” Ember’s breathing was faster as she smiled.

  I nodded. “Yardley will be out in a few days with some of her sound guys. She said if they like what they see in our studio, then we can do most of the recording there. She’s smart. She said it bodes better for our sound if we’re happy, and I told her we’d be much happier in our home than splitting our time between there and New York.”

  “How often will we have to go to New York?”

  “Yardley and I discussed recording the entire album at our house, and then going to New York for a week or two during pre-production to iron things out.”

  Ember let out a massive exhale. “I can’t fucking believe it!”

  “I know, I know. I know it’s not the same as staying in California, but you know the pressure has been on at DROP lately, and it will be a huge relief to the board to have me nix my at large status.”

  While DROP’s community center had been open for almost two years, I had been absent for most of it. There were trusted and excellent members of the team that handled day-to-day operations, but I missed being a part of it. I’d been turning over ideas for the community center, and wanted to get them off and running.

  Ember nodded. “Have you told David yet?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to run it by you first. I know that I didn’t talk to you about it earlier, but I didn’t want to get my own hopes up in case it wouldn’t work out. I’ve gotta be honest, Ember. I’ve loved the last year and a half traveling around the West coast, but if we’re going to go on a national tour next summer, I want to get grounded, you know? Us. Get our home established and have something tangible.”

  Ember sniffed and reached her hand across the car, grabbing my leg. “You know how much that means to me, too, Bo. The time we spent with my parents was great—don’t get me wrong. It was literally just like my middle school life was. Sure, as an adult I had a little more perspective, but I still crave a home base. I know we’ll always have that with each other, but I’m excited to have that in Concord.”

  “Are you?”

  Ember and I had been flying uncharacteristically by the seat of our pants for a year and a half. While she’d had all of her things shipped to my house before we made our initial move to San Diego, we never officially discussed making my home our home. That’s how I referred to it, but I didn’t want her to feel pressured.

  “What do you mean?” Ember’s tone dropped and sounded softly defensive and insecure.

  “We’ve never really … talked about if we’d live in my house together.”

  “Why wouldn’t we? It’s your house. It’s where you grew up. It’s the perfect family home. A family needs to live there. Even if it’s just us right now, we’re family, right?” Embe
r choked up at the end of her sentence.

  I smiled. “What is it?”

  Ember forced a chuckle. “It’s nothing.”

  She pointed out the window as we reached the gate of our home. I’d been on autopilot for most of the drive, and was taken by surprise that we’d made it there seemingly so quickly.

  I put the car in park and put my hand on the door, ready to get out and punch in the code. Ember stopped me.

  “Let me see if I’ve still got it.” She jumped out of the car and jogged to the gate, carefully punching in four numbers. She froze in place for a moment before the gate slowly swung open and then put her hands up in victory.

  “Well done,” I teased as she got back in the car.

  Knowing that this was going to be our official home now, save for when we went on tour, I had a mix of feelings pulling down the long driveway. Thankfully, I felt the peace that always filled me when the house came into view. Despite all of the heartache that I’d suffered over the last several years, this home always swaddled me. Memories of laughter and love carved into its walls, the house my parents’ love built would soon see a rebirth as Ember and I forged our lives here.

  Still, there was some stomach-dropping nervousness. There had been so much hurt suffered here. I remembered the hollowness that awaited Rae and me when we returned here after our parents’ funeral. It was like walking into a strange house, the way all the life had been sucked away like a vacuum. Rae and I had spent a couple of years repairing the emotional structure of the house and once again, three years ago, the house felt like a home.

  My first thought about the house when Rae died had been to burn the place to the ground. I'd thought there was no humanly way I could face walking into that house completely alone.

  I put the car into park, pulling myself out of the grey memories. Looking to my right, I smiled at the woman who held me in every sense of the word when I took those first steps into the house after Rae died. Even though Ember and I weren’t together then, the warmth that filled me as she crossed the threshold on the worst day of my life gave me the sense that I’d never be alone again. That’s all I’d been able to hold onto in those months Ember and I didn’t speak. I didn’t know how, or when, but I carried the comfort that it would be okay.

  “You okay?” Ember asked, almost whispering.

  I was.

  My eyes drifted to the house, and back to her. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I am at this exact moment.”

  Her barely-tanned cheeks reddened as she leaned across the car. Her lips connected softly with mine, and we shared a long exhale inside of our kiss.

  “I love you, Bo. Let’s go home.”

  We stepped out of the car and were greeted by the sweet comfort of Northern New England air. The mid-fall afternoon in New Hampshire blew any day in San Diego out of the water. Of course, that was easy to say when I was standing on lush green grass, surrounded by the fiery oranges and blinding yellows of the leaves above and around us as the trees displayed their most prized artwork.

  Ember walked to my side of the car. A warm breeze with the epilogue of summer and prologue of winter wound its way through her hair, throwing her Autumn-hued hair across her face.

  “Our things arrived, right?” she asked as her eyes scanned the property with contented familiarity.

  I nodded, pulling her close to me. “I asked David to put them in the garage.”

  We didn’t have much that we went to California with, but what we did have aside from our instruments was warm-weather clothes. I chuckled as I felt goosebumps take over Ember’s shoulders. It was sixty degrees, which would have felt like a miracle two years ago.

  “We need to get our cold weather blood back,” I joked.

  “I know we’ve been back here since we moved, but how are you feeling to be back here?” Ember kissed my shoulder and wrapped her arms around her body.

  I smiled at her vocalization of my thought process only minutes before.

  “I’m back here with you, so that means things have gone well since the last time I lived here full time, I’d say.” I kissed the top of her head, leaving my lips there for a moment to take in the always fresh scent of her hair.

  “Let’s go in.” Ember tugged my hand and walked toward the stairs.

  Once we were on the porch, I stopped her hand as it reached for the doorknob.

  “What?” she questioned, pulling her hand back.

  I smiled, letting my eyes float from her gorgeous legs up to her eyes. “I never carried you over the threshold.”

  She rolled her eyes, but smiled all the way to her core. “We have been rather busy, haven’t we?”

  I pulled her to me, kissing her softly. “I suppose. Getting married in the woods and being on tour for the last year hasn’t left much room for tradition.”

  Ember’s face turned serious as her eyebrows angled inward. She forced a smile and looked at me in earnest. “Carry me into our house.”

  “As you wish, love.” I lifted her, reveling in the airy laughter that came from her throat.

  Having Ember to hold onto as we entered the home turned out to serve the dual purpose of tradition and transition. A swift wave of anxiety washed over me, but was gone before I had a chance to think about it.

  There was a part of me that would always be seventeen in this house. The part that wanted to crash through the front door, drop my football gear at the bottom of the stairs—which Rae always complained about because it smelled— and wander to the kitchen to rifle through the fridge while my parents made dinner. They always cooked together.

  While the seventeen-year-old me would feel that longing for as long as I lived, the me that fought to stay present would thank God every single day that this beautiful woman in my arms agreed to forge a new life with me here.

  “I love you,” Ember whispered, her lips grazing my ear as she spoke.

  “I love you.” I set her down, holding onto her hips for a moment as I took a deep breath. “Come upstairs. I have a surprise for you.”

  Ember pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek, the way she always did when she felt caught off guard.

  “You know,” she sighed. “I’d ask how you had time to create a surprise for me, since we’ve been together nearly every second of the last year and a half, but … this is you. I’ve got to learn to accept that you’re a magician of swoon.”

  I let out a loud laugh that started cracking the remnants of sorrow in the walls of the house. “Magician of what?”

  “Swoon.” She nodded once. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the word. You are swoon. It’s ridiculous. And, I love it.”

  She took off ahead of me, racing to the top of the stairs. Sometimes I let her get ahead of me so I could watch. I’m merely an animal, after all.

  I caught up to her and grasped her hand, leading her down the long hallway, lit only by the light coming from the widow’s watch at the top of the spiral staircase behind us. My heart stayed in my throat as we approached the door at the end of the hallway, bypassing my childhood bedroom, and Rae’s. My parents’ old room. I’d practiced saying old for several months, given they hadn’t spent a night there in over five years. Neither had anyone else. That was about to change.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and watched Ember stare straight-faced. There was no signal of expectation in her eyes, and I could tell by the way she bit the inside of her cheek that she was fighting some nerves.

  Without a word, I took a deep breath and opened the door, letting Ember step in first.

  She gasped, and then tried to hide it by clearing her throat. I stood behind her, watching her take in the room.

  “Bo,” she whispered. “What did you … when did you?” She brought her hand to her mouth and took a deep breath.

  I positioned myself next to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “I’ve been planning this for a few months, and had David send me pictures when it was completed last week.”

  For the past six
months, I’d worked with an old high school friend, who was in interior design, to transform my parents’ old bedroom into something new. Something beautiful. The room was rearranged to allow the bed to face the windows, which were on the East side of the room. Being able to watch the sunrise while I held her was one of my favorite things to do, and I wanted to be able to do it every day.

  I purchased a new bed, a large white four-poster affair with rails connecting the tops of the posts. Sheer cream-colored curtains were bunched on each of the corners, and could be pulled around us as we slept. The walls were covered with distressed white wood planks, which looked nearly identical to Ember’s old bedroom in Barnstable. When we’d first met, she talked about the serenity that room gave her, and I wanted to bring a piece of that with us.

  Ember walked gracefully to the bed, allowing her fingertips to skim the curtains before trailing the length of the white comforter. She tilted her head as she seemed to study the tiny pale yellow flowers printed on the blanket.

  A bright smile filled her face as she turned toward me. “You did this?”

  I nodded. “For us.”

  Ember paced over to the dresser I’d had painted a soft sage color, with lavender drawers. “These colors … this style…”

  I chuckled to myself. “I’ve heard you use the term shabby chic a lot. I went on that pin-up website you’re always on—”

  “Pinterest,” she mused.

  “Whatever. I went on that site, sent lots of pictures to my interior design friend, and … here we are.”

  Ember walked back over to the bed and crawled onto it, sitting on her knees. “‘What interior design friend?”

  “Tyler. We graduated together.”

  Ember’s eyes lifted to the ceiling as she seemed to be processing something. “You don’t mean Tyler M., do you?”

  As her eyes widened, so did mine. “Yes … why? How do you know him?”

  “How do I know him?” Ember shrieked as she jumped up and down on her knees. “He helped restore like eight historical houses on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard a couple of years ago. He’s a freaking genius! He’s the reason I fell in love with shabby chic! No wonder this room is so spot on!”