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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  Cover design and illustration by Vi-An Nguyen.

  Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Forever

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

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  twitter.com/readforeverpub

  First Edition: June 2021

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-3552-7 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-3550-3 (ebook)

  E3-20210427-DA-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Also by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  Reading Group Guide Author Essay

  Discussion Questions

  For my wife, Fay.

  You are my happily-ever-after.

  Acknowledgments

  At this point in a career, there are more people to thank than could ever fit on an acknowledgments page. What a blessing to have been supported, educated, inspired, and entertained by so many wonderful people. But let me see if I can list just a few.

  First, thank you to my readers. Thank you to those folks I will never meet and thank you to everyone who has joined my newsletter, hung out on social media, chatted at conferences, and written to me with your thoughts and comments. You are the reason I write, which means you have given me one of the great joys of my life. Thank you.

  Thank you to my friends and colleagues at Linn-Benton Community College, especially Scott, Liz, and everyone in the English department. You have made my work life more joyful than anyone can reasonably expect.

  Thank you to my writing partners, Alison Clement and Susan Rodgers, for your insights and support and for never being annoyed when I changed my main characters’ names. And thanks to Bill at Interzone, the coolest coffee shop ever. May the shop serve coffee for decades to come.

  Thank you to my editor, Madeleine Colavita. This book would have been a train wreck without you. And thank you to everyone at Forever. Thank you also to my agent, Jane Dystel, who has been with me throughout my publishing career, and to everyone at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

  Thank you to the folks at the sex toy stores She Bop and As You Like It. (Don’t forget, folks: these fabulous stores ship!) Thank you to Jessie Fresh for talking to me about pleasure education and for giving the Mind Melting Erotic Spanking class that inspired my story at the Mystery Box Show. Thank you to Reba Sparrow and Eric Scheur of the Mystery Box Show for creating a place for sexual truth-telling. (Watch the Mystery Box Show at www.mysteryboxshow.com.) Thank you to my hairdresser at Dial H for Hair, Irene Gutierrez, for listening to me talk about my work and for always having insights and interesting videos. Also great haircuts. Thank you for the great haircuts.

  Thank you to my students, especially my creative writing students in the Golden Crown Literary Society Writing Academy, for reminding me what a privilege it is to be a writer and how important it is to support each other.

  Thank you to the queer community. I love your strength, your perseverance, your openheartedness, the way you approach challenge with joy.

  And the biggest thank-yous of all…

  Thank you to my parents for instilling in me the love of reading, for supporting my dreams, for modeling a loving marriage, and for so, so much more.

  And thank you to my wife, Fay. Every day with you is proof that happily ever after really does exist and it is as glorious as all the romance novels promise.

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  Chapter 1

  Cade Elgin sat in the first pew at Whole Heart Departures Funeral Home feeling out of place because she was the only person in the room not wearing gold lamé. She wore a dark suit. Dry clean only. Expensive. Boring—at least to this crowd. Her father sat beside her in a gold-lined tweed coat and a gold bow tie. Her mother wore a gold dress. Around them, the crowd of friends and relatives passed flasks of whiskey. Cade recognized a few cousins. Before them, on a low dais, Aunt Ruth’s urn sat on a pedestal surrounded by white lilies. Cade had ordered lilies because lilies were appropriate. She’d googled it.

  A man in a gold bowler hat came by and shook her parents’ hands. “Roger. Pepper. Such an honor to meet you.”

  Her parents greeted him like an old friend, which he would be by the end of the Elgins’ stay. Her parents always made friends. A woman in the row behind them tapped Cade’s mother on the shoulder and offered her a joint. Pepper accepted with a bow.

  “Did you grow this yourself?” she asked as she exhaled.

  The woman had.

  Cade stared at the urn. She should have visited Ruth. She should have gotten over her I-don’t-want-to-go-to-a-nude-beach-and-smoke-pot-with-you thing and just been a good niece and visited. How hard would that have been?

  Okay, kind of hard.

  The chapel organ rumbled to life. Cade recognized the melody: The Cure’s “Lovesong.” It was followed by Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” and then Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk,” which did not want to be played on an electric organ. How many pop songs did the organist know? She waited.

  “Be careful,” Cade’s mother whispered as a jar passed down their pew. “The edibles are powerful.”

  “I am not going to get high at my aunt’s funeral,” Cade said.

  “Well if you do, start with one.” Her mother shook a few jellies out of the jar.

  “Thank you f
or the motherly advice,” Cade said.

  Her mother patted her on the knee. “It’s okay to have a little fun, sweetie.”

  But not at my aunt’s funeral.

  Thankfully, “Uptown Funk” was the last song. The chaplain at Whole Heart Departures welcomed the guests. He’d known Ruth. She was the embodiment of love. After that, a woman lit incense and offered a call-and-response incantation to the Spirit of the Universe. Two drag queens wrapped a feather boa around the urn. Then there was a lull, as though something was supposed to happen and hadn’t. The crowd murmured. On the other side of the aisle from Cade, a woman with short blue hair and a gold tailcoat nudged the friend sitting next to her.

  “Selena, it’s you now,” Tailcoat said.

  The friend clutched a sheet of paper.

  Cade heard her whisper, “I can’t.”

  “You can,” her friend said. “This is for Ruth.”

  “I’ll fuck it up.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Come on.” Tailcoat stood up and held her hand out to her friend. To the crowd, she said, “This is Selena Mathis, and she’d like to say a few words about Ruth, but she’s nervous.”

  The crowd encouraged her.

  “Speak from the heart, Selena.”

  “We love you, Selena.”

  Tailcoat led her friend to the dais and left her there. The woman, Selena, looked out at the crowd. She was gorgeous. Huge, dark eyes. Curly black hair was piled on top of her head and secured with jeweled pins. She had great curves too, the kind of curves a person shouldn’t bring to a funeral, not in skintight pleather pants.

  Everything about her outfit said, Look at me.

  Everything else about her posture said, I’m going to pass out.

  “There are no mistakes when you speak from the heart,” someone called out.

  “I remember,” Selena began, her voice trembling, “when Ruth told me she’d named her clitoris Belinda.”

  There were eulogy mistakes. This was one of them.

  “To Belinda!” someone said.

  “I remember when Ruth decided to turn her backyard into a bird habitat,” Selena went on. “All those finches.” Her hands were shaking. “Ruth was so many things.” She looked at her notes. “She was a gardener, a mentor, a businesswoman. She taught people that nudism isn’t about sex. It’s about accepting the sunlight. And she was like a mother to me.” Selena wiped her eyes, making smeared mascara look stylish.

  It seemed like a good place to end the speech. Selena clearly wanted to be anywhere else, but she went on.

  And on.

  And on.

  Ruth’s theories on pruning wisteria. Teacups. Tampons versus the cup. Cade felt like Selena kept looking at her with a help me expression. Cade’s mother believed in telepathy. Maybe it could work. Stop now, Cade willed. Amen. You’re done. But the woman had started a eulogy with the deceased’s clitoris, and telepathy didn’t save her.

  Finally, Tailcoat rose, stopped Selena midsentence, gave her friend a hug, and said, “Let’s go get drunk.”

  The organist hit the first notes of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

  Cade’s parents took their place at the front of the greeting line. Cade walked over to the urn. She wished there’d been a bit of solemnity, a moment of silence to gather her feelings. She looked at the urn wrapped in feathers. So small.

  I know you’re dead now.

  That was a little obvious.

  I’m sorry I wasn’t the best niece.

  A man sidled up to her.

  “You’re Roger Elgin’s daughter,” he whispered. “I know this isn’t the time, but I admire your father’s gallery so much…If you’re in Portland, I’d love to show you some paintings I’ve—”

  “I’m at my aunt’s funeral,” Cade said.

  Yes, she worked 24/7, but come on. Networking in front of the urn? Cade turned away.

  I’m sorry, Ruth. I couldn’t leave the gallery. If I took a vacation…my parents…they’d turn it into a commune. I know. You think that’d be cool. I should have come for a weekend.

  A woman in a gold cape approached her.

  “Ms. Elgin,” she said in a way that would certainly lead to I’d like to show you my granddaughter’s work.

  “I’m praying,” Cade said.

  Not quite true but whatever.

  I wish you hadn’t had cancer. I know you would have liked to be struck by lightning or exploded in a volcano. Go out big. Like an Elgin.

  She felt yet another person at her elbow and turned with a sigh. It was Selena, now wearing a purple fake-fur coat, still clutching the piece of paper that was too small to contain her epically inappropriate eulogy. Before Cade could say, What do you want? Selena said, “Do you mind if I stand over there?” She pointed to a place about ten feet away. “I want to talk to her, but I don’t want to bother you.”

  That was sweet.

  “You can stand here.” Cade indicated a place beside her. Prime urn-talking real estate.

  “You sure?”

  Selena stepped forward, pressing the piece of paper between her hands and raising them to her chest in prayer.

  “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”—Selena’s voice was almost inaudible—“I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

  She’d memorized more Bible than Cade had ever read. Surprising coming from a woman showing that much cleavage at a funeral. And where was this solemnity when Selena had been eulogizing? It was touching, though, that a woman wearing tight pleather knew that much scripture. People probably never guessed that about her.

  Selena finished with the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Thank you,” Cade said. “That was lovely.”

  Selena smiled at her shyly. “It’s from the heart.”

  Then Selena walked up to the urn, tested the lid like she was trying to open a jar, wrapped her arms around it, and took it off the pedestal.

  No. No. No. The urn stays there.

  “When you’re done…” Selena said, her voice full of prayerful reverence, “my friend Becket made pot brownies. We’d love it if you’d sit at our table and have one. We have absinthe too, but not the kind that makes you hallucinate. Sorry.”

  And that was an Elgin funeral.

  Chapter 2

  Selena cradled Ruth’s urn in her arms as she headed to Becket’s table. She was glad nothing inside rattled. Rattling would be creepy. Nothing about this moment should be creepy. Ruth had wanted a joyful celebration of her life. No one should be thinking about bits of femur.

  Selena’s friends sat at a table beside a mossy shrine: her best friend Becket, Beautiful Adrien (who’d earned that nickname by looking like a cross between a runway model and Jesus), and Zenobious, distiller of the absinthe. Everyone was dressed in the finest outfits Becket’s burlesque troupe, Fierce Lovely, could supply. Selena took her seat and set Ruth in the center of the table.

  They all turned to her. Everyone liked Ruth, but Ruth was Selena’s person.

  “How you doing?” Becket put a hand on Selena’s shoulder.

  Heartbroken. Lost. Hopeless.

  Ruth’s last request had been that no one cry at the funeral. Don’t act like this is the end. It felt like the end. And Selena felt like she was going to fly into a million pieces. Burst into tears. Fuck a stranger against the wall of the nearest alley—provided they discussed consent and proper protection; Selena was still a sex educator, even if her life was a mess. She took another deep breath.

  “Why did you let me give that speech?” Selena asked. It was easier to think about the speech than the fact that Ruth would never sunbathe in the backyard or snip another bouquet of wisteria.

  “You went off on that eulogy.” Becket looked like a sprite with her gold tailcoat and shock of blue hair. “You kicked that eulogy’s ass.”

  “Dude, yeah,” Zenobious said, his man-bun bouncing adamantly. “You were like, Fuck you, high school speech class. I can talk for
as long as I want!”

  “I don’t even remember what I said.”

  “You said a lot,” Becket said.

  “And every word of it was gorgeous,” Beautiful Adrien added.

  “I remember when we picked names. She picked Belinda. I picked Artemisia. Was it okay to talk about Ruth’s clit?”

  She and Ruth had talked about everything, but maybe there was a time and place…

  “Your speech was fuckin’ beautiful,” Becket said. “Ruth deserved more than some dearly-beloved-she-was-a-good-person bullshit. You felt like you needed to talk about her clit, and you talked about her clit.”

  “You don’t think it was too much?”

  Her friends looked at one another. It was too much.

  “What am I going to do?” Selena said.

  Someone had sprinkled foil hearts on the table. They stuck to everyone. Becket picked one off Selena’s arm.

  “God, there are so many casseroles at the house,” Selena added. “I don’t know what to do with them. It was so nice of everyone. Someone brought poke, but you don’t want raw fish when someone’s dying.”

  Her friends nodded sympathetically.

  “I’ll help you clean Ruth’s house,” Becket said.

  They were quiet for a minute.

  “I asked Cadence Elgin to sit with us.” Selena scanned the room.

  She hoped Cadence would come over. There was something comforting about Cadence’s seriousness. Ruth had wanted gold, so they wore gold. But back in Selena’s hometown everyone worn black to funerals, and it meant this is serious and we care.

  “When were you talking to Cadence Elgin?” Becket took a sip from her Solo cup and passed it to Selena.

  Zenobious’s absinthe was terrible, but they all supported his dream.

  “At the altar.”

  “Are you going to talk to her about your paintings?” Becket asked.

  “When we were at McLaughlin, we would have killed to meet Roger Elgin,” Beautiful Adrien added. “I still would, but I’m not going to push my portfolio at him at his sister’s funeral, but I’d push yours.”

  “Me too,” Becket said.

  “I don’t have a portfolio,” Selena said.