Fly away blonde hairs from Gracie’s messy ponytail brush my chin every time the tall white fan does another lap around the room. I’m watching the steady rise and fall of her chest as she lays beside me, head tucked where my neck and shoulder meet, bare leg tangled with mine. Her arm stretches across my torso and then she’s asleep, so exhausted from this week to bother attempting to stay awake. She’s breathing much calmer now, not so ragged and forced. I’m grateful. I was beginning to think that I would have to take her back to the hospital for her own health this time.
The movie playing in front of us has been long forgotten. The fan makes a loud humming noise that makes it near impossible to hear a word that’s being said anyway. My eyes haven’t moved from Gracie for about an hour now. Her eyelids are puffy and swollen, her button nose resembles Rudolphs, and her fingers haven’t released their python-like grip on my bicep since I made her crawl into bed with me. She looks like a beautiful disaster. But for some ungodly reason, she’s my beautiful disaster.
I’m worried about her. Anne is sick. Not in the easy sense of the word either, if there was one. But really sick. Sick enough that I know Oakley won’t be leaving her side again but will insist Gracie stay home, and sick enough that Gracie will tell him to shove it up his ass. But Oakley will have already known that, and I’ll be the one driving Gracie to the hospital every damn day just to make sure she gets there okay.
Anne is their everything. She always has been. They love her with a ferocity that used to intimate me beyond belief. It was too confusing to understand as a kid who grew up taking care of himself before he knew how to and with no parents who actually gave enough of shit to teach him.
It wasn’t until the fifth time I was invited over for one of Anne’s phenomenal home cooked meals that I began to feel the warmth behind their ‘hello’s,’ the concern behind every frown, and the happiness it brought Anne to serve her kids like it was her sole purpose in life. Hell, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. But I admire it more than I am confused or intimated, and I suppose that’s how I know Gracie will survive this.
Their intense, unrequited love stretches far beyond this cruel, selfish world. It’s so deeply ingrained in that family, beaten into them with soft words and warm hugs, homemade chicken noodle soup on cold days and random phone calls twice a week just to catch up. A love like theirs doesn’t just die with someone. It stays forever, lingering in the nipping wind and chirping with the birds.
A long, shuttered breath fans across my chest when Gracie’s grip on me tightens, turning the skin of my bicep white under her fingertips. My brow arches and I watch with a growing smile as she pulls herself closer, turning me into her own personal body pillow.
If only Braden could see me now. He’d laugh in my face and call me a pussy for letting myself get wrapped up in the hurricane that is Gracie Hutton and for letting myself fall for her. I wouldn’t want to agree with him; I’ve always hated allowing people to see my weak spots. But he’d be right and I hate lying even more. It’s still such an odd concept to me—caring for someone so intensely that your stomach bounces around, picking fights and throwing rough punches at the rest of your organs whenever you so much as lay eyes on them. I would do anything for Gracie, even lock myself in a glass box full of Anaconda’s if it made her lips so much as twitch upward. That fact scares the shit out of me.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’
I swallow past the boulder in my throat and peer down at a now semi-conscious Gracie. Her eyelashes flutter as she struggles to keep her eyes open and lets out a squeaky yawn.
‘Go back to sleep, Gray,’ I mumble and rub the dip in her back. She shakes her head in response and lazily drags her leg along mine.
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘You,’ I answer honestly. There’s no point in lying. She’d call me out on it instantly.
‘Me?’ Her eyes close again, and warm lips meet the underside of my jaw. ‘Good or bad?’
I can hear the sleep coating her soft whispers and nod once, letting my own eyelids slide shut. I find myself focusing on the steady rise and fall of her chest against my side and barely manage to mumble a response before falling asleep beside her. ‘Good, baby. Always good.’
My eyes open with an unforgiving burn as the phone on my nightstand vibrates. There’s still no light attempting to peek through my curtains, so I must not have been asleep very long. I tighten my jaw and swipe the fucker away from the hard surface. I grunt, relieved as the room is swallowed in silence again.
‘What?’ I hiss into the speaker, voice heavy with exhaustion. I can barely make out Gracie’s silhouette in the dark, but from the fact she hasn’t moved, the call must not have woken her.
‘Have you told her yet?’ Jessica’s nagging, high-pitched voice makes me kiss my teeth. I carefully slide from the bed and open the door just enough for my broad torso to push through the doorway. I shut it with a soft click.
I should have looked at the damn caller ID.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ I head barefoot to the kitchen and slip on the light before tossing myself into a dining chair with a soft thud.
‘Do I sound like I’m kidding?’ Jessica retorts, annoyance thick in her words.
‘No, but you do sound fucking nuts. I’m not telling her something like that right now. Her mom is in the goddamn hospital, Jessica.’ I spit her name through the phone with the hope that she’ll hang up out of anger. She doesn’t.
I can almost hear her eyes roll when she sighs dramatically into her phone. Jessica has always been overly dramatic. It’s driven me fucking nuts since the moment Gracie introduced her to everyone a two years ago.
I was sitting at one of the large, teal booths at Lucy’s, my ears burning from listening to Oakley drone on and on about the cost of new skates—as if he hadn’t just signed a three million dollar starter contract with the Seattle Seals– when the two girls walked in. One seventeen and the other twenty, they were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and reeked of naivety. Gracie thought she had found the best friend she hadn’t had growing up–an older sister of sorts– and even I was happy for her. But what none of us were expecting was for the older girl Gracie was so proud to have befriended to turn out to be a venomous serpent disguised as a five-foot-nothing, sapphire-eyed girl with a habit of touching things that don’t belong to her.
I’ve always known that sticking my dick in crazy was a bad idea. Still, twenty-two-year old, drunk Tyler didn’t give a shit about consequences that night, and now sober Tyler has to deal with those mistakes. As awful as they may be.
‘She’ll be fine.’
My pulse picks up and thumps against my throat. I shut my eyes and my teeth make an unnerving sound when they grind together. ‘We both know that you don’t want her to be fine. You want her to leave me so I’ll come running to you and it won’t happen. So in the worst way possible, Jessica, fuck off.’
I don’t give her a chance to reply before I hang up and toss my phone on the table, moving a hand up to yank my hair out of sheer frustration before I stiffen. I hear ragged, shuddered breaths coming from the entrance to the kitchen and I turn to see Gracie leaning on her left foot. My black comforter is wrapped around her figure and she has unshed tears in her eyes. She looks at me with a slightly jutted bottom lip and a crease above her brows. If betrayal had an expression, she would be wearing it right now.
Fuck.
Gracie
I shoot up in bed with a sheen of sweat coating my entire body. I place a hand on my chest and attempt to focus on steadying my racing heart. The nightmares haven’t left me alone since I left the hospital, my fear of losing Mom clutching them in a strong fist, keeping them locked inside my head. My cheeks are damp, and when I lift my hand to wipe away the sweat on them, I find fresh tears and the lines they left behind instead.
I’m eager to check my phone to see if Oakley has texted me to give me an update on Ma, but an unnerving feeling of worry keeps me from reaching over and looking. I’m too terrified of what I might see.
As soon as I left the hospital, I knew I shouldn’t have. Yeah, Oakley and I have already lost one parent, but it hit him differently than it did me. I barely had a chance to know what it felt like to have more than one parent. To have a dad. Oakley felt the loss of Dad deeper. It changed him. And I’m terrified of what losing Mom will do to him. I guess he’s older now and has seen more of the darkness the world holds, but losing someone you love never gets any easier, and our mom is everything to the both of us. We would be lost without her.
The doctors say that we should keep a middle ground and not get our hopes up to high or too low either. There’s a chance they can kill the infection and that Mom will be able to recover. But it’s not looking good. I can tell by the way her smile doesn’t make it to her eyes anymore, and her eyes—the ones she gave me—are dull, the once subtle hint of grey now washing away the ocean blue that I love so much. Her hugs are weak too. The strong medication sucks her strength faster than the infection itself. I want to comfort her, to heal her. And knowing that I can’t is killing me a bit more every day that my hands remain tied behind my back.
Reaching to the side of the bed, I prepare myself to feel Tyler’s warm body but instead feel the spot beside me cold, with only a hint of his warmth left radiating there. Knowing that he couldn’t have been up for long, I swing my legs out of bed, snatch the comforter and wrap it around me before opening the bedroom door. Tyler’s strong voice flows from the kitchen and I tighten my grip on the blanket before heading towards him. I can tell that he’s on the phone but by the harsh words being spit towards the person on the receiving end, I know he doesn’t want to be.
“We both know that you don’t want Gracie to be fine. You want her to leave me so I’ll come running to you and it won’t happen. So in the worst way possible, Jessica, fuck off.”
My face drains of colour and my breath catches halfway up my throat. My airway has become so small that it hurts to breathe. My legs itch to move, but I don’t. I can’t. I stand frozen in the dark of the hallway, staring with wide eyes as Tyler reaches into his dark hair and yanks on the strands that have been stuck up from how he slept.
I can’t hear anything over the pulsing in my eardrums and when he notices that I’m there he lifts his head. Tyler watches me with wide eyes the colour of coffee grounds for a few raced heartbeats. Then he pushes off the chair and steps towards me. I can see his lips moving, what looks like my name forming on them, but I just shake my head and lift my hands in front of me, silencing him.
There are only a handful of reasons why Jessica should be calling Tyler. None of them involve me leaving him. None. The brutally quick realization of what’s going on has the fracture in my heart spreading through whatever parts of it were left untouched by the events of the past few days. My throat keeps tightening to the point I’m not sure how I’m still managing to breathe as I gulp for air, desperate to fill my burning lungs.
“What’s going on? What won’t you tell me?” I croak. I don’t know why I bother asking, although I’m sure it’s because a big chunk of me hopes this is just a big misunderstanding. My eyesight is blurring from another round of unwanted tears waiting to be shed. I blink them back this time. I refuse to cry over this.
“Gray, baby. Calm down,” Tyler begs in a hushed voice. He reaches where I stand and places his hands on my shoulders in an attempt to pull me to his chest. His grip tightens, but I keep my arms by my side and chew on my quivering lip.
“You slept with her.” It isn’t a question because I already know the answer. Every petty dig, all of the unsupportive pieces of advice and angry looks make sense now. Jessica was jealous. She was jealous because she wanted what I had—what she already had. I push at his chest and step away from him when I feel vomit burn my throat.
“It was way before we ever—”
“Before or after Mexico?” I meet his desperate gaze and shudder at the deep-rooted regret looking back at me. I don’t know what I want to accomplish from asking him that. I don’t even know which answer I’m hoping for. Either way the result is still the same. Tyler slept with my best friend. My best friend slept with Tyler. They slept together knowing how I felt.
They both knew.
They both didn’t care.
“Before,” he replies without hesitation, as if sleeping with her before somehow makes it better–makes it hurt less. Maybe it would have been better had he not known about my crush on him since the moment he met me. But he knew. Jessica knew. Everybody knew. They just decided to do it anyway. Damn me and my feelings, right?
Tyler drags a frantic hand through his air and pulls. “Fuck, I never knew that I would feel this way about you back then. If I did, I wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of Jessica. Shit, Gracie. I know it’s not an excuse, but I was so drunk off my ass when it happened and as soon as I sobered up I knew it wouldn’t happen again. She has never, and will never mean anything to me.”
I offer him a simple nod in response but avert my eyes and play with the frayed edge of the blanket still wrapped around my shoulders. I do believe what he’s saying. He didn’t owe me anything back then. He had every right to sleep with whoever he wanted. But it feels like such a cruel twist of fate that it happened to be with her.
“Of any girl, it had to be her?” I ask, but don’t give him a chance to answer before I speak again. “I spent years pining after you, Tyler. I didn’t expect anything when we first met. I wasn’t looking to send you to jail for fucking a minor that was wasting her time with a different guy that she didn’t love. But after all of the time we spent together in Mexico, I thought you finally felt the same way that I did. But then we got back and you disregarded me like I was nothing. Again.”
He flinches. I stand up straighter. “Can I jus—”
“You told me you weren’t in the right place to give me what I deserved and I respected that even though it made me feel awful. Even after two years, I was still willing to wait for you. I’m not hurt that you didn’t think of me as anything but Oakley’s little sister when you fucked around with other girls. I’m hurt that you could have slept with anyone, but you chose to sleep with my best friend knowing full well how I felt about you. You didn’t respect me the same way that I respected you and that fucking hurts, Tyler.”
I exhale and let my shoulders sag. My head drops forward as I stare at my toes. Tyler swallows so loudly I can hear it, but I don’t look at him. I keep my head down, grip the blanket until my fingers turn white and walk to the bathroom as fast as possible, desperate to get out of the situation I literally walked into.
