My heart collapsed, as somewhere down the hall, a door slammed.
Twenty
STORY
* * *
Hours later I was on the floor next to Grayson’s bed, but I wasn’t asleep, and I was pretty sure he was awake too. So I said the thing that had been haunting me.
“I’m sorry.”
So many minutes passed I thought he actually was asleep.
“You know there’s a reason why I haven’t given it up all these years,” he said, sounding annoyed.
“I figured it had something to do with the harem of girls who fucked you over…sorry. Again. For, you know, joining it.”
I heard what sounded like a laugh, and I bit my lower lip, gut pancaking at the sound.
“Lottie and I were grade school sweethearts, and when we were fourteen we were gonna lose it together,” he said.
I all but froze, holding my breath. Was Grayson Crowne actually opening up? To me?
“I came in my pants like a fucking…well, like a schoolboy.”
“She cared?” I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice.
“Nah. I was embarrassed. I was Grayson Crowne, and I was supposed to be perfect. The next day I expected my shit to be all over the halls, but she just…kept it to herself. She didn’t have to be threatened or bribed. I pushed Lottie away, which was dumb, and after her, it was a revolving door of chicks who wanted my name, not me. You already know what happened with most of them. I got off other ways, got them off other ways. Once the first person lied about sleeping with me, others did it. Who wants to admit that they only got Grayson Crowne to eat them out? I got close a lot of times—” Suddenly he stopped. Only a few seconds later I knew why.
“Every time I’m with you, I tell you more than I have anyone my entire fucking life.” He sounded so mad. Pissed at me. At himself.
But my heart thumped.
Even Lottie? I wondered a question I had no right to ask.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, throat scratchy. “We’re just connected by a secret I was never supposed to know.”
I hated the silence. I couldn’t see what he was feeling up on his bed. At least when he spoke, I could discern by his voice. He had the most telling voice, even though he tried to hide it through layers and layers of impassivity.
“I’m sorry I stole your happily ever after, Grayson.”
Lottie and Grayson had a love story a decade in the making, and I had come along and thrown a massive wrench into it. Where she gave him lollipops to make his childhood sweeter, I was its bitter aftertaste.
I heard the blankets shift, the bed creak, and when I looked up, Grayson was on his knees before me. Some emotion burned and cracked in his eyes. But before I could wonder, he pulled me into a hug.
GRAY
* * *
Story was stiff in my arms.
Then slowly, hesitantly, she snaked her arms around my waist. Her grasp was small and tender, hands warm.
It was just a hug. It meant nothing.
Friends hugged. So what if my friends don’t hug? If my mother would recoil at the thought, if my grandfather would call me a pussy?
Normal people hugged.