THE NEXT DAY I walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table opposite my dad.
“Can I talk to you guys?”
Mom and Dad both looked up at me—Dad’s eyes immediately narrowed, and Mom looked like she was ready to talk about the weather.
“Are you pregnant?” Dad asked suddenly, and I jerked back in my chair.
“What? No!”
“Now, I’ve been telling you to use protection,” Mom chimed in as she walked closer to us from the stove, and Dad’s mouth snapped shut as he turned to look at her.
“What? You’ve been what?” Dad looked back at me, and I watched as his face quickly turned red. “You’ve been—you and—that’s it! I don’t want you going over there anymore; if Jagger wants to see you, he can come here under my supervision.”
“Dad,” I groaned, and Mom clucked her tongue.
“Honey, don’t be absurd. This isn’t the 1800s.” After rolling her eyes at my dad, Mom turned back to me. “Now, Grey, I’ve told you countless times, and I’ve asked if you had protection. You could’ve talked to me and we could have prevented this.”
“Mom, I’m not—”
“Young lady, you are grounded.”
“Dad, I’m not—”
“How could you go and get pregnant?” he demanded.
“You’re pregnant!” Graham roared seconds before the front door slammed shut and he stormed into the kitchen. “Hell no. Where is he?”
“I’m not pregnant!” I yelled over everyone as Mom started trying to calm down Graham, and Dad started lecturing me. “And why are you even here?” I asked, looking up at Graham.
“I’m hungry and have no food in the house,” he said with a shrug as he walked toward the pantry.
“Graham, I was thinking about Melissa Davis. She’s such a lovely—”
“Mom, I’m not here to talk to you about which girls you think I should settle down with. Besides, we have bigger shit to talk about if Grey’s knocked up.”
“Oh my God, for the last time—” I started, but Dad turned his anger on Graham.
“We do not use that language in this house!”
“Since when?” Graham countered.
“Since right now! Too much sin happening here.”
“Please.” Graham snorted and sidestepped Mom when she walked up to him from the opposite side of the kitchen with a piece of paper in her hands. “Mom, I don’t want to know which girls you want me to date.”
“But they’re all so—”
“I’m moving in with Jagger!”
Everyone stopped and looked at me with wide eyes before they erupted again.
“Like hell you are!” Graham shouted, and waved off my mom as she tried to hand him the paper again.
“You are grounded! You are grounded twice over. You aren’t leaving your room until you’re forty.”
“Dad! I almost got married two years ago, you can’t act like this now!”
“But we weren’t going to let you move in with Ben before you got married,” Mom said calmly as she stuffed the piece of paper in Graham’s hand and moved away from him.
“You are not moving in with him, because you’re not married,” Dad continued, and I watched as Graham tore up the paper and threw it in the trash.
“Fine. Then we’ll elope.”
As if having two of them yelling their displeasure with the conversation wasn’t bad enough, having my mom join in on it had a headache from hell forming.
“I’m not going to elope with Jagger!” I said above their voices and waited for them to stop screaming at me and each other. “I was just trying to show you that I don’t really care what kinds of demands you make. I’m going to move in with Jagger one way or another. Dad, if you try to ground me, I’ll just leave anyway. Mom, stop bringing up the subject of using protection, and don’t worry, I wouldn’t get married without you there. And, Graham, just calm down. I love you all but I’m going to do this; this is what I want to do. I’m not wasting time anymore waiting for the right time for things. The right time isn’t set by any rules society makes; the right time is when you’re ready for it—whatever it may be. And right now is the right time for me to make up for all the lost time with Jag, and start my life with him. Okay?”
Everyone was silent for a minute as they continued to stare at me. Graham looked annoyed, Mom looked ridiculously happy, and Dad’s expression was unreadable until he opened his mouth again.
“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
“Mark,” Mom chastised.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, and got up from the table. “I’m not pregnant. End of that discussion. I really wanted this all to go differently—smoother. I wanted to just talk to you about my decision, but you all started freaking out and I had to stop you. Like I said, I love you. I just have to do this, okay?”
When no one answered, I walked out of the kitchen and took off for my room, where I’d already packed most of my things. Minutes after I got in there, Graham was walking in and plopping down on my bed.
“That was intense,” I mumbled as I packed.
“Yeah, well . . .” He trailed off and looked around my room. “Promise you’re not already married or pregnant and just don’t want to say anything?”
“Graham. I promise. I just want to be with him, that’s all. This wouldn’t be a huge to-do if you were moving in with some girl, but because I’m the youngest and the girl, it’s like all hell breaks loose.”
“Exactly.”
I stopped on my way back to one of my drawers and turned to look at him. “What do you mean ‘exactly’? That’s not fair to me. Why do the rules have to be different because I’m younger and female?”
“Because you’re still their baby or whatever.” Graham snorted as he lay back on my bed. “They want to keep you as long as they can. And girls are expected to be the ones who don’t do the stupid shit.”
“And moving out is considered stupid shit?” I asked in a monotone voice with one eyebrow raised.
“With a guy you’ve only been dating for a couple months? Yeah.”
“I’ve known him since I was six! We’ve been best friends since we were nine. Mom, Dad, and you all know him as well as you knew Ben—hell, you know him as well as you know me.”
Graham turned his head so he could give me a dry look. “Yeah, that’s not the point, though. Think about it this way: I move in with some girl I started seeing a month or two ago. Sound stupid?”
“Of course it does, because you’re with different girls all the time, and no one would expect you to actually want to stay with just her for any amount of time! And like I just said . . . I’ve known Jagger for sixteen years! You can’t compare that with you meeting some chick and deciding you wanted to see her for more than a week.”
“But what if I didn’t just meet her? What if I grew up with her too?”
I laughed and dropped my head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment. “Still can’t compare it. You haven’t touched Thatch girls in who knows how long because you, Deacon, and Knox went through all of them long ago. So to go through your whore-ish ways for all these years, and then decide you want to do what Mom’s been suggesting and actually settle down, and even more, if you decided to do it with a girl you hardly knew . . . well, it would seem stupid on both your parts. Even though I was with Ben all that time, I was never apart from Jagger. He’s been a constant most of my life.”
Graham’s eyes narrowed for a few seconds, but his mouth never opened.
“Come on,” I challenged. “Give me something else so I can shut you down again.”
With a heavy sigh, Graham lay back down. “That was all I had.”
“It was weak.”
“Hey, I had to try and I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot I could go off of. It’s not like any of us have anything bad to say about Jagger that I could’ve used. But I still say you shouldn’t move in with him.”
“Fine, I’ll move in with you. I’m sure Deacon and Knox will be happy,�
�� I offered, and Graham gave me a look like I’d just suggested the most disturbing thing imaginable.
“Fuck. No. Move in with Jagger!”
“If you insist,” I said in a singsong voice, and went back to packing.
“That was evil.”
“If you say so.”
Graham and I were silent for the next twenty minutes as I continued to pack, and he lay there still as stone. When I was done, I sat down on the bed next to him with an exhausted sigh and eyed all my packed things warily. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to moving all of it by myself, and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask Jagger to come help me when everyone was still in a mood over the fact that I was leaving.
“There has to be something wrong with him,” Graham mumbled, and I looked over my shoulder to give him a questioning look. “Jagger. There has to be something that isn’t perfect about him.”
I laughed awkwardly. “Uh . . .”
“He took care of you after Ben with no questions asked. He never said anything to you about the way he felt until you accidentally found out. He brought you back here. He’s there in a second when anything bad happens. He just seems too perfect. There has to be something.”
“You left out that he pretty much raised his sister.” Graham shot me a glare and I smiled back. “Jagger’s still Jagger,” I began, and turned so I could see Graham while I talked to him. “He’s not perfect; granted, he’s changed a lot in the last few years because of what happened to Ben, but he’s still the guy who always got us in trouble when we were growing up. He’s the reckless one, and the one who wants to have fun; but Ben changed all of us. And what happened made Jagger push the crazy side of himself back, and the protective side to the forefront. You can’t really use that against him, though.”
“No, I can’t,” Graham agreed. “I still say there has to be something.”
I groaned in annoyance and hit his arm. “If you want something on him, then you already know what it is. The best thing about him is also his biggest flaw. His need to protect everyone from everything is one of the things I love most, but also something that can drive me crazy because there are some things that are out of everyone’s control, and he’ll still try to take it all on himself.”
“Wonderful. Way to confirm his sainthood.”
“Don’t be a dick,” I said in a huff.
My mind instantly went to Jagger’s mom, and the guilt I’d been struggling with ever since I’d seen her came back to twist at my stomach. I’d told Jagger he couldn’t protect me from everything, and I was doing the exact same thing. Well, I was protecting him from one thing . . . one thing that—as the days passed—felt like it was consuming my world and mind.
“Hey, Graham, I have a question.”
His eyes drifted back to me, both eyebrows rising to show he was waiting.
“So, hypothetically—”
“Don’t start anything with that,” he said quickly, cutting me off.
“What?”
“When people start off a question with a hypothetical scenario, that just means it’s actually happening and they’re trying to act like it isn’t.”
“Well, maybe I’m trying to act like it isn’t,” I shot back, and he waved his hand out in front of him.
“Then continue.”
“Hypothetically, if you know that someone close to someone you’re close with is having trouble with some things in life—”
“I’m already confused,” Graham cut in, and I sighed heavily.
“I’m confusing myself too. Okay, let’s try this again. Let’s say that Knox’s older sister came to you because she was struggling. Like she lost her job, and her boyfriend stole absolutely everything from—”
“She’s gay.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. Well, fine, her girlfriend. And stop cutting me off! So her girlfriend stole everything from her and then took off. But you know that Knox hates her girlfriend and is always fighting with her. So his sister comes to you because she needs money, and she’s afraid if Knox finds out he’ll give up everything he has to help her or get himself thrown in prison by going after the ex-girlfriend.”
“Knox would never do anything to a girl, and he doesn’t have much to give up.”
“Graham!”
He sent me a teasing smile. “I’m kidding! I was just trying to piss you off. But he really wouldn’t do anything like that to a girl.”
“Anyway! So if all this happened, would you help her and keep it from Knox because you’d think he’d do exactly what she’s afraid of?”
Graham sat up and looked at me for a while like he was trying to figure out whether he should answer honestly, or go back to trying to find out what was really going on with the “hypothetical” situation. Then he exhaled heavily and shrugged. “I have no idea. If that shit actually happened to his sister, I’d tell him because he deserves to know.”
“What if this was kind of a repetitive thing for her? Like she always finds girlfriends that end up stealing from her and leaving her with nothing.”
“Then she’d deserve it because she’s too stupid to realize she deserves better than those type of girls. I wouldn’t give her money. You can feel sorry for a woman if she happens to get involved with an asshole. If she repeatedly gets involved with them, then it’s her fault.”
All the air slowly left my lungs and I sat there feeling even more confused, guilty, and somewhat defeated.
“Hypothetically . . .” Graham trailed off, the word sounding like a question.
I looked up and nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Knox loves his sister. We all do. Any one of us would probably go after someone who hurt her, but Knox would be uncontrollable. He was always beating up people who used the fact that she was gay against her—whether they wanted something out of it, or they were just being assholes and making fun of her. So hypothetically, if all that shit happened, I would help her out once . . . and, yeah, I’d probably even keep it from Knox. Only because I know how he is when it comes to her. But if she came to me a second time, I would tell Knox in a heartbeat. Not only because she would be practically welcoming the destruction her partners always brought on her, but also because at that point, he would definitely deserve to know what was going on with his sister.”
“Okay,” I said on a breath. “Thank you.”
He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Grey, who asked you for money?”
“It was a hypothetical situation.”
“Grey.”
“No one asked me, they asked a friend of mine.”
Graham gave me a disbelieving look and ground his teeth. “That’s just as much bullshit as saying it’s hypothetical.”
“Graham, I don’t even have money to give someone. I barely make a dollar over minimum wage at The Brew, and most of it goes toward paying off school loans. It was a friend of mine.”
He sat there for a minute without saying anything, the look on his face showing he was waiting for me to come clean. But I couldn’t do that. With an annoyed grunt, he leaned forward and kissed the top of my head. “I don’t believe you. Just don’t give them money again.”
“Graham . . .”
“Come on, I’ll help you move everything over to Jagger’s. Most of this can fit in my truck.”
My body stilled as my mind raced. It wasn’t exactly a town secret that Jagger’s mom couldn’t keep husbands or boyfriends, but she’d stopped being talked about in the town back when we first went to high school. I wondered if Graham was putting everything together and that’s why he wanted to help me . . . so he could talk to Jagger . . . but my mind and body eased when he turned and saw the look on my face.
“I’m not going to say anything to him about you moving in, I swear! I told you what I think, and you’re the only one I need to tell. It’s up to you if you tell him about the war you started in the kitchen.”
With a relieved smile, I accepted Graham’s hand to help me off the bed, and filled my arms with thi
ngs to take downstairs. “I appreciate it.”
Graham snorted as he walked out to the hall. “This would take you three trips in your car. We already got on you once about you moving out, I’m not going to force you to go through it another two times each time you come back here to get the rest of your shit.”
“Ah, well, if that’s the only reason you’re helping me . . .” I trailed off, and laughed at his confirming glance.
“Besides, I need to get out of here before Mom can—”
“Oh, Graham, there you are!” Mom called out from the entryway. “I thought you’d left. Okay, so if you don’t want to talk about Melissa Davis, what about—”
“Mom! No. No more trying to set me up.”
“But you need to settle down,” she argued as we walked outside.
I grinned at Graham. “Why do I feel like Mom’s never-ending list of girls is the real reason you’re helping me?”
Graham grumbled something incoherent and walked faster. “Shut up and let’s get this done before Mom calls one of the girls and invites her over.”
“That might be—”
“If you want my help, you won’t finish that sentence.”
I shut my lips tightly to silence my laugh, and nodded. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter 15
Jagger
September 10, 2014
I LOOKED TO the side when I felt Grey’s breathing deepen, and smiled when I saw her eyes were shut and her mouth was slightly open. Reaching over with the arm she wasn’t lying on, I brushed her hair away from her face and trailed my fingertips across her cheek, nose, and lips.
We’d been going all day. After sorting through everything of hers in the extra room yesterday, we figured out what we could put in the warehouse and what was going to go. We drove a few towns over to donate the things we didn’t need, and then went shopping for stuff for the warehouse. Stuff that I couldn’t care less about, but Grey was having fun decorating, and I loved that she was taking her move-in seriously and making it obvious the warehouse was ours instead of mine.
Letting Go Page 20