by Megyn Ward
“And you told her to lie to me about it?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I never told her to lie about it—but I knew she wasn’t telling you.”
“How?” Her voice rises, her tone sharpens because she doesn’t believe me. “If you didn’t tell her to lie about it then how did you know that—”
“Because this never happened.” I don’t shout but my own tone is heavy enough to shut her up. “Because you didn’t show up on my doorstep or at the community center to get in my face and tell me to stay away from her. Because she kept showing up and I knew that if you knew she was spending time with me, you would’ve put an end to it.”
For a second, all she does is stare at me, like I told her that Molly and I have been sticking up liquor stores and gas stations together. Finally, her shoulders sag and she shakes her head at me. “What? What makes you think you have the right to waltz up to my door after five months of nothing and just hey, Grace your way back into our—”
“You broke it off, Gr—” I swallow the rest of it, have to set my jaw and force her name back down my throat. “You. You did that—” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Remember who this is. That she has a right to be angry. That she’s smart not to trust me. That I have a brief but decidedly storied past of being a selfish asshole when it comes to her. “And you were right to.”
As soon as I say it, Grace jerks back in her seat like I took a swing at her, her mouth dropping open again in what looks like shock and I have to look away from her because this is not how I saw this conversation going. To be honest, I never really let myself think about it at all.
Lifting a hand from my lap, I unclench my fist to swipe it across my jaw. “You were right to end it—it needed to happen. What was going on wasn’t good for either of us, and I—” I can feel my Adam’s apple start to bob and scrape along the line of my throat because I don’t want to say this. I don’t want to say any of it, but I have to. Need to, if I’m going to have any sort of chance with her. “I didn’t care. I was hurting you and I didn’t care. I’m sorry about that. You deserved better.” Something flickers across her face when I say it—either regret or relief, it’s gone too soon for me to tell. Finally, she turns away from me to pluck her car keys from the ignition and palms them before calmly unlatching her seatbelt. Free, she turns in her seat and looks at me.
“From now on, if you want to spend time with Molly, you ask me first—understood?”
I swallow hard against the lump in my throat and nod my head. “Understood.”
“Good.” She pops her car door open and hops out, slamming it close a little harder than necessary. A few seconds later, she has the rear hatch open and she’s retrieving her backpack.
Scrambling out of my seat, I reach the rear of the car just as she slams that closed too.
“I’m late for class,” she says, shouldering her backpack while giving me little more than a passing glance. “I’ll see you around.”
Before I can say a word, she’s gone, walking across the parking lot toward the building without so much as a backward glance.
Twenty-three
Grace
I enjoy approximately twenty minutes of righteous indignation before I realize what a colossal bitch I was to Ryan. Twenty minutes to savor the memory of him standing next to my car in the parking lot, looking angry and contrite, while I rode away on my high horse before I came to the sudden and unwelcome conclusion that I have nothing to be angry about.
Certainly not when it comes to Ryan.
Because he’s right. I was the one who broke things off. I’m the one who tapped out. Told him that what was happening between us was unfair to me and that I didn’t want to do it anymore.
But I’m angry just the same. Probably because he let me do it. Let me walk away. Didn’t chase me down and drag me back under. Heard what I had to say and had the audacity to respect my decision.
He did exactly what I asked him to do.
He let me go.
Instead of being angry at him I should be… what? Grateful? Relieved?
I am none of those things.
What I am is confused and apprehensive because when I exit the building that houses my 10AM medical ethics class, Ryan is sitting on a bench directly outside door, waiting for me. It reminds me that last time we were here together. The way he sat on a bench and waited for me on the sidewalk while I took my entrance exam nearly six months ago.
The day he kissed me.
The day he took me back to his room at Sojourn and pushed me against the door to his room. Pulled my pants down and—
“Excuse me.”
As soon as it’s said, in an exasperated tone that’s practically in my ear, I’m jostled to the side and I realize I’ve been standing in the middle of the walkway, staring at Ryan like he has two heads and six arms for the last thirty seconds.
Smooth, Grace.
Real smooth.
Squaring my shoulders, I dodge foot traffic to cross the sidewalk to where he’s sitting. Next to him on the bench is a tall, white to-go cup with my name scrawled across it in black sharpie and a pastry bag, both from my favorite coffee cart. “What are you doing here?”
Did I say smooth?
I meant super smooth.
“Waiting for you,” he tells me, a slight scowl settling between his dark brows when he catches my tone.
“I thought you said you didn’t need a ride home,” I counter eyeing the pastry bag and coffee like they might be a trap.
“I don’t, I just—” He shakes his head, the scowl marring his face smoothing out into something else. Something sad that tightens my throat and makes me feel like an asshole. “Will you please sit down? People are starting to stare.”
A quick look around tells me he’s right. People are looking at us. Some are whispering. Because I don’t like to be the center of attention any more than he does, I sit on the bench next to him, letting my backpack slide off my shoulder and onto the ground between my feet. “What’s all this?” I say, jogging my head toward the cup and the bag between us like I’ve never seen a coffee cup in my life.
“Uhhh…” He looks down like he’s just as lost as I am. “It is a large, double mocha latte, no whip and three vanilla bean scones.”
Because it’s my order exactly and because I have no idea how he would know that, I sit here and stare at him some more, trying to piece it all together. “Why?” I shake my head in confusion. “I mean how—”
“I asked around and everyone said the coffee cart near admissions was the best on-campus and since you don’t seem like a woman who screws around with sub-par coffee, I figured that’s where you’d go.” He lifts a hand to reaches past the collar of his coat to rub a hand over the back of his neck. “From there, I took a shot and asked if there was a pretty blonde nursing student named Grace who stops by on Fridays and if there is, what her order was.” Dropping his hand, he gives me a sheepish grin. A real one. Nothing flat or odd about it. Seeing it, feeling it aimed right at me, takes my breath away. “The latte is a thank you—for the ride.” The grin on his face loses some of its shine, his mouth twisting into something more uncertain. “The scones are an apology for everything else.” When all I do is stare at him in response, the smile re-anchors itself on his face and he stands. “That’s it. That’s all I wanted. Just to say thank you and I’m sorry.” He lifts his hand in a half-hearted wave. “I’ll see you around, Jimmy,” he says tilting his head, an instant before he turns away from the bench and me.
“You can’t just leave.” I blurt it out, the words tumbling out of my mouth, fast and frantic, trying to stop him before he disappears on me again, and it works. Ryan stops in his tracks, but his back is still turned like he’s trying to decide if she should just keep walking. “I am made of questions, right now, Ryan O’Connell.”
When he turns around to look at me, he’s not smiling anymore because now it’s his turn to look at me like I’m seconds away from springing some sort of trap. “What do
you want to know?”
I want to know if you still dream about me.
I want to know if you think about that night and wish things and gone differently.
Looking away from him so I don’t say it out loud, I pluck the pastry bag off the bench and unroll its top. “Well, for starters,” I say, reaching into the bag and pulling out a scone. “I’d like you to sit back down and share these scones with me.” I don’t have time for this. I’m supposed to pick my parents up from the airport in forty-five minutes. After that, I’m supposed to take my mom to Anton’s so she can try on the dress Cari had made for her for the wedding, and somewhere in between, I have to pick Molly up from Mary’s after school, feed her dinner, study for an hour and then get ready for my shift at Gilroy’s. But this is Ryan. He’s here and I know if I let him go again, I’ll regret it. “And then I’d like to know what you’re doing here.” Holding out the bag, I give it a little shake and wait.
Hold my breath.
Hope.
That’s what Ryan does to me.
He makes me hope.
He looks over his shoulder, at the sidewalk, teeming with students rushing from class to class, body tense likes he’s considering just bolting into the crowd to avoid me altogether. But then he looks back at me and he gives me that heart-stopping grin that makes me forget my own name.
“Okay.” He gives me a nod and leans in, close enough to reach into the bag I’m holding out to him, and pulls out a scone. Sitting back down on the bench next to me, he shrugs his shoulders before popping it into his mouth. “Shoot.”
Twenty-four
Ryan
I don’t really have time for this.
I texted Con for a pick-up right before Grace showed up so I don’t have more than a few minutes before he gets here. After that, I’ll have about thirty seconds before he starts blowing up my phone, asking me where the hell I am.
But I don’t care about that. Not right now, because this is Grace. She’s here and she’s smiling at me. Seems at least willing to consider the possibility of forgiving me for the giant mountain of fuck-ups I’ve put between us.
For that, I’d do just about anything.
“So…” She cocks her head at me before taking a drink of the latte I brought her. “What are you doing here?”
“I, uhhh…” I feel the back of my neck go hot and I reach up to rub at it. “I go to school here.” Saying it out loud makes me feel like a stalker. This is Boston for fuck’s sake. You can’t swing your dick without hitting a college or university. Between my GI bill and the millions in family money I have at my disposal, I could have my pick of them. Hell, I could’ve had Conner hack me into Harvard if I’d wanted to. But I chose Bay State. Grace’s school.
So, yeah.
I’m a stalker.
When I make my confession Grace lowers her coffee cup slowly to set it on the bench between us. “You go to school here?” She looks around like she doesn’t think we’re talking about the same here. “Here?” When I nod, she reaches into the bag for another scone but instead of eating it, she worries it between her fingers, crumbling it, bit by bit. “Since when?”
“Since fall semester started, so… a few weeks now.” I tell her. “I never was much good in school, even before getting my bell rung, so it’s just one class—English 101. We—I—want to make sure I can handle it before I really dive in—not really my style but Con’s pretty insistent that I take it slow.”
Brushing crumbs off her hands she gives me a nod. “So, just a toe?” she says but I get the feeling that’s not what she wants to ask. Not really.
“Yeah.” I crack a smile over her analogy because that’s exactly what it feels like. “Just a toe.” When she doesn’t say anything else or look up at me, I keep talking. “We is Con and me,” I offer even though she didn’t ask because I don’t want her to think it means something it doesn’t. “He’s been helpful. Annoyingly relentless, but helpful. I had my first big test today and he’s put all his free time into helping me prep for it.”
Her head comes up and realization spreads across her face. “Is that why he gave up Thursday nights behind the bar?”
I nod. “But I suspect it won’t be for long. As soon as I get a handle on things, he’ll be back—next question?”
“Where’s your cane?”
Not the question I expected but it’s an easy one to answer. “I don’t generally need it in the morning anymore—I mean, getting out of bed is still pretty rough but an hour in the tank—”
She gives me a weird look. “Tank?”
“Sensory deprivation tank.” I shrug when the look on her face holds. “If you want to know how or why it works, you’re going to have to ask Con. All I know is that an hour a day helps my cognitive issues and with the pain,” I tell her before picking up her coffee cup to steal a drink. It tastes like tepid, coffee-flavored hot chocolate. “This is horrible,” I tell her with a grimace.
“Oh, and I suppose you take your coffee with a stick of butter and a handful of gunpowder,” she scoffs, her chin tilted upward in mock indignation that makes me laugh at her.
“No butter,” I tell her, around the laugh. “And I prefer Napalm to gunpowder.” For some reason, the joke and the sound of my laughter pulls her mouth into a pensive slant. “What?” I say, panic sneaking in because I’m sure I took a misstep with her somewhere. “What did I say?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head at me, her sky blue eyes a little cloudy when she settles them on my cheekbone. “I just…” She gives me a helpless shrug and jogs her gaze up to meet mine. “You’re different. Than before.”
Giving myself time to digest her observation, I take another drink of her awful coffee before setting the cup back down between us. “I think you mean better.”
“No.” She shakes her head at me. “I mean different.”
It reminds me that she’s always contended that there wasn’t anything wrong with me to begin with. That my entire problem was that I just couldn’t accept it. “Yeah...” I agree, giving her a slow nod while pinning my gaze to hers. “A lot about me is different.” Like it has a mind of its own, my gaze slip down the curve of her cheek to rest on her mouth, lingering there for a moment or two before I can gather the will to force it back up to hers. “But not everything.”
A flush blooms across her cheeks, and her lips part slightly. Just enough to show me the tip of her little pink tongue. Just enough to remind me what she tasted like when I sucked it into my mouth. What it—
My cell phone buzzes in my back pocket, vibrating against my ass, and I shoot up from the bench like I’ve been zapped with a goddamned cattle prod. Pulling it out of my pocket, I swipe my thumb against the screen to pull up my text messages.
Con: Where the fuck
are you? I’ve been
circling this lot for
fifteen minutes.
Me: Got caught up,
On my way.
“You finally figured out how to text?”
I look up from the screen to find Grace watching me like she’s not exactly sure who I am anymore. “Told you—new and improved.” I give her a smirk. “Look, I have to go,” I say, shoving my phone back into my pocket, I give Grace a quick, apologetic grin. “Con’s here to pick me up—rain check on the rest of your interrogation?” I say, backing away from the bench reluctantly.
“Oh, okay—yeah. Sure.” She nods, standing to brush at the crumbs in her lap before bending down to retrieve her backpack. “I have to go pick my parents up from the airport anyway—the wedding’s tomorrow so I’m on Maid of Honor duty,” she says as she shoulders her bag and gathers her trash off the bench. “It was… good to see you again, Ryan.”
I watch her turn away from me to drop the empty cup and bag in the wastebasket next to the bench. “Hey.” I have no idea what I’m going to say to her. All I know is that I can’t let her leave without saying something.
Hearing me, she turns, cocking her head a little in silent question.
&n
bsp; “We’re good, right?” I take a step forward, closing the distance between us until I’m standing over her. “I mean—” My phone buzzes in my back pocket again, another text from Con, telling me to hurry the fuck up. I ignore it. “You and me—we’re okay?” As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I call myself a coward because it’s not what I’m supposed to say. Not what I want to know.
What I want to know is if she’s missed me as much as I’ve missed her. If she lays awake at night and thinks about me. Wishes things between us had gone differently.
“I don’t know.” She hitches her backpack up on her shoulder and looks up at me with an exasperated smile. “Are you going to disappear on me again?”
“No.” My phone buzzes again and I contemplate spiking in on the sidewalk like a football. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then yes—” the exasperation in her smile melts into something softer. “You and I are good.”
“Okay.” I’m not sure if I believe her but employing my advanced interrogation training, I don’t have much choice but to believe her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Stepping back, I let her go.
Grace nods her head and gives me a brief, awkward wave of her hand, before walking away from me for the second time in one day.
Twenty-five
Grace
I forgot Cari’s veil.
I even know where I left it. Can picture it perfectly, sitting on top of the washer in the laundry room where I set it down to help Molly get her shoes on this morning before we left Boston to make the hour-long drive to Declan and Tess’s house on the Cape.
Shit.
I’m careful not to say it out loud, lest I be harassed for pocket change by my four-year-old daughter for my swearing. Last I saw Molly, she was outside with my mom, running around with Noah, the grandson of Patrick’s friend, Davino Fiorella, who is the ring bearer, but I can’t be too careful these days.