by Lara Avery
As she finished telling them about Sydney, her parents, and the weird new house, Bryce’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m not sad,” Bryce said, and it was true. “It’s just so nice you’re finally here.”
Gabby chirped, “We could say the same for you!”
Greg just looked at Bryce through his long lashes.
Bryce wiped her eyes on a paper napkin. It was a little embarrassing. She shifted. “So what’s up with you guys?”
Gabby glanced at Greg quickly, as if choosing who should go first. Seeming to make up her mind, Gabby dove in. “I’m going to be a lawyer,” she said firmly.
Gabby flowed and fluttered through what she had done, how much fun college had been, and then wove slowly into the sad parts: quitting diving to focus on academics, missing home and Nashville. She was headed to GW Law in the fall.
“And Greg,” she began. Greg had been interjecting yeses and nos, but said nothing of what he had done. He just sat leaning back, smiling or shrugging at Bryce when Gabby said ridiculous things. Like always. “Greg’s also going to be in D.C. Finding a job.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know,” Greg said, fumbling. He seemed surprised, as if he had been thinking about something else. “I like D.C. a lot. Pretty buildings.”
Bryce raised her eyebrows, trying to picture Greg in the capital, wearing a suit maybe, doing a desk job. He’d always had ideas for eclectic businesses, like selling boat radar detectors or organic horse feed, a new one every week. But maybe that was just the kind of thing you talked about in high school. “People go through phases,” her father had warned her after she’d hung up the phone last night. Bryce wouldn’t know. She hadn’t had the chance to grow out of anything.
“What about coaching, though?” she asked Greg intently. “Did you give up diving, too?”
“No, no.” Greg smiled back, his full lips breaking cheeks into dimples. “I rode it out. But not all of us have the whistleblowing skills of Mike Graham.”
Gabby smiled at him, wrinkling her nose, then turned to Bryce. “So, what’s next for you?”
“I don’t know. Want to watch a movie?” Bryce smiled hopefully. She had been looking forward to doing that, just the three of them. Just hanging out, like old times. Maybe they could come over after this. They could watch a Western, maybe some John Wayne, like The Searchers. Gabby would yield now, Bryce knew she would. Or maybe she would get her way as always and make them watch Pride and Prejudice, coma or no coma, arguing that Bryce hadn’t seen it in five years.
Gabby cracked up. “No, I mean, like, your life.”
Bryce opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. Her life had been all planned out—the Olympics, diving for Vanderbilt, another Olympics. After that, maybe she’d coach, or if she was lucky, keep training, keep diving, keep competing. Now she didn’t know. Her family, diving, and Greg were the only things she’d ever loved. The only things she’d ever really known at all.
“Not much of anything yet,” she said.
“We’ll find something,” Gabby said knowingly. “You’ve missed a lot, but there’s still time to figure it out.”
Bryce felt a strange twinge in her gut that she wasn’t used to feeling around them. Greg and Gabby knew who they were and what they wanted. Bryce should be happy for them, she knew that. But she didn’t feel happy. She felt like she needed to defend herself for being asleep for five years.
As Greg took the last chip, the hostess came by. “Are you sure y’all don’t want anything to drink?”
“Oh, I can’t—” Bryce began, then she stopped. This wouldn’t be like that time in Bryan Godard’s basement when she and Gabby were dared to drink vodka straight out of the bottle. They were adults now, right? “You know what? I’ll take one.”
“So, three margaritas?” Gabby said, raising her eyebrows at Bryce
“Yep.” Bryce nodded. She looked at the hostess. “You need ID?”
“Ha. Yeah, right,” the hostess replied shortly, and walked away.
“Oooh, Bry’s famous,” Gabby teased.
Bryce blushed and looked at Greg, wearing the same old Hanes T-shirt out of a five-pack, twisting two straws together with his long, bitten-down fingertips. He was different, but he was still the same old Greg, mostly. He used to ride home with Bryce after practice on weekends and raid the refrigerator. He talked technique with her dad, fixing an odd shelf or curtain rod for her mother while Sydney followed him around, asking unnecessary questions. She used to joke that he was better at being a Graham than she was.
“So,” Bryce said. She looked back and forth between the two of them, as if they were all lounging on the bleachers after a meet.
“So,” Gabby replied. But then her brow started to wrinkle, and her eyes squinted, holding back tears. “Oh, Bryce. We never thought we’d see you again.”
Another lump formed in Bryce’s throat. “It must have been hard.”
“It was.” Gabby nodded and let her eyes drift toward Greg. She spun her ring around her finger nervously. “The only thing that made it okay was that we had each other.”
Greg returned Gabby’s gaze, long enough for Bryce to feel like she had disappeared, just for a moment. She frowned. We had each other. It sounded odd, like something one of the characters from Gabby’s romance novels would say.
Gabby continued quietly. “The reason why I asked you what was next for you is because we want to share something that’s next for us.”
Gabby kept looking at Greg. Why was she looking at Greg so much? Greg looked back at Gabby, and then at the floor. He looked sad. Tense. Nervous.
“What?” Bryce asked. What did she mean, us?
“Do you remember how you thought Redding Greenberg had cooties when you were in third grade?”
Bryce laughed. “Yeah, of course.”
“And then, one day, you woke up and you felt so differently. You wrote his name in little hearts, and chased him on the playground.” Bryce felt herself turning red, but Gabby pressed on. “You did. You know you did.”
“I did,” Bryce admitted, smiling. “And?” she said, sipping water.
“Try to imagine that happening…but, like, now.”
Greg finally looked up. “Really, Gab? That’s how you’re going to do this?”
Bryce looked back and forth between them, trying and failing to meet their eyes. Her mind was blank, but her muscles began to tighten with fear.
Gabby continued, her voice trembling. “Like all of a sudden, you wake up, and things are different. You love someone who’s been there all along. And it’s so random, but that’s just the way you feel.” Gabby looked vulnerable now, like she was about to shatter.
“Greg and I,” Gabby went on, her voice getting smaller. “I…we’ve been together, Bryce. We’re actually, um. We’re engaged,” she said, and then she said some more, but Bryce didn’t hear the rest. After the word engaged, the dinner rush at Los Pollitos filled her ears. The hum of the lights, the clanking of silverware, the conversation next to them.
The noise rose to a deafening roar, but no one else seemed to hear it. Hot pain crept from her neck, pricking her forehead, her eyes.
“I just need to—” Bryce began, snapping her eyes shut to the hurt that was beginning to shoot from her spine. She couldn’t finish. She fell backward, or forward, she couldn’t tell, and opened her eyes to a strange sight.
The barn.
Nighttime had fallen, making the walls and ceiling almost disappear. But this was a special place. Bryce knew exactly where the beams stood, where the stalls were, where the floor creaked. She didn’t need to see. And suddenly, a light came on, forming a small circle near the hayloft.
Bryce looked up. A halo of blond hair, the angles of a muscled shoulder. Greg.
Greg set the electric lantern on the floor of the barn, the light illuminating his face in sharp shadows. His lips pressed together, shaking. He looked like he had hurt himself. He was crying. Then he said her name.
Bryce took a step toward him, only to
trip on nothing through nothingness, landing back on a chair, blinking rapidly, out of breath.
Gabby was looking at her with the same wincing expression. Bryce clutched the table, suddenly afraid it was going to tip from under her.
“Engaged to be married?” Bryce finally asked. She tried to swallow. There was a hot rock wedged in her throat.
The waitress brought their margaritas, and Gabby took a small, tentative sip. Greg gulped his down. Bryce watched the lime-green liquid of the drink get lower and lower until it was gone.
“Greg asked me when we were in Italy. I know that’s not—I can’t even imagine…I wish there was some other…I know this must be weird,” Gabby finally finished. She absently spun her ring around her finger again, and for the first time, Bryce really looked at it. It was a gold ring with a small yellow diamond, and it sat on the ring finger of her left hand. An engagement ring. Of course it was an engagement ring. Bryce hadn’t given it a second thought. People wore class rings, rings given to them from their grandparents. Nobody got married. Not them.
Greg’s hand rested beside his glass. Gabby took it. Bryce felt like something was snaking out of her gut. Her intestines maybe.
“Just say whatever you feel,” Gabby said.
“I don’t—have anything,” Bryce croaked. The hot rock was making it hard to speak.
Greg let go of Gabby’s hand. Bryce felt no relief.
“In a way, it’s a blessing,” Gabby said. “The timing—I knew we were right to come back to Nashville for the wedding. It would mean so much to us if you would be there.”
“Be there?” Bryce choked out.
Gabby sputtered, shaking her head. “Well, if you felt like it was something you could do. I mean, I have no idea. All I can say is…” She took a shuddery breath. “We didn’t know, Bryce. We didn’t know,” she repeated. “I’m just so glad you came back to us.”
Bryce would not look at Greg. She felt him sitting there, now ripping apart his napkin. She took a sip of margarita, and her mouth twisted at its salty-sweet bitterness.
Gabby’s face gradually broke into a small smile. “I just…Growing up, I always pictured you next to me at my wedding. I couldn’t imagine who the groom would be. It didn’t matter. I just knew you’d be my maid of honor.” She leaned forward anxiously under the hanging lamp. She was wearing makeup. Mascara that brought her lashes to a long, vicious swoop. Blush the color of sunset, at the tip of her cheekbones. “Will you? Be my maid of honor?”
Bryce stared at her. But then Gabby looked up, past Bryce. Bryce felt a warm hand on her shoulder and turned around.
“Sorry to be a downer, but you’re not in stable enough condition to drink alcohol.” Carter spoke directly to her, not looking across the table. “Also, I just got a call from your parents. They need you at home.”
“Oh.” Gabby sat up straighter, looking at Carter with concern. “Are you her nurse?”
Carter let out a snort. “Kind of.”
Bryce couldn’t help but untwist her mouth into a small smile. Relief swept through her. It felt good to be needed somewhere. She limped away with Carter at her side, the ground like liquid beneath her feet.
“Bryce!” she heard Gabby call.
She turned to look at the couple, now blurred across the restaurant.
“Talk to you soon, okay?” Gabby’s voice sounded tentative.
Bryce finally looked at Greg, but it was as if the moment her gaze met his, he shrank away, disappearing. She turned and walked away from them, pushing open the doors harder than she needed to.
hough it was nearly evening, the parking lot was still bathed in bright light, the low sun beating off the car hoods and windows. Bryce supported herself on the parked cars, surrounded by the sounds of distant traffic and the dull thump of her boots on the asphalt. The cicadas buzzed.
Carter came a few feet behind her, and they arrived at his car.
“What happened?” Bryce said softly, trying to match the quiet. “Is it Sydney? Is everything okay?”
Carter leaned against the Honda. “I made that up. Your parents didn’t call.”
Bryce blew out the breath she’d been holding. “Ah, okay.”
“I thought I heard you guys ordering drinks so I started listening in. It didn’t sound good.”
Bryce said nothing. Maybe she should be angry with Carter for sticking his nose in her business, but after the news she’d just heard, it seemed like a small offense.
“I thought you’d want out of there.”
“Too much excitement for my rusty ol’ brain. Good work, doctor.” She started to take short, pained steps past the car.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I just need to move.” As she said this, she realized how stupid she sounded, as if getting her body away from what had just happened would keep it away for good. She used to do the same thing as a little kid. A plate broke, she fell down and skinned her knee, she would just scramble away as if bad things only happened in one place. She turned, leaning against the warm metal of the car.
Carter opened the driver’s door. “You want to go home?”
“Yep,” she said, although she’d been awake for long enough now to know that home didn’t exist anymore.
The seats were warm and the windows were down. Bryce held out her hand to catch drops of water from the sprinklers. Carter had started to tell her about a book he’d been reading. The sound of his voice was oddly soothing, the up and down, but all Bryce could do was look out at the houses whizzing by, letting the water droplets hit her arm. If Bryce focused hard enough, she could see each individual droplet catch the gold light as it flew through the air and then follow its arc over the sidewalks, over the curb, shattering against her skin as if it were made of glass.
Beautiful, Bryce thought. She wished Carter could see what she was seeing.
They pulled up in front of the big blue house. The restaurant, Gabby and Greg engaged, it was all catching up. She couldn’t act like she was happy for them, like they were two people she knew from long ago, like an old high school friend would act. They didn’t feel like people from her past. One day she’d fallen asleep, and the next her boyfriend was engaged to her best friend.
Diving, the van trips to tournaments, Gabby insisting they play gin rummy, lying in the bed of Greg’s pickup truck, dancing with Greg in the barn with no music…it was all last month to her.
It didn’t matter that they were getting married. Walking down the aisle, wearing nice clothes, that was a game. It was that they were in love, that they probably needed each other, relied on each other. They kissed each other. My god, they probably had sex. And it meant something. Her stomach twisted painfully. It probably meant everything. Which left her with what? Nothing.
Bryce could disappear into a coma again and their lives would go on as planned.
She had been flailing above the truth like she was treading water, and now she let go. Bryce slumped in her seat.
Carter took off his seat belt. “You okay?” he asked.
She looked at him, and tears came. She tried to swallow them. “They’re engaged,” she said.
“I know,” he said solemnly.
Bryce remembered her dad’s warning about phases. Her mom trying desperately to get her to stay home. Sydney that first night at the hospital. Bryce was the only one in the dark. They had all left her in the dark. Or maybe she had put herself there on purpose. She didn’t know which was worse.
“How could they do that?”
Carter tightened his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know.” He moved his hand to Bryce’s shoulder, letting it rest there for a second, leaving a trail of warmth on Bryce’s skin.
Bryce sniffed, shuddering, and lifted her boots to rest them on the dashboard. She was still restrained by her seat belt.
Carter reached over. “Here,” he said, and clicked the buckle open. The seat belt slid back into place. “I normally don’t let people put their feet on the
dash, but I guess we can make an exception.”
“Gee, thanks,” Bryce said.
Carter sighed, and shut off the engine. “The time you lost probably hits harder at some times more than others.”
“You think?” Bryce had a sudden urge to slap Carter in the face. Not because he had done anything, but because he was there, facing her like Greg had faced her that day at the lake. She wanted to go back to that day so badly now. She would swim away from Greg, and she would walk past Gabby under the tree. She would live the next five years of her life without them, as they had done without her.
“You’ll get through all of this,” Carter said. “You’re strong.” He was rubbing his chin again, thinking. His eyes darted from her boots on the dashboard to her face, back to the boots.
“I hope so,” Bryce said.
“No, you will,” Carter said. He spoke more gently now, evenly, like someone who would know because it was his job to make it that way. “Really.”
They sat there, listening to her take choppy breaths. She let tears fall on her lap, closing her eyes. She didn’t care about crying in front of Carter anymore. At that moment, she didn’t care about much of anything.
Through the dark red of her eyelids, Bryce felt Carter reach out to her, and that was how she met him in the center of the two seats, her head burrowing easily into a place in his chest, his arms fitting around her.
It was nice. She hadn’t been hugged like that in a long time. Nowadays people squeezed her quickly, just for a second, as if they might break her. This is nice, she thought again.
Carter loosened, Bryce leaned back, and somehow her forehead was right near his chin.
Oops, Bryce thought. She tilted her head to say sorry. But she didn’t end up saying sorry.
Her mouth had found its way to his. His lips were soft, but Bryce could feel pressure behind them. They moved again, to fit hers.
After a moment, Bryce pulled away. “Whoa,” she said quietly.
“Bryce…”
“Um, I should…” She opened the door without finishing her sentence. She kept her eyes down and stepped out onto the pavement.