Eleanor & Grey

by Brittainy Cherry

  I couldn’t imagine living in a home without a strong type of love. My parents swam in each other’s love as if their hearts were oceans. They held one another up whenever times were hard. Their kind of love made the world a better place to be in. I couldn’t imagine them ever not being completely head over heels with one another.

  They were the greatest love story I’d ever witnessed, and it was so hard to even imagine the two of them being apart. I swore their hearts beat together as one.

  If there was one thing that I knew for sure, it was the fact that there was no Kevin without a Paige.

  “I just never want to be like that,” he confessed. “When I fall in love, it’s going to be real. It’s not going to be a love for convenience, it’s going to be a forever kind of love. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “I agree.”

  “But I do have to thank my parents. If anything, they taught me what love isn’t, therefore I’ll know what it is when it comes.”

  He kept doing his nervous fiddling thing with his hands, and I swore my heartbeats were directed straight to him.

  “Sorry. We can talk about something else,” he offered. “Maybe we can talk about us.”

  Heart skips and heart flips.

  “Yeah? What about us?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, you know.” Greyson’s head tilted toward me, and we locked eyes. “About what it would be like to kiss you.”

  I swore he controlled my heartbeats with those words. We hadn’t really talked much about things like that, about us and if there were any feelings involved other than friendship. The most we’d ever done was hug, for goodness’ sake, and a hug from him was enough to set my world on fire.

  For a while, I’d thought my crush on Greyson was a one-sided thing, so to hear those words come out of his mouth somewhat felt like a dream.

  “Do you ever think about that, Ellie?” he asked.

  I inhaled slowly. “Only always.”

  He inched a little closer to me, and I let it happen. He tucked my hair behind my ears, and I let it happen. His smile melted every part of me, and I let it happen.

  “I think about it a lot. After we hang out sometimes, I beat myself up for not just doing it. I overthink it. Like, it should’ve happened when we got ice cream, or when you first brought me here. Or on Molly’s steps.” He scrunched his face. “Probably not on Molly’s steps, but still, I think about it.”

  “Me too. All the time.” I paused. “Well, not all the time, but yeah…all the time.”

  He placed his hand in mine and gave it a slight squeeze.

  “I just want it to be perfect, you know? Especially now that I know it’s your first kiss. That’s important. In the novels you’ve had me read, it always happens naturally,” he said softly. “I take notes when I’m reading on how the hero does it, on where it happens, on how comfortable or uncomfortable both the characters seem.”

  I felt his hands trembling slightly—or was it my hands that were shaky? It was becoming hard to tell what were his feelings and what were mine.

  That was okay, though.

  I liked the confusion.

  “I know,” I agreed. “There’s always a moment…”

  “When the timing is just—”

  “Right.” I finished his sentence, knowing his thoughts the same way he knew mine.

  “Ellie?”

  “Yes, Grey?”

  “Would it be cliché of me to ask if I can kiss you?”

  “Yes.” I scooted closer, so close that his lips were millimeters from mine, so close that his exhales became my inhales, so close that my mind had already decided it was going to be the best first kiss of my life. “But do it anyway.”

  And then he did.

  9

  Eleanor

  “He’s so goofy!” I exclaimed as Mom and I went grocery shopping. I wandered in front of her as she pushed the cart. “He kept trying to win me the stuffed animal, and ended up with a black eye. Even with the black eye, he seemed proud, though.”

  “That’s so sweet, honey.”

  “It was sweet, in a really dorky way.” I walked toward the fresh fruit, moving on my tiptoes as I thought about Greyson. Every now and then I’d start humming. “We’re supposed to go out for Mexican food next week, and I’m really excited about it.” My hands moved across the oranges.

  Did Greyson like oranges?

  I’d have to ask him. I wanted to know everything about Greyson East. The good, the bad, and his opinions on fruit.

  “Oh, and I forgot to tell you—”

  Crash.

  I whipped around quickly at the loud sound which snapped me from my current dreamy state.

  “Mom!” I hollered, rushing over to her side. She was lying on the floor, and her eyes were crossing before they shut. I shook her body, but she wasn’t responding. “Mom, mom! Someone help!” I shouted.

  She completely blacked out, and my heart shattered into a million pieces.

  An ambulance was called to the scene, and I cried harder than I’d ever cried as I sat beside her and tried to wake her up.

  When she came to, she was dazed and confused. She tried to speak, but she was too shaky. I just stared at her, wide-eyed and terrified. I watched as my tears splashed her cheekbones so prominent under her thin skin. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop sobbing. I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t let go of the hopelessness I felt.

  We were rushed to the hospital, and Dad met us there.

  He forced me to sit in the waiting room as he searched for answers.

  I sat, I waited, and I cried.

  I sat, I waited, and I cried some more.

  Mom was released a few hours later and the whole ride home was completely still.

  That was the day when it became real for me. That was the first time since finding out about her cancer that I was really afraid. For a while, I was naïve enough to think that she was getting better than worse, then a wake-up call hit me in the fresh produce aisle.

  The next morning, Mom walked into my room and gave me a small grin. She wore a Janet Jackson T-shirt with overalls, and her hair was wrapped in a bandana. For the most part, she looked like her regular self. You could hardly tell anything was wrong just by looking at her. From the looks of it, she didn’t seem like a woman who had just blacked out the day before. I thought that was the hardest part to wrap my mind around: how could she look okay but not be?

  “Hey, beautiful,” she said.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “So…yesterday was tough.”

  “You should be in bed,” I told her. “You need rest.”

  I sat up a bit. “Sorry about that. I—”

  She shook her head. “It’s fine, really. I just want to make sure you’re okay. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  “You shouldn’t be worried about me.”

  “I’m a mother, sweetheart. Worrying about my child is all I ever do.”

  I lowered my head. “I’m scared, Mom.”

  “I know.” She moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed beside me. She wrapped an arm around me and I rested my head against her shoulder.

  “I just need you to be okay, alright? Can you do that?”

  She combed her fingers through my hair but didn’t reply.

  Mom was never one to make promises she couldn’t keep.

  “Your dad went out to clear his head and will probably be out for a while. You want to drive over to Laurie Lake?”

  “Are you okay enough to travel?” I asked warily.

  “I promise, Ellie. I’m okay.”

  “Okay.”

  We headed to the lake and walked out to our secluded area. It was hot that late morning. The high was supposed to be around ninety-five degrees, but it already felt like it was triple digits.

  We sat under the sun, melting and drinking from the water bottles we’d brought. It was quiet for a while. I wondered if we were quiet because we didn’t have anything to say or because we didn’t kno
w how to say it.

  Mom tilted her head up to the sky with her eyes closed and felt the sun beating against her skin. “I was thirty-three the first time I found out I had cancer. You were two years old.”

  I turned to face her, stunned. “You’ve had cancer before?”

  “Yes. You were so young, and I remember crying with you in my arms, because the idea of leaving this world was too hard to face. You were so new to me, and your father and I had fought so hard to have you in our lives. You were just becoming your own person. I was watching you grow into this beautiful little girl with her own personality. I thought about all the things I’d miss, all the firsts you hadn’t even discovered. Your first day at school, your first dance…your first boyfriend, your first kiss. Your first heartbreak. I remember getting so mad at the world, at my own body for bringing you to me only to take me away. It felt unfair. I felt as if I’d betrayed myself. One day when my worries were so loud and my heart was breaking, do you know what your father said to me?”

  “What?”

  “‘You’re still here, Paige. You’re still here.’ That changed everything for me. I just need you to know that, too, okay?” She took my hand into hers and patted it gently. “I’m still here, Ellie.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about if you weren’t, though. I thought yesterday was…” I shut my eyes and inhaled hard. “I thought you were gone…”

  “I know, but even if a day comes when you can’t physically see me, I’m still here. Always.”

  I took a breath.

  That was a difficult concept.

  “I’m really scared, Mom,” I confessed.

  “Fear’s okay, as long as you don’t let it drown you.” She looked down at her hands. “Do you know the story behind the dragonflies?” she asked. “Do you know what they stand for?”

  “No. You’ve never told me.”

  “In almost all parts of the world, the dragonfly stands for change and transformation. They live most of their life as a nymph. Do you know what that means?”

  “Like a fairy?”

  She smiled. “Well, that’s one of the meanings, but in this case it means an insect with incomplete metamorphosis. It’s the stage before it gets its wings. Dragonflies only actually fly for a small fraction of their lives.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Crazy, right? When you see dragonflies, you would believe they fly all their lives, but you don’t take into account the number of flightless days that came before. The dragonfly never gets down on itself for not having wings, though. It never overthinks when they will come. It just lives fully in the moment. That’s what they mean to me: living in the moment. They live each day moment by moment, not overthinking the future.”

  I knew what she was getting at. “I’m not a dragonfly, Mom. I can’t help but overthink everything.”

  “I know. I’ve been overthinking things, too, but I also want to find the good moments. I don’t want the next however-many days to be filled with sad times, Ellie. I want to know the good things. I like to think you can find a reason to smile every single day if you look hard enough. So, can you do that for me? For us? Can you find a reason every single day to smile?”

  “Yes,” I promised, even though I didn’t know if it were true. For her, I’d try. I fiddled with my fingers as dragonflies buzzed around in the distance. “You didn’t miss one of the firsts,” I told her. “Greyson kissed me two nights ago.”

  Mom’s eyes lit up, and for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, she smiled, a real smile filled with happiness. “Oh, my gosh.” She placed her hands on top of mine. “Tell me everything.”

  As I told her, she kept smiling ear to ear, and I realized I was smiling too, not because Greyson had kissed me, but because she was it for me that day. Seeing her glow felt so amazing. Seeing her not crying was what made my lips curve upward.

  She was my reason to smile.

  10

  Eleanor

  After Mom blacked out, things became harder.

  She made me stop going to chemotherapy treatments with her, even though I fought her tooth and nail about it.

  At first, we were all doing okay. We found our daily reasons to smile.

  Then, things progressed.

  She stopped painting in the garage.

  Her hair thinned.

  Her movements were becoming slower.

  One night after Mom’s chemo, she became extremely sick. It woke me up in the middle of the night, and there was no way I was going back to sleep. While Dad helped her in the bathroom downstairs, I sat at the top of the staircase, listening. She was crying, telling him she was tired.

  I didn’t know if she meant physically or mentally.

  Maybe a little bit of both.

  I hugged the railing as Dad helped walk Mom back to their bedroom. Afterward, he came back into the space and stood still in the middle of living room. He stared forward, looking at the blank television screen, and then he covered his mouth and began to sob uncontrollably. He muffled his tears with his hands, trying his best to keep his hurting contained in order to not worry Mom or me.

  My father was the master of putting on a brave face. He’d always take care of Mom and then check in on me to make sure I was okay. Yet, if I asked how he was, he’d always reply, “Great,” even though I knew that was a lie. My father was heartbroken. He refused to admit it to anyone, but I could see it even before he’d begun to cry.

  The next day, we could hardly find a reason to smile. Then the following one, it became even harder. Our reasons for joy were decreasing day in and day out. We all knew it, but we tried to hide from each other the fact that we were all cracking more each day. Our reasons for smiling were so very few, yet we were all too tired and too stubborn to admit it.

  “Hi, Ellie,” Greyson said while standing on my porch one Saturday afternoon. He was holding some canvas in his hands and smiling brightly. I was confused about why he was there. Truth was, ever since everything with Mom worsened, I’d been a bit antisocial. I didn’t have a clue why he’d still want to be my friend, or whatever it was that we were. We hadn’t even had a chance to really talk about anything between us after our first kiss.

  He never brought it up, and neither did I.

  If we were hanging out together, I was quiet on the outside while my insides screamed.

  He hadn’t signed up for a sad friend, but still, he kept showing up.

  Something should be said about the people who show up for the depressed souls. They never receive enough credit for being brave enough to stay.

  “Hey. What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I just thought I could stop by to officially meet your mom. I wanted to see if she’d like to teach me some of her art skills.”

  “That’s really nice, but she’s not feeling too great today.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe…”

  “I’m feeling good enough for that,” Mom interrupted.

  I turned around to see her standing in the foyer, looking skinnier than I liked.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. She had bags under her eyes, her hair was wrapped up in a bandana, and she looked nothing like herself.

  “Of course. Come on in, Greyson.”

  He walked past me and followed Mom into the living room. He set his materials on the table, and then sat beside Mom on the couch. “I’m sorry we haven’t officially met yet, Mrs. Gable, but I’m Greyson. I just wanted to stop by and see if you could give me some art tips. I’m not an artist at all, but Ellie has told me you’re the best artist in the world, and I’d love to pick your brain about techniques and stuff.”

  Then, for the first time in days, Mom smiled.

  More of that.

  For a moment in time, Greyson took her mind off of her illness and accompanied her back into the world she loved more than anything. She spoke about curves and lines, pastels and chalks, paper drawings versus canvas.

  She had him paint and then she critiqued his work, but with a gentlen
ess Mom always maintained. She didn’t give critiques without offering solutions. Her eyes lit up when she talked about art.

  After a while, they headed to Mom’s studio in the garage, and they stayed there for hours. I didn’t join them, because everything they were talking about pretty much just went over my head.

  Mom needed it—she needed to feel inspired.

  When they finished, they both came back into the house covered in paint. Mom was wearing an apron, and a paintbrush was balanced behind her ear. She looked a little like herself.

  “Thank you, Grey,” I told him as he was getting ready to leave.

  “For what?”

  “Being you.”

  I didn’t know why he’d come into my life all those weeks before. I didn’t know why he chose to stay. I didn’t deserve a friend like him. Honestly, I wasn’t sure anyone deserved Greyson East in their life, but I was so thankful he was in mine.

  Mom walked up to me after Greyson left and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “You know what I like about that boy?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Everything.”

  11

  Eleanor

  By the time Mom’s sixth chemotherapy appointment came around, school was back in session. I’d never thought I’d say it, but being back at school was the kind of normal activity I needed in my life. It distracted me from worrying, and I needed a break from worry.

  Shay and Greyson made sure to keep my mind busy, too. They’d come over to my house and read books with me, and they’d sit with me during lunch. They’d talk about anything and everything to keep me laughing. Turned out Greyson was the master of telling really bad jokes that didn’t make sense but, somehow, were still funny.

  Even on the days when I wasn’t feeling happy, I’d give them a small chuckle.

  If Shay wasn’t checking in on me, Greyson was looking for an update.

  I needed that. I needed their check-ins to remind me that I wasn’t alone.