By the time the night turns dark, I’ve given up hope of hearing from Grace. Still, I change the setting on my phone from vibrate to a shrill ringing sound. Just in case. I guess hope is the real villain here, forcing me to hold on to the possibility of us. That there stillisan us. It’s two in the morning when my racing thoughts are put to a halt by a soft knock. A persistent rhythm of gentle urgency.
I get up from my bed and walk to my door, and just as the knocks shift into a pounding thud, I swing it open. Grace stands on the other side, her body wrapped in my hoodie and her hair thrown into a rumpled knot. Her eyes look round and red, like she’s spent some time crying.
“Hi,” she says.
I nod.
“I—I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.” It sounds like my throat is lined with sandpaper, and the words are grating against it, sounding choppy and coarse as they leave my lips.
“Can we talk?”
I open the door, letting her in. I get a whiff of her shampoo, a mix of roses and oranges. A strangely unique combination but one I’ve become slowly obsessed with. It makes me want to just pull her into me and hold her, somehow forget about what happened and lay in my bed so we can embrace the memory of everything away. The common practice we’ve accustomed ourselves to is to settle into whatever soft, cushy surface is closest to us. Right now, that spot is my unmade bed. But that feels a little risky. Throwing gasoline into the fire. Instead, I lead her to my small dining table. The same table where we sat and ate multiple meals of grilled cheese sandwiches or read a book or swiped through our phones.
“What did you want to talk about?” I ask her in a flat voice. My gaze feels just as leaden with all the things we want to hash out. While I may appear displeased, she looks almost inconsolable.
“Andrew,” she starts, her voice breaking. “I’m so sorry about what happened. But there’s nothing going on wi?—”
My deep sigh cuts her off, and I don’t know if it’s from frustration or exhaustion. Or maybe a little bit of both. “Grace, I was never worried about…” I pause, searching for the right words. “Whoever that was. I trust you.” I realize how true those words ring. As much as I hated the sight of him looking at her as if she were his to look at, I knew it was all one-sided. I could tell by her body language, the way she leaned away from him and had her arms crossed like an extra buffer in front of her.
I see her tense shoulders slump as if a wave of relief ripples through her, but it comes back when the moment of silence between us turns taut again.
“But Grace, you didn’t even tell him you had a boyfriend.”
She cowers. “I’m sorry.”
Instead of telling her it’s fine, that it was just a misunderstanding, and I forgive her, I ask, “Are you ashamed of me?”
“No!” She reaches for me, but I instinctively recoil. “Not even a little bit.”
“Then why?—”
“I don’t know.” Her mouth starts to tremble, and my will cracks. “I don’t know if I’m worried it won’t work out or—or…I don’t know?—”
“So, you don’t think this is going to work out?”
“I don’t know, Andrew,” she says, her voice turning desperate. “I don’t know. And that scares the shit out of me.”
“Then maybe you don’t want to be with me.”
“That’s not it,” she tells me firmly. “I do. I want to be with you.”
“But you just don’t want people to know about us.”
Her eyes search the space in front of us, looking for the right words so her plea comes out the way she wants it to. “I—I’ll tell people.We’lltell people. We can tell Teeny first thing in the morning.”
“Grace,” I argue. I don’t yell at her or even raise my voice, but it’s enough to shut her down. She cowers, and all I want to do is console her. But I know I can’t. We can’t act as if nothing happened. “I don’t want it to be like this. I don’t want you to tell people about us only when you feel like our relationship is threatened. It’s not fair to me.”
“I know.” Tears well in her eyes, and one rolls down her cheek. I look away, unable to bear the sight of her crying,mourning over the loss of something that was just beginning. “So where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her, answering her without even looking her straight in the face. “I think I just need some time to think. I’ve been trying to find work and make rent and think of a way to tell my parents I lost my job, and…I don’t know, Grace.”
“You’re going to tell your parents?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “I…might need to move back home.”
She nods. “Okay.”
