“Of course not.” Grayson tried to look unaffected. “Impossible.”
In all the years of our friendship, the crossroads we were at now presented a situation we hadn’t even had the foresight to entertain. For so long, it had been Grayson and me against the world. First as lovers and partners, then as friends and roommates. This scenario where one of us fell in love with someone else hadn’t even been significant enough of an idea to register on either of our radars. Maybe we could have better prepared or better planned.
“He’s good for me.” I offered Grayson a small smile.
“I’m sure.” Grayson let out a long and loud breath, then turned on his heel and went into the kitchen. I listened to him pop a cork from a wine bottle, and then the familiar glug-glug as he filled two glasses. He came back into view, setting both glasses on the dining room table. He kicked out my chair and dropped down into the seat that had always been his.
My spot was a mess, still piled high with work. I stacked it all up and shoved it out of the way, pulling the wine toward me and cradling the extremely full glass between my hands.
“Will you tell me about him?” Grayson asked, swallowing down a mouthful of wine.
“I don’t deserve him.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dropped it onto the table, swiping my screen open to the message thread between us. “I never have, but especially now.”
I keyed out an apology and sent it before I could overthink it. The apology ended up taking six messages for me to get out what I wanted to say, and there was so much more. So much more in my heart and my mind, but I didn’t want to overdo it. I didn’t want to suddenly come on too strong when hours before I’d been anything but. The age difference between us had always been a problem for him, and I didn’t want to make it worse. I didn’t want to make my shortcomings more noticeable to him.
I wrote out one final message and slammed my phone back down on the table, sliding it over to Grayson so I would stop digging myself a deeper or more pathetic hole.
“Why would you think that?” he asked.
“He’s an infinitely better and more mature person than I am.”
Gray opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, disbelief mapped around the corners of his eyes. I knew him well enough to recognize the look on his face as the one where he vehemently disagreed with me, but didn’t want to argue.
“Go on.” I swirled my wrist in the air, indicating I was ready for whatever ridiculous argument had existed in his brain. “Say what you have to say.”
It didn’t matter what he said, though. Because I knew the truth of it. There wasn’t a single nerve ending in my body that deserved Hendrix’s thought, let alone his forgiveness.
“I don’t understand what’s so great about this guy to make you think so little of yourself.”
“You’re joking, right?” I leaned back and stretched out my legs, nursing the wine on the off chance Hendrix would agree to talk to me when he got home. “Do you really think I have low self-esteem?”
“It’s what you just said.”
“I don’t think poorly of myself.”
The idea sounded absolutely abhorrent, and it called my entire relationship with Grayson into question if it was honestly something he believed. Or maybe it was me? Had I just given off petty and insecure vibes for the duration of our friendship?
“You’ll have to explain, then,” he said, wine already half gone.
“I don’t think poorly of myself.” I traced the tip of my finger around the rim of the wine glass, the edge dull against my skin, lacking the softness I’d grown accustomed to when repeating the movement against Hendrix’s body. “I know I’m reasonably close to being on the better than average side of attractive.”
“That’s a lot of words to say you’re vain.”
“I’m notvain. I just know that I’m nice to look at most of the time.” I shook my hair out of my eyes. “But that’s not the point. I don’t think poorly of myself, I just think extremely highly of him.”
“Why though?” Grayson asked. “Why do you think so much better about him than yourself?”
“I think pretty highly of myself, Gray. It takes work to outrank me in my own head, but it came pretty easily for him.” I sipped my wine, scratching at the corner of my mouth.
“Can you table the word games for just one second and tell me what about this dude is so fucking great that your panties are in such a twist?”
There weren’t enough words to explain.
It was impossible for me to summarize Hendrix in a way that would make sense for Grayson. I couldn’t even make sense of it myself. It was just something that I felt in my bones, that I knew in my heart.
“Oh,” Grayson murmured, downing what was left in his wineglass. He eyed mine, still mostly full, then topped his off and took another large swallow.
“What?”
