“I know. What I mean is: your story is inspiring rather than funny. It shows how far you’ve come since that day. Besides, this incident of yours doesn’t even come close to the time my mom insulted the dignity out of me after I got drunk at a club gathering with all her peers and sang random pop songs at the top of my lungs. Thank God for Mave, because he dragged me out of there before I could vandalize the place to shit.”
Dorran’s expression darkens. “Fuck Miranda. I hope her bones are in a disarray in her grave.”
I chuckle. “I’m pretty sure they are.”
He sighs as he shifts in the chair. “Man, I miss Maverick. That guy will eternally have my respect for looking after you the way he did.”
My eyes sting, and my throat tightens as I sniff against the burning in my nose. “He should be here with us right now. Jayce, too.”
Dorran swallows, and his expression turns distant as he looks sideways. “Yeah.”
Silence takes over – a heavy yet breathable one.
We’ve had several moments like this before, Dorran and I. I don’t know what it is that he thinks about in the comfort of this quiet, and I have yet to gather the courage to ask him. Maybe I will someday, once I’m ready to hear all about it.
You know what the most excruciating part about grief is? It’s that we don’t get to choose it. It choosesus. A collection of things happen in a person’s lifetime, most of which are outcomes of specific choices. Profession, passion, marriage, children – all of them. Grief, on the other hand, is born of its own. It witnesses all of those chapters of our lives with us, and where everything else is fleeting and may disappear over time, grief simply doesn’t. It changes its face; changes its nature. But it never,evergoes away. Pretty fucked up shit, huh?
I’m distracted from my train of thought when Dorran brings his free hand up and scratches the top of his head.
“Ugh, you’regross,” I say by way of distraction, because I don’t want to fall back into the depthless abyss of my mind.
He gives me a bewildered look. “Didn’t youjustsay that I look like aPlayboymodel?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I retort, arching a brow at him.
“It’s not flattery if it’s the truth.”
“What is? My statement from earlier or your current self-proclamation?”
His lips curl as he gives me a rogue smile. “You’re so fucking infuriating.”
“I know,” I all but sing, then put my tongue to my cheek as I rake my eyes over his frame. “I kinda wanna see your abs.”
“What?” the question all but rushes out of him.
“Your abs, Dorran – I want to see them,” I reframe my request for clarity.
He gawks at me like I’m a specimen with a foot for a face. “What iswrongwith you today?”
“I’m sorry, but please rephrase your question because this one doesnot, in any capacity, match my caliber of insanity.”
“My bad,” he says around an airy laugh. “What the fuckareyou, you crazy…thing?”
I flash my teeth in a half grin. “That’s more like it,” I praise. “No, but really, show me your abs.”
“Butwhy?”
“Because I want to see them?”
He looks thoroughly amused as he studies me with a beautiful smile on his face. “You’remad,” he deduces perfectly. When I don’t say anything in return, he chuckles while touching the tip of his tongue against the left corner of his mouth. “Alex and Varsha are going to think I’ve lost it.”
“They already think you’re a slut for me; it won’t make much of a difference, I assure you,” I tell him.
“This is a public violation of my body,” he defends himself, even though I know he’s a millisecond away from giving in.
“Good thing I’ve got contacts at the biggest law firms in the country, then,” I counter.
He shakes his head as he smiles again. “You’re so extra.” He glances ahead for a beat, then sighs and looks at me again before briefly lifting the hem of his tank top, giving me a quick view of hisverydefined abs.
