“Because you’re my home. You’re all I have, Gen. You’re mine.” His voice wobbles on the last word. It comes out hoarse as tears fall down his face. He ducks his head, trying to meet my eyes but I refuse to look at him, knowing he’ll see it written all over my face, that the decision is already made. Even now, I’m trying to protect him from the pain that this is over. That I’ll never be his again.
I frantically grab my bag, my body trembling, and I feel like I’m drowning. This was a mistake—not just tonight but the past ten years have just been mistake after mistake.
“Why are you doing this to us? Why are you picking him?”
“Forme, Will.” My voice is desperate and cutting as I try to choke back the tears. “I’m doing this forme.” He flinches and I finally look at him, grief rising around him and threatening to wash him away.
“Genny…” he whispers, the hurt in his voice clearer than ever. Swallowing, I pull open the door, forcing myself not to look back at the boy I grew up with, at the splinters of our love lain between us, butchered and bleeding.
I make my way down to the lobby, and like I’m on autopilot, I text the only person I know I can count on to not judge me for being here. I push through the double doors, breathing in the sharpness of the fall air, moving to the bench nearest me. I sit numbly, replaying every detail ofWill’s face. Grant’s face. It’s unclear how much time has passed when I finally hear Sloane’s voice.
“Gen…Gen, what happened?” I feel her sherpa coat wrap around my shoulders as she guides me to her car.
Before I get in I turn to her. “Sloane, I fucked up.” The sob I’ve been holding in finally escapes.
“Oh, honey…” I let her wrap her long arms around me, pulling me in as I bury my sobs into her shoulder. We stand there for a second and my mind tugs on all the ways I might be able to fix this. Fix us.
“Do you want me to take you to him?”
I nod, her knowing exactly what I need, and it’s a kindness I don’t deserve.
28
Grant
The rattle of the net, the ragged intake of my breath, the barely audible lapping of the lake—that’s all I hear. Cold air rushes past me, rasps against my bare arms as I set up another shot and miss. It was warmer when I got here, when the sun was still nestled low in the sky. Now, it’s just the moon shining down, spotlighting the hoop.
My heart kicks up, fluttering inside my chest, again. It keeps doing that—beating like it can’t find its rhythm.
And I haven’t felt like this. I haven’t felt like this in a really long time.
I spent the past ten years avoiding it—the burn of abandonment. Had convinced myself that maybe therewassomething in me worth staying for. That it wasn’t me—it was my mother that was the problem.
I swallow past the grief, lining up another shot. Spinning through the air, the ball barely touches the net, bouncing off the ground in one smooth motion—the only clean shot I’ve made all day. The quiet murmur of a car pulling up the road momentarily pulls me out of mythoughts, and my next shot is less seamless; the ball collides with the rim, ricochets before swishing through the net.
A raspy huff filters out of me as I sit at a weathered picnic table, my voice rusty from a near twenty-four hours of disuse. I didn’t go home last night—didn’t want to face my sister whose self-righteousness would’ve deepened the cut Gen made. I stayed on Andy’s couch, grateful for a place to dissociate from it all.
This is what tortures me the most: would I go back and tell her no deal? Would I give up even knowing her, just to avoid this pain?
A resounding no pulses through me every time, is this heavy leaden thing, like an anchor, keeping me stagnant in this sea of sadness. I don’t want to let her go, but I should, because it’ll always be like this—me needing her to be done with him, and her not being ready to.
My dread is acidic as it clamors through what’s left over: the hope, the sweet ache of loving her, the twinge in my heart every time her lips would tug into a smile, the heat that flared across my skin when her knowing eyes would slightly slant my way. That’s the trick with love—you can’t just forget it. It ends and you have to deal with knowing it happened, with remembering what it felt like. Have to deal with knowing you can love some like that, and they can be careless in return.
I wish I could be like Sloane and just have this never ending well of optimism that people will come back. But being separated at seven didn’t spur this permanent hopelessness in her like it did in me. She didn’t sit in a restaurant at eleven and get stuck with the bill. She didn’t lay her heart on a table in a pizzeria and have to pick it back up, shove it back into place on a long walk home, alone.
That is what this feels like. Like I gave a part of myself to Gen and she left it on the table.
The table groans beneath my weight as I shift on the attached bench, elbows on my knees and head in my hands. If I go home, Sloane will definitely want to talk, will tell me exactly how she feels the moment I walk in the door. And I don’t want that right now. She’s right—everything blew the fuck up. There’s nothing else to say.
“What the hell, Grant?”
I pick up my head at the sound of her voice, the sight of Gen in the middle of the court feeling surreal. She wears this tired scowl, her arms crossed and jaw set hard in irritation. I’m about to ask her how she found me when she cuts me off.
“You can’t justdothat.” I can see fear lapping in the back of her gaze as she comes closer, and I fight the urge to wrap myself around her and wash it away. “I went to your apartment. I called?—”
“My phone’s dead. And I stayed at Andy’s.”
“So were you ever going to let me know you were okay? Let me know where you were so we could talk, like I told you I wanted to?” Quiet fury rages in her gaze, her breaths coming heavy as her brows dip, but the words elicit visions of her from last night—tears in her eyes, her phone tightly clasped in her hand as she left me.
