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I stopped stirring, then gripped the counter. “Jax’s didn’t use to always be Jax’s. When my dad was in college, he and Gram used to go to the place it was before. They’d do that after they went to the ballet. They used to do that a lot.”
That was kind of how the tradition started with my friends’ dads and us guys. We’d do the ballet, then dinner all the time. Though, our dads typically used ballet outings to punish us.
“Oh.” The remorse on Aspen’s face was there again, sadness. It was weird seeing her direct that toward me. Our argument had been a volcanic eruption.
“That’s on me for not thinking about that place,” I said, chewing my lip. “I should have. That was their place. Hers and my dad’s.”
I wanted to fucking kick myself but resisted in the moment. That didn’t stop the guilt, though.
“Thank God she let you walk her home,” I said, and Aspen nodded. I faced my sister. “My sister said she turned her back for only a moment.”
Again, sometimes that was all it took.
The two continued to play their board game, my gram in so much bliss. Bow was too. She always was seeing Gram happy. Even if she wasn’t always there.
Aspen hugged herself, studying the two with a sad smile. “Me too. I asked if she had a phone after I noticed she was confused. I was going to attempt to call one of her contacts for her, but she didn’t have one. At least not on her, and eventually, she let me look at her ID. Again, I found her address.”
And she took her home. She’d done that for a complete stranger.
Aspen’s throat shifted. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what her apology was for. I guess the situation in general, which was fucked up.
She didn’t know the half.
After taking the cocoa off the burner, I didn’t serve it right away. I stared at the brown liquid. “My gram was in a coma for a lot of my dad’s life. An accident…” My fingers tapped the bar. “Anyway, she came out of it when my dad was in college. She missed his entire childhood for the most part.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.” I pushed off the bar. “She woke up, and she had a college student now instead of a little boy.” I gestured toward my face. “My gram’s memories recognize this face. This is the one she saw when she woke up.”
“Which is why she thinks you’re…”
“My dad, yeah.” It really was messed up. It was fucking tragic, but not just for me. Nah, it was nothing for me. Not compared to what my dad got on the other side of all this. “My gram doesn’t know me as her grandson. It’s too confusing for her memories, but it’s worse for my dad. Her mind doesn’t know what to do with him at all, and he can’t ever mention who he is to her. She panics. She has these episodes and… it gets bad.”
I’d downplayed that shit. The struggles… the tears. My gram would have these breakdowns, and that was when I was placed on speed dial. The early days of her disease I had to be at the ready. I had to drop everything because if she saw my face, my dad’s face, things were okay. I made things okay for her. I calmed her.
“Thatcher…” Aspen’s hand reached out, and she had a look in her eyes I’d seen before. It was that day I’d had a panic attack. I’d barely been lucid myself, but I recalled that same look in her eyes. The one of concern, remorse. It’d been there all of two seconds before it shifted to her own panic, fear. I’d scared the shit out of her that night.
But it hadn’t even come close to matching my shit.
Aspen stopped reaching for me in the end. Maybe she thought better. Maybe she got smart. I didn’t know. She hugged her arms. “Is this what you were dealing with at home? You said that. That you were dealing with something.”
My head lifted. I’d dropped my head at some point. My jaw shifted. “Yeah, but there were things I shouldn’t have said to you that night.” There was a lot of shit I had said. Shit I regretted. I swallowed. “I didn’t sleep with that girl.”
I could tell that hadn’t been what she expected to come out of my mouth, and when this conversation started, I would have thought the same. I didn’t hate this girl, but I strongly disliked her sometimes. I disliked my potential to spiral around her.
To be vulnerable around her.
I didn’t like being vulnerable, and my friends could tell anyone that. Vulnerability made you feel shit. It made you emotional and unstable, and that was one thing I couldn’t be. I had too many people looking to me for stability. People like my sister who was going through this shit at home too. I had no excuse for instability because when it came to all this tragic shit at home, I got the good end of the stick. I still had my grandmother in some way, and if my dad could lock down his feelings and take care of everyone around him, I could too. I could be strong too like him.
Aspen… she rattled my shit, though. She made me feel vulnerable. She made me feel, and I didn’t like that shit. It wasn’t her fault, but I’d be naive in saying the guys weren’t right about the shit she could bring up. She was there during some of the most turbulent times in my life.
She just didn’t know it.
And she never would as far as I was concerned. Some things were just better left forgotten, easier that way and not just for me.
It took me a minute to realize those brown eyes hadn’t left me, but there was no longer sympathy there. There was something else, and whatever that was had my stomach clenching and shit. Flipping. Aspen reached out, and when she took my hand, I let her. She stared at our fingers together, hers so slender and warm brown, mine thick and pale.
