“Oh, look!” I hear Rylee exclaim from behind me. “Lily’s home—wow! Isn’t that great?”
“Rylee!” Lily smiles, embracing Rylee in a hug. “It’s been forever! When did you get here?”
“Just a few days ago,” she mumbles into Lily’s shoulder. “Wasn’t really planned—we just happened to run into B at a show.”
“We?” Lily begins, releasing Rylee and looking past her shoulder to look directly at Mia.
There she stands at the bottom of the stairs, looking like a goddamn vision, and I can feel the tension thicken in the air. In her eyes, Mia looks shocked, but nothing else gives her away.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“And you are?” Lily asks. “It’s too late in the day for you to be one of Tony’sconquests. So who do you belong to?”
“Mia Alexander,” she says, clearly taken aback. “I’m a friend of Rylee’s, and a concert photographer. Just here on assignment and the guys were nice enough to let us stay with them.”
Mia looks my way for half a second, not long enough for anyone else to notice. I remain indifferent in order to not give myself away as I wait for Lily’s response along with everyone else in the room.
“Niceenough, huh?” Lily says, turning to face me with a raised eyebrow and a whole lot of venom in her eyes. “Got it.”
“So, uh.” Brandon clears his throat. “Does anyone want to go for waffles?”
“Fantastic idea, Brandon!” Eric exclaims immediately.
“Why…?” Johanna begins, clearly confused.
“Not one more word!” Tony interrupts, pushing her out of the living room and towards the garage. “We’re going to get waffles and no one gets to protest about it.”
Rylee, Mia, Eric, and Brandon follow promptly behind them, leaving Lily and me all alone. I’m searching my brain for something, anything, to say to her, but nothing is happening.
I don’t want to fight with her anymore.
I just want to move on.
“Well, aren’t we going to talk about this?” she asks almost innocently, like we’re about to decide between pizza versus Thai food for dinner and like the little show she’d just put on never happened.
“A little warning would’ve been nice, Lil,” I admit, gritting my teeth. “I’ve got stuff going on.”
“Stuff?” she scoffs. “Like what, that you’re already seeing some nobody behind my back? You needed a little warning to get rid of her before I got home? Nice, Grayson.”
“I’m not seeing anyone, Lily,” I tell her, and it’s the truth. “Not that I owe you any explanation. We’ve been separated for months, and it’s not like you didn’t know the road this was headed down. You don’t hear me asking who you’ve been screwing since the last time I saw you. What gives you the right to know anything about me now?”
That shuts her up for a minute. For the first time, I think I’ve rendered her speechless.
“You may not like it, Grayson, but I’m still your wife,” she says, her voice weaker now. “Maybe I don’t want to throw away ten years. Maybe I want to fight for us.”
“Well, I certainly don’t,” I throw back at her. “There’s no room for me. Everything has to be all about you, all the time! God forbid I ever have something going on. You’re gone on tour all the time, avoiding me, avoidingthis. There’s no reason for us to keep doing this. You weren’t there when I wanted to make an effort. It’s done, and you know it. There’s nothing left to fight for.”
Lily stares at me, clearly taken aback. She sits down on the chair behind her, never taking her eyes off of me.
Honestly, I can’t believe what I just said either.
I’ve never lashed out at her like this before. The mind games and the constant fighting and making up are just so normal with us at this point that I never really thought to say anything about it.
“What’s happened to you?” she asks weakly, clearly trying as hard as she can not to show how emotional she’s getting—unsuccessfully.
“What tells you that something’s different?” I ask bitterly. “Is it that you’ve actually stopped thinking about yourself long enough to notice it, or that I’m not tip-toeing around our problems anymore?”
“Are you trying to hurt me?”
