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“What are you doing here, Grey?”
With my hands in my lap, I looked up towards her.
“Guess I’m not getting that vodka after all, am I?”
She pursed her lips in displeasure. “No. Now, out with it. Why are you here?”
“What?” I replied. “Can’t I pay a visit to my good friend?"
As I spoke, Katy’s hair bounced from left-to-right as she shook her head. Glaring down at me through the short, brown strands, her freckled complexion gave her away. She’d already spoken to Maddie about what happened between us. Well, if nothing else I could save some time without getting into a whole back story with her.
“What did you expect her to say, Grey?”
“Yes?” I replied with a rising tone. “What the hell kind of question is that, Katy? Why wouldn’t she want to marry me?”
Katy didn’t respond but instead let out a deep exhale. She passed by me, taking a seat in a chair to my left. As she did, she swept her skirt under her rear and crossed her legs, turning her upper body towards mine.
“Grey,” she began. “You really can’t be this much of an idiot. Rich, successful, worldly? It’s not possible. You couldn’t have done a much worse job of this if you tried.”
Leaning away from her, I wrinkled my brow in disgust as she continued to chastise me.
“You cannot demand someone marry you based on some feelings of obligation you have.”
I shook my head. “I’m not following, Katy. This is a ‘no lose’ deal for Maddie. And the baby.”
“Grey, Jesus!” she said as she lifted both arms skyward. “Don’t you get it? This is not a ‘deal’. Okay? Can you just, for once in your life, not see everything in terms of winning and losing?”
Scowling, I sunk back into the chair. Katy’s expression conveyed sincerity and while she may have been a lot of things, disingenuous wasn’t one of them. I chewed the inside of my lip for moment or two as we looked at one another in silence. Overhead, the florescent lighting buzzed as I stared at her.
“All right,” I began. “Fine. I’m listening. Explain this to me."
Katy remained silent for several more moments. It was obvious she wasn’t sure how to begin.
“Let’s just get this over with, Katy.” I said, interrupting her self-imposed trance.
Katy nodded and flashed a curt smile of uncertainty to her lips before she started to speak.
“It’s like this, Grey,” she began. “Maddie doesn’t want to be married to you because you feel like it’s ‘the right thing to do’, and she certainly doesn’t want to be a pawn in your family drama. Marriage is about the love two people share. You do understand the difference don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Frankly, Katy, no I don’t. People get married all the goddamned time for ‘love’, and more than half wind up divorced anyway. I never said I didn’t care about her. I do. I care about Maddie in a deep way.”
“Mmm, hmm…” she replied. The tone in her utterance suggested I hadn’t done a good enough job of explaining myself. So, I continued to try and get my point across.
“I mean if she’s willing to be married to me if I tell her I love her, well, then that doesn’t change any of the other things that happen because of it. In other words, I’m still taking care of her and the baby, and she’s still helping me meet the condition of my grandfather’s will. It seems like a game of semantics to me.”
“That’s just it, Grey,” she said, as she reached across and wrapped her hand around my forearm. “It makes all the difference in the world.”
I scoffed. “So, what? So none of the other things matter? The fact that I’m here, willing to do what needs to be done to care for her and my child? That’s all a load of shit?”
Katy shook her head. “No, I never said it was, Grey. You’re doing the honorable thing. No one is disputing that at all. It’s just that, well, the way you’re going about it is wrong.”
We all make mistakes in life, fuck things up. That’s a goddamn part of living. But frankly, I didn’t appreciate being scolded or corrected by Maddie’s mouthpiece. Katy’s accusations were pushing me close to the edge of my tolerance for bullshit. But before I could reply and tell her what I thought of all her nonsense, she continued.
“If you love her, then do this the right way, Grey. Don’t make her feel like you’re doing her a favor for God’s sake. Do you have any idea how utterly unromantic something like that is?”
I thinned my lips as she finished speaking.
“Do you love Maddie, Grey? That’s all she wants to hear from you, if you do. She wants to know you feel the same way about her as she does about you.”
“What am I supposed to say to that, Katy?”
“It’s simple, Grey. Are you in love with Maddie or not?”
“It’s not simple, Katy. But, if you must know, actually I…”
As I started to reply, my phone vibrated inside the pocket of my coat. I reached inside and felt around for it, grabbing it as it buzzed in the palm of my hand. I pulled it out and noticed my mother’s number flash across on the tiny display in backlit bright blue lettering. There was only one reason she would have called. I nodded as I looked at it and then slid it back inside my coat pocket.
“Katy, I’ve got to be going.”
“Going?” she asked with a look of confusion on her face. “Who was that? Maddie?”
I shook my head as I readied myself to leave.
“No.”
“I don’t understand,” she said as I began to walk away. “Are you going to talk to her? Straighten this out?”
I paused for a moment and looked down at her.
“Thanks for the chat, Katy, but I’ll deal with Maddie.”
As I began to walk away, Katy continued, “Grey, wait! You never answered my question. Do you love Maddie? Are you going to tell her how you feel?”
I opened the office door and walked out. I had a grandfather— and a hero--to bury.
GREY
It was a helluva thing, saying goodbye to the old man. In a lot of ways, I’d written him off in recent months. It was inevitable, and he wouldn’t have tolerated me getting distracted by it for too long anyway. But, it was the hardest goddamn day of my life so far and frankly, I was glad to have it behind me. Of course, now that he’d passed, I had to deal with the conditions of his estate as the trustee.
And so it was a couple of days after the funeral I found myself in the offices of the estate attorneys. We sat in a large conference room. A half dozen of the immediate family were there, including my mother. None of them had been privy to the details of the will, so I figured I’d get a good laugh out of seeing their reaction. I have to say I enjoyed watching their expressions transform from a smug sense of entitlement, to abject horror as they realized my marital status would determine their economic status.
As it happened, the cousin I despised the most, Albert, was the first to voice his displeasure. A fat, balding hump of a man, Albert looked like he lived — lazy and uninspired.
“This is an outrage!” he grumbled. Redness roiled to the top of his bald head like mercury in an old-fashioned thermometer. Fixing his ire on the attorneys, he continued, “So the fate of my money will be determined by whether or not my playboy cousin gets married? You can’t be serious!”
Over the next few minutes, the attorneys did their best to settle him down. For a moment or two, it looked as if he might have a stroke. Not that I would have minded, of course. Yet, in spite of the attorneys making the terms of the will crystal-goddamned clear, Albert continued to complain about the influence I had over ‘his money’. Drinking a cup of hot, black coffee I glared at him as the taste of the bitter liquid lingered in my mouth. I permitted him to carry on for a few more minutes until at last, I’d heard enough.
“Albert,” I began. “It’s not your goddamn money, you selfish prick. It belonged to our grandfather. And, let me tell you something. If it wasn’t for the love I had for him, I’d see to it that not a single one of you got a dime of it.”
Albert swallowed hard and sunk back into his chair. As he did, the leather covering the back of it groaned. He lingered there for a moment or two, gathering his thoughts. But eventually, like a rabid dog backed into a corner, he barked an insult at me.
“Why don’t you just marry one of your bimbos and be done with it?”
If it wouldn’t have violated the privacy of the conversation I’d had with my grandfather on the subject, that right there would have been the final straw. I wished he could hear the way they talked about his dying wish. Here the old man was genuinely concerned about my well-being, wanting me to be happy, and these vultures couldn’t give two shits. The only thing any of them cared about was not losing their upscale homes and country club memberships.
Sickening.
Even so, I was still no closer to having anyone on my short list of marriage material. I’m sure they’d all get a great fucking laugh out of hearing Maddie rejected me. At the rate things were going with her, I might not be married inside of a year, even if I wanted to be.
Pretty goddamn ironic.
