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“I heard they’ve got you doing some dating blog type of thing. A little different from your usual stuff.”
Grace rolled her shoulders. “Yeah, well … the long-term relationship stuff has sort of lost its luster for me.”
Again, there was no defense. No pompous lecture. And again with that lost-boy look.
“Why are you here, Greg?” she asked softly.
He turned back toward her then, and the regret on his face made her palms tingle.
She knew then why he was here. And she had no idea how she felt about it.
“I believe they call it ‘crawling back,’ ” he said with a sheepish smile.
Grace said nothing. She was too busy trying to sort it all out. Every scorned woman probably dreamed of this moment, and Grace was no different. In those first weeks when he’d confessed to the affair and her life had become one big blur of crying and packing her things, she’d done her fair share of fantasizing about the moment when he crawled back.
It was the same moment when she was supposed to walk away, head held high.
And yet now that he was here the moment felt oddly hollow. Where was the self-righteous anger, or even the self-satisfied glee that it was her chance to turn his life upside down?
Hell, Grace would even take ripping pain over this melancholy regret.
“Let’s not do this, Greg,” she said, feeling weary.
He came to her then, gently taking her hand and leading her to the couch. “Just hear me out. Please.”
And perhaps she wasn’t as immune as she’d thought, because the pleading in his blue eyes and familiarity of his once dear features seemed to hold her hostage. The girl that had fallen in love with the boy he used to be demanded that she hear him out.
He sat in the chair next to her, pulling it nearer until he could continue to hold her hands. She wanted to jerk her fingers out of his grip, but she seemed paralyzed. And 1.0 was saying she owed it to the past ten years to listen, while 2.0 was still nowhere to be found.
“I made a mistake.”
“Yes.”
“I … I’m not seeing Maureen anymore. Not for weeks.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with me,” she said softly.
“Yes you do,” he said, his eyes searching hers. “I want you back, Grace.”
She’d known the words were coming, and still they hung between the two of them like unwanted leftovers that someone forgot to put back in the fridge.
“You’re a cheater, Greg. Not just a one-time slip-up, either. You were sleeping with another woman for months. And you were lying about it.”
He swallowed. “I know. I know. And I know I have absolutely no right to ask for a second chance, and I owe you an explanation, and I don’t really have one beyond I’m such an idiot …”
Even 1.0 could agree with that.
“I think I flipped out there for a while because we’d become so settled, and neither one of us had really been with anyone else, and for some reason I thought that was a bad thing …”
“So not helping your case,” she muttered.
“But now I see that us being together the way we were wasn’t boring, it was right. We’re right. We want the same things, we’re practically the same person …”
Grace held up a finger at that. “We’re not the same person. I never would have cheated.”
Greg gave her a sad smile then. “No, you never would have. You’re too good.”
“Yeah, and just look how well that’s worked out for me. Single and bitter.”
