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“I hope that call works out for you. I really do.”
After Dottie drove away, I made my way back to the old oak tree. I scrolled through the short list of contacts, trying to find his name. Before I could talk myself out of it, I called him. It rang once before he picked up.
“Kent?”
“Hey, Gray,” I said with a sniffle, silently cursing myself for losing my composure so soon.
“Hold on.” He was quiet for a moment, and then there was the sound of a door closing in the background. “Sorry, I just wanted to get somewhere quiet. Thanks for calling me back. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. Listen, about what you said in the office. Kent, I—”
“It’s fine. Really, we’re okay. I want us to be, at least. Gray, I don’t want this. I can’t do it anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Us. The fighting. It hurts. What happened that night. Everything that happened after. It’s hurt for twenty years. I don’t want …” I pulled the phone away from my face and pressed my mouth into the crook of my elbow, trying to muffle my sobs from him. I was sitting in the same spot where Trevor made me kneel that night.
My phone fell into the grass as everything crashed inside of me at once. Dottie, Isaac, Gray, Trevor. Every moment that was stolen from us. The dam had burst, and once the tears started, I couldn’t make them stop. During one of the brief periods of silence between my sobs, Gray’s voice called out to me. I reached down for my phone and saw that he’d been sitting on the line for five minutes.
“Gray?”
“I’m here.” His voice was soft. It was like he was handling me with kid gloves.
“Do you think you could get away for a little while? I could really use a friend right now.”
“I’m already in the truck. I’ve just been waiting for you. Where are you?”
“The lake. Our spot.”
“Oh, Half-pint. You’re all alone?”
Pushing my face against my knees, I choked back another sob. “I don’t want to be. I just—I needed to—thought I could handle it.”
“I’m coming. I’m driving now. Just stay here with me, okay? Stay on the phone.”
If he was at work when I called, that would put him fifteen minutes out. I laid back in the grass, against our tree, and I closed my eyes.
REASON SEVEN
It doesn’t have to be okay. It just has to be true.
Onmyeighteenthbirthday,Gray picked me up, promising me a night I’d never forget. When we arrived at the lake, he’d jumped out of the truck before the engine had even died down. As he ran through the grass, he lifted his shirt over his head and let it fall to the ground. He fumbled with his jeans, unbuttoning them as he sprinted. When he reached the water’s edge, he shoved them off and threw them over his shoulder. I ran to catch up with him, but he was in the water before I had even made it halfway. When I approached, Gray was floating in the lake, facing me. The crescent moon lit us up, and as I undressed, his eyes never left mine.
I had been dating Kate for two months in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that I was completely, madly, head over heels in love with him. He had been catching me staring at him more and more frequently and had started making comments about the lingering looks, always said with a smile I couldn’t quite read. I was terrified of scaring him off and thought that if he saw me with a girl, he would know that he was safe.
Stripped down to just my underwear and the last of my pride, I made my way to him. The water was warm, and pond moss squirmed against the soles of my feet. I floated toward him, both of our bodies bobbing up and down in the water like buoys.
I’d missed this. Our time together there. It was just a small watering hole on his parents’ land that was probably more of a pond than a lake, but when he’d shown it to me, that’s what he’d called it. Lake Lanier. I didn’t question him on it. I didn’t question him on a lot of things. Some topics were just too scary to broach.
Since I’d started seeing Kate, my time with Gray had dwindled, and I’d already begun planning breakup speeches. I just needed to hold out for a few more weeks. Long enough to give him a sense of satisfaction that I was most certainly heterosexual, and most definitely not in love with him, nor had I been in love with him for the last five years.
Gray’s hands were moving around under the water, and I stared at him, unsure what he was doing. Mental images of water-beasts tugging at his legs with their sharpened teeth ran through my mind. It wasn’t until he pulled his hand into view, holding his dripping underwear, that I realized he was, in fact, not being eaten by a lake-living shark. He reared his arm back and hurled the boxer briefs onto the shore. Before I could react to the fact that he was completely naked in front of me, his head disappeared underneath the water. His legs kicked up into the air, and for the first time, I caught sight of his bare ass. I couldn’t have willed my erection away if I’d tried.
He tickled my thigh underwater, but just as quickly as his hand grazed my skin, it was gone. I turned around, searching for surfacing air bubbles. There were none. It was like he’d simply disappeared. There was movement directly under me, then his hand was on my calf. Even the protective barrier of water wasn’t a match for the sensation of fire on flesh provided by his touch.
“Stop that,” I shouted into the darkness. His hand rose higher, grazing my ass as he surfaced, his cheeks puffed out at the sides. “Don’t even think—”
He puckered his lips, spitting a hefty stream of lake water into my face.
“I hate you. God, I hate—”
