Chapter 13
GRAYSON
Tuesday morning comes like every Tuesday comes. No respect for the calendar of the human heart.
I'm up before her. Coffee on. Her bags by the door because she packed them last night and then spent an hour unpacking and repacking and pretending she wasn't. I noticed. I didn't say anything.
She comes down at seven in jeans and a sweater the color of good bourbon, which is either a coincidence or a cruelty. Hair in the two braids again. Gold hoops back in her ears.
"Morning."
"Morning."
She sees the bags. Sees that I moved them from the top of the stairs to the front door while she was sleeping. Her mouth does a small thing.
"Efficient."
"Eat."
"I can't."
"You can eat a banana."
"Gray."
"Half a banana."
She eats half a banana.
I drink my coffee.
Neither of us says anything about the fact that my chest has been tight since four a.m. when I laid in bed and watched the ceiling and counted the hours until I had to put her in a car.
"Driver's at nine," I say.
"I know."
"I'm taking you myself."
"Gray."
"I'm taking you myself, Simone."
She looks up at me from her coffee. I see the fight start to form and then I watch her let it go.
"Okay."
"Okay."
I drive her down the mountain.
The truck is quiet. The road is the same road I took three hundred times alone in the last three months and it looks different today because there's a woman in my passenger seat with her hand on my thigh.
She doesn't talk much. Neither do I. Every so often she squeezes.
At the bottom of the switchbacks she says, "Play something."
"What."
"Music. Something."
I hit the aux. An old Bonnie Raitt song comes on. She lets out a sound that is almost a laugh.
"Of course this is what you listen to."
"What."
"Nothing. It's perfect. Don't change it."
She rides with her hand on my thigh and her cheek against the window and Bonnie Raitt singing about something given, something taken away, and I watch the road and do not let myself look at her more than once a minute.
At Kelowna airport I pull into the short-term lot. Kill the engine. Don't move.
"Gray."
"Give me a second."
"Okay."
I sit with my hands on the wheel. I take a breath. I look at her.
"Come back to me."
"I'm coming back."
"I'm not putting a timeline on you. I'm not putting a pressure on you. I just need to hear it one more time from this seat."
"I'm coming back, Grayson."
"Okay."
I get out. Walk around. Open her door. Take her hand.
I carry her bags to the curb. I stand with her at the door of the terminal. She puts her face in my chest. I put my arms around her and I hold her like a man who will not let go until he has to.
"Text me when you land."
"Okay."
"Text me when you get to your apartment."
"Okay."
"Text me the embarrassing amount you paid for the airport sandwich."
She laughs into my jacket.
"Okay."
I kiss her. Not long. Long enough that she'll feel it on the plane.
Then I let her go.
She walks through the sliding doors and she doesn't turn around, and I know why she doesn't turn around, and I love her more for it.
I get back in my truck and I drive up the mountain.
I make it forty-two minutes before I pull over on the side of the road above the second switchback and put my head on the steering wheel and breathe like a man who just got told his chest has to work a different way now.
Three days.
I give myself three days.
Not because three is a sacred number, but because that's how long I can last before the cabin starts feeling like a box I built around a missing person.
She texts. I text. She calls on Wednesday night for an hour and we say nothing important and everything important and I sit on the leather chair in the office and listen to her eat cold pad thai over the line and I think about how I used to hate the sound of a woman eating on the phone and now it is the best sound I've heard in three days.
Thursday she calls at noon.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"The Globe wants me to fly to Ottawa Saturday. Follow up interview with a source. It's a two day trip."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"You're a journalist. You fly places for work. It's okay."
"I just. I don't want you to think."
"I'm not thinking anything. Do your job."
"Okay."
"Simone."
"Yeah."
"Tell me how you are."
A pause.
"Tired. My apartment feels weird. I slept in your shirt two nights in a row and I think I need to wash it but I don't want to. Marcus came over last night with dinner. I didn't cry but it was close. I keep reaching for my left and expecting your arm."
"Yeah."
"How are you."
"Bad."
"Good bad or bad bad."
"Bad bad."
"Gray."
"I'm coming to Toronto."
Silence on the line.
"When."
"Tonight."
"Gray."
"I've got a ticket. Seven thirty out of Kelowna. Lands at one your time. I'll cab from the airport. I won't wake you up. I'll wait outside."
"Grayson Mercer."
"What."
"I said I was coming back."
"I know."
"You said you would wait."
"I lied. Or I thought I meant it and I didn't. Take your pick. I'm not going to sit in this cabin another night alone knowing you're cold in a bed in a city without me in it."
A long breath on the line.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay come."
"You don't have to make room for me. You have your job. You have your life. I'm not coming to take space. I'm coming because I can't be that far from you right now. I'll stay in a hotel. I'll show up to your door when you want me and I'll leave when you don't. I'll be where you need me."
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Just come."
I land at one in the morning. I'm in a cab by one thirty. Downtown Toronto is quiet in the way only downtown Toronto is quiet, which is to say not very. I have her address in my phone. I told her not to wait up.
She waits up.
I see her from the street when the cab pulls up. Third floor apartment. Light on. A shape at the window in a t-shirt that I'm pretty sure is mine.
I pay the driver. Grab my duffel.
The shape disappears.
By the time I get to the stoop the door is opening.
She is barefoot on the sidewalk in April. Hair loose. One of my shirts. Leggings. A jacket thrown over it all like she didn't have time to find the zipper.
She runs.
I drop the duffel.
She hits me in the chest and I catch her and her legs go around my waist and her arms go around my neck and she buries her face in my shoulder and she doesn't say anything and I don't either.
I stand on a Toronto sidewalk in the middle of the night holding a woman who flew from my cabin to this city four days ago and could not survive another four hours without me and I knew it because I could not survive another four hours without her.
"I had a speech," she says into my neck.
"Yeah?"
"It was a good one."
"Tell me."
"Can't remember a word of it."
"That's okay."
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Don't go back without me."
My whole chest locks up.
"Simone."
"I'm done. I'm done pretending I can do this from here.
I was going to call you in the morning. I was going to say it.
I had it in my phone. I was going to say I'll finish the follow up from the cabin.
I'll file from the porch. I'll come back to Toronto when I have to and I'll go wherever my job takes me but home is where you are and home is on that mountain.
I was going to say that. I was going to say it in the morning. "
"Say it now."
"Home is where you are."
"Again."
"Home is where you are."
I set her down. Keep my hands on her waist.
"I was coming here to ask you."
"Ask me what."
"To come back with me. Whenever you were ready. This week. Next month. After the follow up filed. I was going to ask and then wait."
"You flew to Toronto at one in the morning to ask me a question and then wait?"
"Yeah."
"Grayson."
"What."
"You are a ridiculous man."
"I know."
"I love you."
It is the first time she has said it.
I close my eyes.
"Simone."
"I love you. I love you. I should have said it on the porch Saturday. I should have said it in the truck. I should have said it when I said home. I'm saying it now. I love you."
"Say it one more time."
"I love you, Gray."
I kiss her on a sidewalk in Toronto at two in the morning.
A guy walking a dog across the street gives us a wide berth.
She laughs into my mouth.
I pick up my duffel. She takes my hand. She leads me up the stairs to the third floor apartment that I have never seen and will never sleep in more than a handful of nights, and somewhere above us a neighbor slams a door and somewhere a streetcar groans past on the rails.
I follow her home.
Home is wherever she takes me next.