Chapter 27 #2
Connor’s voice is thick and resigned as he says, “I always do, Mom.”
After we disconnect the call a few minutes later, Connor tosses the phone aside. “Sorry about that.” He shakes his head. “I overstepped with the book.”
“It’s okay,” I assure him.
Before he or I can say more, his phone pings with a text. He snickers as he reads the message.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“It’s my mom telling me I have some explaining to do.”
His phone pings again. “And that one? ”
Connor looks at the screen. He rubs his thumb and forefinger over his eyes and groans. “She said ‘and for the record, we love her.’” A tired shrug pulls at his shoulders with an inconceivable weight that I feel in my bones.
“I love your parents. We used to sit together at your football games. Your mom would draw with me sometimes and your dad always had bubble gum for me in his pocket.” I grin at the memory.
“They always wanted a daughter. I bet you felt like a breath of fresh air for them.”
Our chairs still tucked flush together, I lean deeper into my seat and Connor does the same. I don’t know why I rest my head on his shoulder, but I do. I don’t know why his fingers trace shapes over my knuckles, but they do. Are we ever going to figure this— us —out?
You have to be willing to talk about it, Gretchen!
“Guys look at you, too, you know,” he says.
“What?”
“Earlier you were talking about women noticing me and I’m saying that men see you, too.”
I scoff. “Yeah, well, I don’t tend to keep their interest for long.”
His body tenses. “Why would you think that?”
“It’s how it’s always been. They expect me to be a certain way and eventually they realize I’m kind of boring and I’m quiet and…”
The motion of his fingers over my knuckles stops. “And what?”
I sit up and turn to face him. He shifts to meet me.
“And,” I say, “I don’t give up parts of myself very easily.”
“Will you tell me?” he asks.
“There’s not much to tell. You already know about the stuff that went down in high school.” He nods stiffly. “And I um…I didn’t really date at all freshman or sophomore year of college.”
I couldn’t force the memories of those two years away no matter how hard I tried.
Freshman year was full of so much promise and hope and it was all wrapped up in Connor.
Then year two hit like a freight train. Hopeless and lost, I had to figure out how to adapt to a life where I’d suddenly woken up and a limb was missing.
All the confidence that had taken me so long to get back, gone.
“I dated a guy for a few months junior year and he was really nice. I liked him.” I didn’t love him, but I’d given up on that by that point.
“But I always kept him at arm’s length…physically.
He never pressured me though.” I clear my throat.
“Eventually, I decided to rip the band-aid and just do it, but when the time came…I couldn’t.
He was really understanding about the whole thing.
“He drove me home, kissed me goodnight and I thought everything was okay, but…I don’t know, he suddenly got really busy and couldn’t make time to see me. It took a couple weeks, but eventually he stopped calling.”
If the silence between us was a movie screen, you’d see snapshots of every text, every phone call, every video chat that propelled me through my days as a freshman on campus.
Hundreds of miles from home, Connor became my anchor, my safe space.
I never said the words out loud to anyone, but I fell in love with Connor Vining that year.
Before I ever tasted his lips or knew how good it felt to be pressed up against him, I loved him.
I was ready to give every piece of myself to him on that balcony.
He held my entire heart and I trusted him with it, implicitly.
“Who else?” he grits out. The anger, the pain in his eyes—it hurts him to listen to this.
“Why do you want to know so badly?”
“Because I need to know, Gretch.”
I tilt my head. “You plan to defend my honor, QB?” It’s a sorry attempt to lighten the mood. Not surprisingly, Connor doesn’t take the bait.
“Maybe,” he seethes.
I huff. “Good luck with that because the guy last fall was a foreign exchange student from Scotland who weighed like 300 pounds. A legit modern-day Viking. He’d have a field day on your pretty face and I’d prefer to keep your face intact.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not any more than the previous guy did.”
“What happened?”
I release a heavy sigh. “He was looking for a semester fling and I wasn’t that kind of girl.”
“Keep talking. What else? ”
“Good God, Connor. You wanna know? Fine.” I drop my voice to a furious whisper. “He waited until our sixth date when he had his tongue down my throat and his hand down my pants to tell me that he didn’t want to be serious or monogamous.”
The tense lines of his face pull tight. He pushes both hands through his hair, cursing under his breath.
“Connor, you’re getting upset over nothing. I’m not heartbroken over either of those guys. I’m fine.” I rest a reassuring hand on his forearm.
“I need names,” he demands.
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
“Gretchen.”
“Connor.”
I meet his gaze, a challenge taking shape. Things do not need to get this serious. I shove him in the shoulder, widening my smile. “I swear, you’re allowed to let this go.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Then I’ll give you their names and you’ll probably get in a few good punches, but they will too and you’ll end up with anothe r black eye.”
I give him a teasing look from under hooded lashes. Our gazes lock, both of us remembering the shiner he sported that summer he and Drew visited before they moved to Chicago.
“I’m not scared of a black eye,” he says.
“Oh, I know. You never told me how you got the one that summer, by the way.”
He furrows his brows…a little too much. “Yeah, I did.”
“No. You told me you got into a fight over ‘dumb guy stuff.’” I emphasize with air quotes.
“And…that’s it.”
“And…that’s not it,” I mimic. “That was a lie. At the very least it wasn’t the whole truth.”
He averts his eyes and scrubs a hand down his face.
“Come on, old man. Time’s a wastin’.” I grin, lifting my brows with a shoulder shimmy to nudge him along.
“Don’t, Gretch. ”
“I need names,” I growl. He looks at me sidelong, daring me to press him. “Tell me who hurt you, Vining.”
“No.” The command sounds more like a warning. My nerves begin to tingle, but I bite back the urge to return his intensity.
I laugh nervously. “Hey now! I just told you two very embarrassing stories about myself. The least you could do is give me one sordid truth from your past to level the playing field. Come on, QB. Where’s that chivalry you’re so famous for?”
The distressed look on Connor’s face unnerves me and my conviction wanes.
His throat bobs an obscene number of times. He may as well be swallowing his voice box down into his chest for all the words he’s not saying.
“Connor,” I plead, unsure if I even want to know whatever it is he’s intentionally kept from me for the past six years.
“It was your brother,” he blurts out.
The words hang in the air. I’m confused, but I don’t immediately think much of them. “Okay, you guys are best friends, I’d have assumed you’ve gotten in a fight or two over the years.”
He folds his arms across his chest.
Cautiously, I ask, “What did you fight about?”
“McDormand was talking shit and Drew was drunk. He threw a sloppy punch and my face got in the way.”
He won’t look at me and it’s the worst kind of tell.
“What was he saying?”
He finally turns, meeting my stare. “Why the hell does it matter?”
“Because it’s written all over your face!”
“He was talking about you!” he spews. His eyes squeeze shut in the wake of the words he already wishes he could take back.
Bewildered, I reply, “I don’t understand. Why was McDormand talking about me?”
Connor’s next words tumble out of him like a relentless barrage of pellets from a BB gun.
Close range precise hits that hurt like hell.
“Because he saw you at the pool, thought you were hot and decided to poke the bear also known as your brother. Drew went ape shit on him, punched me in the process and loudly declared to all of us that his sister was off-limits.”
My face drops.
Dots connect.
Rage, like a tsunami, consumes me.