3. Grace
Three
Grace
I lay the breakfast I bought at my favorite bistro while I recounted the strange look the cashier at the liquor store gave me when I bought a bottle of rum and mojito mixer.
“Did he really looked at the clock before ringing you up?” Soraya asks, grabbing the nearest chocolate croissant to her.
“He even pauses as if to give me time to walk out of the store without the liquor,” I chuckle.
“Wow, I’m sorry I made you look like an alcoholic.”
“No need to be sorry. Now, do you want to talk about it or do you just want to watch romcoms in the hope you can believe in love again?”
“Romcoms please. I’ll tell you eventually, but I need to distract my brain for some time until the urge to bawl my eyes out diminishes.”
“I’m so sorry, friend.” I lean in and give her a side hug. “This hug is from Seth and he says that you are a wonderful woman who deserves so much better. His words, not mine.”
Soraya frowns at me before it morphs into a smile. “Grace Stewart is jealous that her fuck buddy complimented me.”
“Who is jealous? Not me. I would never.”
“Honey, you can lie to yourself all you want, but I know that tone. You said all that as it if pained you to do it. If I didn’t know better, I would swear you hate me.”
“It’s impossible to hate you. For the record, I’m not jealous. I’m simply practicing my girlfriend’s tone.”
“What does that mean?”
I sigh and explain how now me and Seth are pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend to my little sister, who shows up unannounced in my apartment while he is in the kitchen. Soraya shakes her head and chuckles. I glare at her for a second before laughing, too. Soraya is the witness to a lot of my crazy shenanigans, and this new one is not the exception and will not be the last one.
I look at my best friend and I’m grateful to have her in my life. She is one of the few good things that comes from the little mountain town my family loves. We meet when her family move into Clear Springs after both of her parents got a job at the Haven Springs Resort. Her parents, like mine, are still there. The difference is my family has been in Clear Springs for generations. My mom married into the Stewart family and breathe new life into their coffee shop and bakery. All of my siblings live there too, except Maggie, who is here in Maxwell College for her degree. I’m the only one who never feels like Clear Springs is home.
Soraya and I went to an out-of-state university together and landed jobs in Maxwell. At the very beginning we live together but when her, now ex, boyfriend asks her to move in I find a place for my own. Somewhere it feels like home. I love my apartment and my building. My neighbors are wonderful. The same year I move into my current apartment, I change jobs and met Seth. He not only is my upstairs neighbor, but his business office is in the same building complex the start-up company I work in has their offices.
Bumping into each other on the apartment elevator and seeing each other at the coffee shop in the complex lends itself for us to build a friendship, and eventually we landed on each other’s bed. It’s been years since I had such a satisfying sex experience and I couldn’t let it go. I ignore the side of my attraction towards him that wasn’t sexual and strike up our current agreement.
I know I felt some type of way when he sends his well-wishes to my best friend. My brain knows nothing, that he is being empathetic to her situation and wants to be supportive. But my heart rebels against it. I don’t like him saying Soraya is a wonderful woman, that she deserves better. My heart screams that I’m the one who deserves better. I deserve to be his girlfriend and not just her friends with benefit. He should introduce me as the love of his life, his future wife, instead of her downstairs neighbor.
“I swear you two need to sit down and have a heart to heart. I can tell you both are drowning in your unspoken feelings, thinking the other one doesn’t feel the same. Now you are pretending to date in front of Maggie, who shows up at your place randomly. You are digging yourself deeper and deeper,” Soraya says.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look like he feels the same.”
“Pretending to date won’t help you see it. Believe I can tell these things.”
I lean back and arch my eyebrow, the strawberry halfway to my mouth. She knows where I’m going with the look.
Soraya sighs. “Just because I didn’t see ahead of time my fiancé was cheating on my doesn’t mean I’m blind to everything.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Your face is pretty loud, Grace Stewart.”
I sigh and focus on the food before us. I’ve already spent a lot of energy this morning and I’m starving. I also don’t want to over think things about Seth. I feel like if I give it space in my brain and my heart, it would change things without me knowing.
Soraya is halfway through her watch list when the damn breaks. In a single breath, she tells me how she found them and how asinine her ex-fiancé’s words to her were as they break up. Thankfully, her mom and her sister, who was her maid of honor, are canceling everything they can and getting whatever refunds they can this late into the wedding preparations.
She is one more sentence away from starting to cry and I rush to the freezer to get one of the three tubs of ice cream I bought. The movies help me distract her until the afternoon when I couldn’t stop her anymore from making mojitos with too much rum and a splash of the mixer.
“I’m glad he packed you a bag. Honestly, if you don’t solidify your relationship with that man and let him fall for another woman, I’m gonna kick you after I let you cry it out for a little bit,” Soraya says, staring at the ceiling of her bedroom.
“What if this is wishful thinking?”
“What’s wishful thinking?”
“That he feels something besides sexual attraction to me.”
“I mean, to me is clear as water, but a lot of these things require communication. I know that what my ex did was horrible. He betrayed me in a way no one in my life has ever done. I also need to see that while he makes that horrible choice, I knew our relationship was growing cold but because I was sure about. I mean, we were going to get married for god sakes. Knowing things weren’t as good as before, I did nothing about it. He may have learned nothing because he is a dumbass, but I learned relationships, the important ones, demand work. One thing is trusting him, which is the biggest thing he broke, and another thing trusting that because we were at a certain level in our relationship, I shouldn’t or didn’t need to do anymore work. I took the relationship for granted and he took me for granted.”
“Your capacity for retrospection outstands me.”
“I’m still incredibly mad and sad about it. I just don’t want to make the same mistake. As much as my heart hurts, I want to learn my lesson, hoping I could move on. Besides, I need to seem okay since my mother decided not only to cancel as much of my wedding as quickly as possible. She is also moving up my little brother’s wedding. Seems like his fiancé is pregnant and her parents want her married before her belly shows.”
“I hate to be the one to say it, but can’t she use some things you already have on schedule for his wedding.”
“Oh, she is. The catering and the cake because we haven’t completed the menus for either and they transfer the deposit from my venue to another venue by the same owners. My brother already paid me the money for that one. I don’t know what she is going to do about the wedding dress appointments, but everything is out of my hands. I was only asked to be present and to look like I’m not heartbroken.”
“Well, that’s easier said than done.”
“Tell me about it.”
We lay beside each other in silence for a while. My eyes grow heavy when her voice startles me.
“Grace, don’t break your heart before anything happens. Talk to Seth.”
My best friend turns her back to me and falls asleep. I’m left staring up at the ceiling, wondering if I’m brave enough to ask him if he feels towards me like I feel towards him.
The next morning, a call wakes me.
“Grace, where are you and why there is a man I don’t know in your apartment with a Valentine’s Day card?” The voice of my mother pushes all the sleep away. I scramble both to explain where I am and to get dressed.