Chapter 36
After Grey
The next day, Grey tried to call me. Then he tried to text me.
Then he messaged Kellan and Josh on Instagram to have them come pester me.
Thankfully, they didn’t barge into my room—which was probably what Grey was hoping for.
They waited until I found my way into the kitchen in search of snacks or liquor.
I hadn’t really made up my mind which would be the preferable find.
“Everything all right with you and Grey?” Josh asked from behind the stack of books and a pile of color-coded notes he was reviewing in preparation for finals.
“He messaged us on Instagram asking that you call him back,” Kellan said from a much-less-studious perch on the couch while he played his PlayStation.
“Sure, yeah, things are great,” I said with only a drop of sarcasm. I wasn’t in the mood to get into it with them.
Opening the freezer, I found it stocked with a half a gallon of ice cream and a bottle of rum.
I went for the ice cream to find it empty except for an amount so tiny I doubted it would even be a spoonful.
“Seriously, guys? I thought we talked about not being snack teases.” I threw the container in the general direction of the trash can—somehow making it in—and snatched the rum instead.
“Because rum for breakfast is usually an indicator that life is going well,” Josh said.
I made a bratty face at him, flicking the lid in his direction before taking a swig. My eyes watered as liquid fire shot down my throat. Fuck it, I might as well tell them. “I ended things with Grey last night.”
That was enough to make both roommates stop everything. Kellan dropped his controller in surprise, and Josh carefully set down his red pen.
“What happened?” Kellan asked, turning to look over the back of the couch and leaving his teammates to be slaughtered in the game he’d been playing on the screen behind him.
“I just couldn’t do the discreet thing anymore.” I took another swig of rum then put the bottle back in the freezer. I didn’t know where the lid had gone, so I set it upright and hoped it wouldn’t spill.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Josh asked.
“Not really,” I replied. Then I proceeded to give them a play-by-play of the previous night’s conversation, from how it had started with Grey pulling away to me realizing I couldn’t take it any longer.
My roommates were silent as I described it all.
“I don’t know,” I said after I finished my story. “Was I being too harsh?”
They both shook their heads before the sentence had even finished leaving my lips.
“Absolutely not,” Josh said.
“Yeah, you put up with a lot to be with him,” Kellan added. “I’m not saying he isn’t worth it, but he kind of needs to give something in return. Band or no band.”
“And like you said, things will only get more difficult if they keep going the way they are. Do you really want to put yourself through that?” Josh asked.
“So, you think I made the right decision.”
“One thousand percent,” Kellan said.
“Should I call him?”
“No!” they both said so vehemently that it was almost comical.
I couldn’t help but smile grimly.
So, I didn’t return his calls. By Wednesday that week, he’d stopped trying to contact me.
His last text was simply I’m sorry. By then, I was too slammed with all the schoolwork I’d been putting off to dwell on my emotions.
Finals came and went in a blur of anxiety and studying, and the next thing I knew, the semester was over.
True to personal form, I was alone in my room on my last Friday night before going home.
Student pickups were scheduled for the following Monday morning, and damn near everyone on campus was out partying and celebrating one last weekend of freedom before their parents came and brought them back to the real world.
Not me. My plan was to be superproductive by staying in bed, wrapped in my blankets, desperately trying to drown out every emotion I’d been repressing for the past couple of weeks as they welled up in me all at once.
I was successful at the lying in bed part—not so much when it came to ignoring my emotions.
Focusing on any one app on my phone was proving to be much more difficult than I thought it would be.
I kept scrolling through my texts with Grey, fighting every instinct to reach out to him.
During finals, staying away had been easy since I’d been fighting for my life in those exams. But with nothing else to fixate on, all I could think about was him.
Was it that unreasonable for him to ask me to keep things low-key between us?
Maybe I’d overreacted. A lot. Suddenly, alone in my room, the weeks of frustration didn’t seem so bad.
A text popped up at the top of my screen, and my heart leaped in my chest… until I saw it wasn’t from Grey, but from Kellan.
You should get dressed.
Why? I responded.
We’re going out to celebrate our emancipation.
That’s a fancy word. Did Josh teach it to you?
Shut up. I know words.
Right…
I’ll be home in fifteen. Your ass better be ready.
I didn’t reply after that. He wasn’t my parent or my boss. I could do whatever I wanted, and I had a full night of moping ahead of me. Fifteen minutes later, I was fully dressed and waiting in the living room when Kellan and Josh walked in.
“Told you he’d be ready.” Kellan smirked.
Josh grimaced and handed over a bill to Kellan. “You owe me twenty bucks, Ethan.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, refusing to acknowledge the fact that they’d placed a bet on my level of preparedness.
“It’s a surprise.” Kellan winked.
When I looked to Josh for answers, he held up his hand. “Hey, don’t ask me. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
I didn’t bother asking further, unable to find the energy to spare.
Besides, it only took us a few minutes of walking to reach our destination, which turned out to be Lucky Charlie’s Bar.
I realized as we walked in the front door and handed our IDs to the bouncer that I hadn’t been there in months.
Has it really been since the first time I saw Grey perform?
My roommates and I had been frequent customers before then—ever since we’d figured out which bartenders didn’t care to check for scrubbed off Xs on the backs of underage college student hands.
It was oddly sad that we hadn’t spent as much time here this year.
I grinned at Kellan. “Okay, I’ll admit it. This is a great surprise.”
“I know, right?” he replied, clearly pleased with himself. “I wasn’t about to let you go back home for the summer without getting hammered here one last time.” He was such a thoughtful friend.
We quickly retrieved drinks—beer and tequila shots—and found a table to cluster around.
Josh raised his shot glass in the air. “To another successful year.”
“And to one fucking less year to go!” Kellan added enthusiastically.
“Thank God for that,” I said louder than I’d meant to, and the others laughed.
We downed our shots.
We chatted aimlessly, falling easily into our regular rhythm.
Even while we were talking, my mind wandered.
Somehow, Kellan mentioning that we were one year closer to graduation made me consider something that hadn’t occurred to me before.
What would next year be like without Grey in my personal life but seeing him everywhere around campus?
What would it be like to see him gaining more and more fame and maybe hear him accidentally on the radio, only to think about what could have been?
Maybe I should just transfer for my senior year, I thought, though I knew that wasn’t practical, and even if it were, I wouldn’t want to leave everything else behind just to get away from a guy—no matter who he was.
As time went on, Josh started acting strange.
He was notoriously bad at keeping secrets, which was why he usually just said he wasn’t allowed to give information so he had as little to lie about as possible.
But since I’d been so excited about Lucky Charlie’s, I’d assumed the secret or surprise Josh had clearly been keeping had been the bar we’d spent so much time at over the years.
Kind of doing something for old times’ sake, specifically to pull me out of my funk.
Watching Josh’s behavior, I wasn’t so sure.
“Everything okay?” I asked him after he’d checked his watch for the third time in five minutes.
“Yeah, why?” He tried to play it cool, but he was a little too twitchy for it to feel natural.
I narrowed my eyes, looking from him to Kellan and back. “Charlie’s was the surprise tonight, wasn’t it?”
Josh didn’t meet my gaze, while Kellan looked straight into my eyes when he said, “Of course it was.” He was a much better liar than Josh.
“Right.” I thought through every possible scenario that I could conjure at that moment. If I were in their shoes and planning something for me, I’d probably plan on… “Please tell me you two didn’t.”
“Okay then.” Kellan laughed. “We didn’t.”
“Yeah, you’ll have to be more specific,” Josh said, seeming to relax finally.
Before I could force myself to voice my worst suspicions, the room around us erupted into applause, and I looked up to see Grey and the rest of Dreamscape walking out on stage.
Grey had his guitar strapped to his back, and the rest of the band made their way to instruments already set up for them.
My heart leaped painfully at the sight of Grey, which really sucked because I’d been hoping that the next time I saw him, I would be unfazed.
It had been a laughable hope. I doubted I would be able to so much as think about Grey for the rest of my life without my insides doing a weird twist.
I cursed myself internally. How did I not notice any posters at the entrance? I was sure that if I’d been looking for it, I would’ve noticed that Dreamscape was performing tonight. How did I not even think it was a possibility? After all, this was where I’d first met Grey.