Chapter 15 #3
Gray sprung up from his chair, peering down the short stairwell. Lifting his hand in the air, he waved at me, his smile big, bright, and beautiful. “Kent. Hey. Hi. Hey. Come on up.”
“Someone’s perky,” I said, climbing the stairs two at a time. “Hey! Hi. Hey there.”
We’d been doing this since the day we shared at the lake.
With all doubt of a possible romance rekindling off the table, we’d spent our time at work together doing various platonic things like stumbling stupidly over our greetings, catching ourselves gazing longingly into each other’s eyes and then looking away, and buying each other lunch and sharing it in the locked employee break room that only Gray had the key to.
It was all very above board, guaranteed to leave us with little to no emotional desperation.
“Bernice wants to know if we have, and these are her exact words: a ‘delicious little fruitcake’ hidden away in the back.”
He winked at me. “Besides you?”
“First of all, that’s a homophobic slur and I don’t care for it. And secondly …” I blushed because he’d essentially just called me a tasty little treat. “Yeah. Besides me."
I sat in the chair beside Gray and inched closer to him. He clicked away at his keyboard, searching the store’s inventory. Our knees brushed together through no fault of my own, and then my chair swiveled, causing my leg to rub back and forth against his. Repeatedly.
“Aha!” he unnecessarily shouted directly into my ear.
“One left. Two-liter for the win!” He lifted his arm in the air, seeking a high-five.
I would have been remiss in my role as his best platonic friend not to offer one, so I did.
Our hands remained connected for several seconds.
“Should be on the shelf where we had the seasonal stock last year. Come on, I’ll help you with the ladder. ”
On our way to the stockroom, Gray got called to the front for a cash register override, leaving me to manage the deathtrap masquerading as a ladder on my own.
My knees were wobbly by the time I reached the eighth step.
When I reached the ninth, I thought I might go into cardiac arrest. “Keep it together, Kent,” I scolded myself.
“You’re good. I’ve got you, Half-pint.”
My knees shook with surprise. Grabbing the ladder with both hands, I managed to avoid falling, but only just. Once I had regained control of my legs, I glanced down. Gray was staring up at me with a grin. “You—you can’t just—don’t sneak up on me like that. I could’ve fallen.”
Gray shrugged. “I’d catch you.”
I thought of letting go just to test his sincerity, then I remembered how much I enjoyed having bones that weren’t broken.
I took another step up the ladder before glancing back down at him with a stupid smile on my face.
A reflection of light caught my eye, and I turned back toward the unexplainably long shelf in front of me.
One round tin sat at the very back. I couldn’t tell if it was fruitcake or just a seasonal assortment of butter cookies, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try to find out.
One final step lifted me high enough to reach over, but the tin was all the way at the back, at least six feet away.
"What kind of madman makes a shelf this long? Is this even structurally sound? Honest to God, Grayson, if I die up here, I'm going to kick your ass." I stretched my arm out in vain, not even making it halfway toward the back. “I can’t—I can’t reach—argh!”
“Are you alright? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not long enough—”
“I know, Kent. I’ve seen it in person, remember?”
“I swear to God, Grayson. If you don’t stop making jokes about my dick, I’m going to pull it out and measure it in front of you.
” Gray coughed so hard that he started choking, and I turned my attention back to the task at hand.
“It’s right there, but I can’t reach it.
Can you grab me a broom? I might be able to pull it toward me. ”
“We can just tell her it was a mistake in the system. She could probably find one on . There’s no telling how long this one’s even been here.”
“She’s nine hundred years old, and she’s spending money she clearly doesn’t have on this. Leave her alone.” I glanced down and scowled at him. “And get me the goddamn broom.”
“Don’t talk like that, Kent. Gosh. You know that word makes me nervous.”
I wanted to look down and shoot him a death glare, but I was face-first in an endless tunnel, reaching for a fruitcake long past its never-ending expiration date.
My crotch was on the top step of the ladder, and I shuddered when it wiggled beneath me.
“Oh my god, if you’re shaking the ladder on purpose, so help me, you’re going to need a miracle—what the fuck?
” A broom flew past me and landed at the back of the shelf, completely out of my reach.
I looked down, needing Gray to see my disdain for his disastrous behavior.
He was standing two steps below me on the ladder, grinning ear to ear.
“Oh, hell. Good job.” I offered him an obnoxious round of applause.
Pushing past the pure terror roaring away inside of me, I crawled forward on the shelf, only to come to a complete halt when Gray’s palm smashed against my ass.
“Mother of God.” I stared over my shoulder, gaping at him. “Did you just spank me?”
“Her name is Mary, Kent. And don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
Another sharp pain crashed across my ass.
“You just did it again!” I shouted, and then I let out another shout as I found myself being flung headfirst into the shelf, toward the wall.
I rolled forward, landing directly beside the forgotten fruitcake.
Glancing back, Gray was beaming ear to ear as if he’d just delivered the final blow in some really bad action movie.
I looked over my shoulder at him, scowling. “Do you feel better now?”
I grabbed the fruitcake and crawled back toward the light.
Toward him. He almost looked like Jesus standing at the end of the tunnel, guiding me home.
Well, if Jesus was an absolute babe who used far too much product in his hair.
When I reached him, I held out the canister.
He took it in his hand and then he let it fall to the ground.
“Oops.”
“You’re terrible. The worst,” I said.
We sat there, our faces close enough that I could smell the peppermint on his breath.
I folded my arms in front of me and laid my chin against them, just drinking in the sight of him.
He leaned forward, resting his weight on his elbows against the top step of the ladder.
Glancing up at his hardened hair, I reached forward and thumped it. As expected, it didn’t budge.
“God, how much gel do you use now, dude? I thought you were bad before.”
He grinned with pride and gave me a quick nod. “Two-liter." Another nod. "All grown up.”
“That’s the stupidest nickname I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged. “You gave it to me."
Something about that shelf—be it the darkness that surrounded me, or the endless glue mouse traps filling my nostrils with their inebriating fumes—gave me more courage than I had any right to. “I would have given you so much more than that, Grayson.”
His face was unreadable. A beautiful, empty picture frame showing no sign of his current headspace.
I reached forward, brushing my thumb across his eyebrow.
He tilted his head to the side and stared at me for what felt like ages before bringing his hand to my face.
His thumb mirrored mine, running across my brow.
For a second—for one tiny, minuscule little moment—it looked like he might smile. Then Rhonda’s voice came over the intercom, calling Gray to the front. He took a step down and I could feel him slipping away.
He took another step down.
Good. I wanted him to.
I didn’t want this. Not any of it. Not a single second of him touching my face with his stupid fingers.
I grabbed his wrist.
He jerked his head back, his eyes growing wider.
My heart was racing a mile a minute, thumping out a chorus of Gray-Gray-God-Please-Gray.
I lifted his hand and brought it to my lips.
He took a step up the ladder, making his way back to me.
The corners of his lips curled as he ran his fingers through my hair.
“Half-pint, what are you doing to me?” His grip tightened, tugging at my curls.
I pressed my forehead against his, our breaths cascading and crashing.
I would beat myself up for it later when reality hit me.
That against my better judgment, I admitted the truth to myself.
A truth I’d buried so deeply for so long that I didn’t think it could ever be resurrected.
But there it was. Truth. Truer than Texas. Truer than family. Truer than God.
I still loved him.
The boy he was. The man he became.
Sure, he’d hurt me. He’d let me down when I needed him most. But that didn’t negate the love that I felt for him.
It didn’t tear away at the fabric of who we were, it simply amplified its intensity.
His inaction the night Trevor caught us had shifted the entire trajectory of my life.
It pushed me away from him and away from West Clark for a time, but it also pulled me back.
The mistake that cost me my career—the man who looked like my Two-liter—had brought me home.
Back to him. The real him. It brought me to the Pick-n-Save, up that ladder, into a dark shelf, eye to eye with a man who stared at me like I was his entire world.
A world he could have if he’d just take it. A world that was his by right.
“Kent,” he rasped, closing his eyes. The way he said my name like a prayer made my heart slam in my chest.
I leaned in and kissed him on his cheek. “Go on,” I whispered. “Bernice is waiting.”