CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CASEY
After not sharing a bed with Griffin that night, I expect him to whine about it in the morning.
But when I find him in the kitchen sipping coffee alone just after eight, he barely looks my way.
“Morning,” I say, heading for the coffee pot. He tosses me a half-hearted smile and resumes looking at his phone. Immediately my chest tightens.
There’s a ravine between us now. I wouldn’t even feel right giving him my standard morning kiss. Much less hopping into his arms and doing our trademark koala hug.
I serve myself a mug of coffee, my heart pounding against my ribs. It’s too early for this much emotion. But we’ve been slowly breaking up for days now, and I just need to rip the Band-Aid off. I can’t stand this lingering, this avoiding, this half-in/half-out.
And then I notice the piles of books across the room.
My books. Stacked on the coffee table. The filming equipment, neatly dismantled and organized.
There’s a pile of folded hoodies of mine that were in the laundry now next to the books.
And there’s a stack of flattened cardboard boxes in the corner, like he had them delivered from somewhere first thing this morning.
I haven’t even had my first sip of coffee and already the tears are here.
“Oh,” I say on an exhale. “You’ve been packing my things?”
He runs a hand through his hair, avoiding my gaze. He’s fully expressionless. “You’ve got a lot to pack. I wanted to help.”
My chest feels so tight that it could crack. “I feel like I should say thanks, but I don’t want to.”
“You told me you’d be coming back for it after Chicago.” His voice is level, measured. “I’m leaving Tuesday for at least a week. Thought I would help where I can.”
It makes sense, in a way. If you overlook the fact that he’s been playing the role of my husband-to-be. I have so many thoughts swirling in my head I don’t know where to begin. I feel like I’m going crazy.
“You’re really going to let this end here? Like this?”
His gaze snaps up to mine, and it’s haunted. I can see the signs of not sleeping well last night. “It was always going to end here.”
“So you must do this with all your puck bunnies, huh?” My tone is acid now, but I can’t reel it in. “Play house for a while, lead them on, make them think they’ve got something special with you, and then leave them in the fucking dust.”
His chest is rising and falling more quickly now, and I can tell I struck a nerve. Like I wanted to. “Don’t even say that.”
“You seem to have this routine down. I’m crazy in love with you, and you have no problem walking away.”
Griffin scrubs at his face with his hands. At least he looks conflicted, which satisfies something deep inside me.
“This has nothing to do with how I feel about you.” His voice is eerily level. Like he’s been practicing this. Or maybe because he’s done it before and this is old hat for him. “It’s logistics.”
I throw my hands up in the air. “So there’s no version of us that you’re willing to fight for? Something that can continue?”
Griffin looks at me with so much heartbreak on his face that I can barely hold his gaze.
“Case.” His voice is low, gritty. “You told me what you want. And it’s not me.”
“But it is you,” I say, tears already pressing at the corners of my eyes.
“It’s not. You want someone there for every day. Someone who comes home to you. To share dinner with, do every day with.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I heard you say it. We’ve been living it all summer. But it ends here because I can’t be that.”
“I was wrong,” I say, my voice shaky. “I thought I wanted that. But I—”
“Stop it, Casey. Listen to yourself. I’m not saying this to hurt you.
I’m saying this because you should get what you want.
Not half-time. Shit, what I can give you isn’t even half-time.
It’s worse. A third of the time. You want to live your life like that?
I just signed for six more years. I can’t stand the thought of breaking your heart later once you realize what a bad deal you got six months or two years down the road. ”
“You don’t get to decide what’s right for me,” I bite out.
“I’m a grown woman asking you a direct question.
I’m not asking you to weigh my options. I’m not even asking for a fucking commitment.
Think of it like a book. We started writing an incredible chapter here.
I just…want to know. Do you want to even try to keep this going and see where it leads? ”
Griffin stares at me, pain slashed across his face.
He doesn’t say no.
But he doesn’t say yes either.
I wait until the silence is boring a hole in my head. I’m so heavy with emotion that I can barely stand up.
“Okay,” I finally say. “I’m not going to ask again. I got my answer.”
“Casey—”
I raise my palms and back away slowly. I’m gutted, I’m heartbroken, I’m on the verge of full-body sobbing. I need to get into my bedroom before I can unravel completely.
I just make it before the first sob escapes.
I press my back against the closed door and slide down it until I'm sitting on the floor, and I let it come.
All of it. The whole summer's worth of wanting something I kept telling myself I didn’t deserve, crying it out into the quiet of the morning while Griffin keeps his distance and holds to his decision.
I don't know how long I sit there. Long enough that the light in the room shifts. Long enough that I hear the front door open and close, and then the sound of his truck pulling out of the driveway.
He’s gone. And I need to accept that summer is over.
This love affair has ended.
Griffin stayed true to his word. And I was the one with my head in the clouds.
Again.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and look around the room. I need to get out of here. Permanently. My plan had been to leave the following morning, but I need to get out of here ASAP.
I pull my bags from beneath the bed and start packing.
There’s something meditative about it once I lock in.
I’m not crying anymore. I’m focused and hollowed out, moving with vacant efficiency.
Clothes first. Then toiletries. Books. Once my room is mostly packed and organized, I grab everything of mine from the bathroom.
Then I head into the living room and start collecting everything that he hadn’t gathered yet.
Soon, the scant evidence that I’ve ever lived here is gone.
Then I remember the things in the kitchen cabinets—the few mugs I’d added to his collection, the ceramic dishes I’d brought out to make dinners more fun.
My gaze moves to the blue hand-painted vase full of last week’s farmer’s market zinnias.
They’re ready to be thrown out, the flower petals papery and drooping.
I grab the small handful and take it to the trash can.
And that feels like the end of it all.
I make several trips out to my car, loading up the sedan until it looks exactly like it did when I arrived in May. Full to the brim, too many appliances, one woman’s transient life packed up and waiting for the next chapter to begin.
Once I’m done, it’s early evening. Griffin still hasn’t come back. I wonder where he is; maybe he’s in Cleveland, quieting his thoughts with the weight equipment. Or maybe he’s sifting through the same mental wreckage that I am.
But if he was able to look me in the eye and close the book on our love story, then maybe he’s fine. Clearly he’s far more capable of controlling his head and his heart than I am.
I’d hoped he’d let himself want this enough to try. Want me enough.
But I was wrong.
I do one last walk-through. His spare room is empty, sheets and comforter stripped, looking like it did when I first stayed that drunken night in May.
I peer into the bathroom—neat, organized, new shower curtain and rod still in place.
I pause at his bedroom door, daring myself to look inside.
Absorbing the manly, quiet space that became my refuge this summer.
It smells like him, and the scent makes my gut wrench with sadness.
I shut the door and head to the kitchen, where I fish out the bulging envelope from my bag—the accumulation of all the rent money I’d meant to pay him but he wouldn’t accept. Well now, he can’t say no. I place it on the counter, and then…there’s only one last thing to do.
Give him back his key.
I wrench the little gold key off my keyring and set it on the counter next to the envelope and the vase.
My entire body is heavy as I slip outside for the last time and shut the door on the house that accidentally became my home this summer.
I found my thing this summer in Bayshore. The book reviews, the account, the version of myself that shows up and doesn't shrink. I built something real from nothing, in a town I'd been running from for years.
I found peace with my family.
I found myself.
I wipe away a few tears that spill out as I hit the road to drive west to Chicago. I have six hours ahead of me to cry and wallow. I’ll need it.
Because Bayshore didn’t just give me a new career path and unexpected healing. I found my person here too.
But he’s decided he’s not going to be a part of my story anymore.