Chapter 21
Danny
Seventeen Years Old
Gracie and I are watching Die Hard, again, for the fifth time this year. She’s so beautiful in her short-sleeve pink shirt and matching sweatpants, curled up beside me on the sofa. A word is embroidered on the sweatpants across her ass in capital letters, and I’m trying very hard not to stare.
I don’t have a game tonight, which means extra time with my best friend. We’re at her house today for the first time in a long time. She has a better TV. Plus, her dad will be out late at the bars like he is every Friday night, so we have the place all to ourselves.
Her house is a similar size to mine but severely lacks personality on the inside.
The main living area is closed-concept, with a white wall between the kitchen and family room.
Normally, beer bottles litter the countertops, but she must’ve done some serious cleaning before I came over tonight.
The only photos of her mother are hidden in her nightstand drawer, alongside several pictures of us.
It pains me that Gracie can’t proudly display them, worried sick that her dad will smash the frames in one of his drunken stupors, as he’s done in the past.
Our favorite scene of the entire movie starts—the infamous Ellis negotiations. I start on my practiced impressions. I flash every tooth in my mouth.
“Hans, bubby,” I drag out with flair, “I’m your white knight.”
She can’t stop giggling, her eyes rolling back.
“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs,” she replies in the worst mafioso accent I’ve ever heard. She sounds like a child playing Vito in a school production of The Godfather Junior.
She’s terrible at accents. For some reason though, when she’s quoting Die Hard, Gracie never stutters on any of her sounds. She calls it “The Die Hard Exception,” and it’s something we can’t explain. But if quoting the cast makes her less anxious, it’s well worth the hundred views.
It’s been over a year since I broke it off with Tori, and we only have a few weeks of school left as juniors. Gracie rides to school with me every day (against her better judgment), and we eat lunch together a few times a week when she’s not studying in the library with Ben.
It turns out that Ben is, in fact, a very cool guy and someone I now call a friend.
I’m happy he was there for her when I was being an idiot, and it’s been a blast hanging out, the three of us.
He’ll often call his girlfriend and put her on speaker when we’re all together.
I love it when he does, because it almost feels like a double date.
I still haven’t confessed my feelings to Gracie, but the urge to tell her the truth grows stronger every single second.
I want to tell her she’s beautiful, instead of pretty.
I want to trade our hugs for kisses.
I want to ask my best friend to be my girlfriend.
But the words sit heavy on my tongue. Things are so good between us right now… I don’t want to mess anything up with her ever again.
We’re cuddled close on the couch, and she puts her head on my shoulder. Gracie could be in my lap, and I’d still somehow never feel close enough. Maybe if my hand was glued to her hand… I instantly shudder. My “creepy to cutesy” meter may need some recalibrating.
She nudges her toes behind my calves. I grab her feet, which are always cold, and swing them over into my lap so she’s facing me.
I start warming up her feet with my hands, rubbing them up and down.
It’s a reflexive move, one we’ve been doing since we were younger.
My hands start to rub her ankle, and she flinches.
A flicker of pain flashes in her eyes, and I immediately stop touching her.
“Shit, Gracie. Sorry. I thought I was being gentle, but I must’ve pressed too hard. Did I hurt you?”
She gives me a strained smile. If it’s meant to be reassuring, it has the opposite effect. “No, no. Not your fault. My ankle was sore from something earlier this week.”
I squint, searching her face for signs of the truth. An ankle injury doesn’t make sense. Gracie didn’t mention anything about hurting her ankle until now. She doesn’t play any sports. Her house is a ranch, so there’s no chance of twisting an ankle on a staircase.
“How did you injure it?”
“It was nothing, just a minor accident. No b-big d-deal,” she says quietly, avoiding eye contact.
Something’s not right.
“You’re biting your cheek, Gracie. And you’re stuttering.” A horrible feeling soaks into my skin. “Are you…are you lying to me?”
Her face turns red, and my stomach bottoms out. With shaky hands, I reach for the remote control and pause the movie.
“You told me it was better. You said he doesn’t do that anymore.”
“I know, and he hasn’t d-done anything physically in a while. He still, um, yells at me, b-but this”—she points to her ankle—“was a one-off.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. “What happened? No lies. Please don’t lie to me.”
Her words come out quickly and almost all at once.
“D-Don’t make this a b-bigger d-deal than it is, please.
He lost money at the casino this past weekend and d-drank more than usual.
He’s b-been, um, b-better over the past few months, so I guess I just wasn’t expecting it.
He was already pretty upset when he came home.
B-But then, when he saw I d-didn’t clean my d-dishes from d-dinner, he kind of roughly pushed me t-to my room, and I wasn’t in control of my b-body…
and, and I b-banged my ankle on the d-door frame. ”
“Is this why you didn’t want to hang out with me on Sunday?” My voice trembles with every word. “You were, what? Sitting at home resting a swollen ankle?”
All she does is silently nod.
“Gracie,” I whisper.
She looks down and away, eyes glued to the floor.
“Let me look at it, please. You don’t need to hide from me,” I say softly.
“Okay.”
After placing the remote on the table, I gingerly roll up the leg of her sweatpants and pull down her sock.
An angry, dark yellowish-green bruise surrounds a swollen area the size of a golf ball on her left ankle.
How is she even wearing normal shoes with this?
The sheer force he must’ve pushed her with to do this kind of damage…
I brush my thumb in a feather-like touch against her battered ankle and suck in a shaky breath.
“You need to ice and elevate this, Gracie. It won’t heal properly if you keep walking on it,” I say weakly.
“Yeah, I figured. I’ll d-do it after you leave, okay?” She snatches the remote off the table and turns the movie back on.
We sit in silence for two minutes before I decide I’ve had it. I grab the remote and completely turn off the TV.
“We need to report him. Enough is enough.”
“Danny, I t-told you not t-to make this a b-big d-deal. I’ll b-be eighteen soon anyway. He won’t stay like this forever. I’m positive.”
“You can’t be serious. It’s been years of the same bullshit,” I reply, my voice hoarse.
“I can’t…fuck. I’m trying not to take away from how you’re feeling.
I don’t want to make this about me. It’s just…
it’s just so goddamn hard to sit by and watch you get hurt.
Emotionally, physically, it doesn’t matter.
It’s all hard to swallow.” The blood rushes from my head, and my heart rate speeds up.
“If you just let me help you, Gracie, I can fix this. I’m trying to understand. ”
“That’s just it. You d-don’t understand. He’s my d-dad, and he could get b-better soon. He’s still d-dealing with the loss of my mother. I’m not over her either. I’ll never b-be over her.” She slowly pulls her feet off my legs and scoots back on the couch.
I lean toward her, closing the distance between us. “I know, but that’s no excuse for how he treats you. It’s not right, Gracie. Parents shouldn’t do this to their kids. I want to be there for you. Let me be there for you.”
“It was a one-off thing, I’m sure of it. It had b-been a really long t-time since we had an incident b-before this one. He hasn’t even b-been missing work recently. You d-don’t need t-to worry.”
I cover her hand with mine. “I care about you, Gracie. I care about you more than anything.”
“Well, if you care about me, then you won’t say anything.
We’ve b-been through this b-before. If the police b-believe you, they’ll send me t-to my only living relative, Mae, in Florida.
If Mae can’t t-take care of me, I’ll go into the foster care system.
If the police d-don’t b-believe you, I’ll stay with D-dad, except he’ll b-be angrier than b-before. There’s no positive outcome.”
I snatch my hand back and nervously run it through my hair.
“No positive outcome? No positive outcome? It would suck if you lived in Florida, Gracie, but you know what? At least you wouldn’t be bruised.
At least you wouldn’t be hurt. At least you wouldn’t be fearing for your goddamn life every single day.
At least I wouldn’t have to see my girlfriend beaten within an—”
She brings her hand to her mouth. “Your girl?”
Heat rises in my chest, and I can’t stop barreling through my words.
“Because guess what, Gracie? It doesn’t matter if you go to Florida.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a plane ride away.
You could go to California. You could go to Amsterdam.
You could live in fucking Tokyo! It doesn’t matter.
Because in any country, you’d be away from him.
You’d be secure. You’d be safe. And you’d still be mine. ”
“Be, be yours? Danny, I…”
I turn my head toward her without thinking and lean in.
When our foreheads gently meet, Gracie gives a small gasp.
My lips are so close to hers now, hovering slightly above them.
I tuck a curl behind her ear, and it immediately springs back in front of her mouth.
The corners of my lips turn up, and I twirl the curl with my finger this time, gently tugging on the end.
Her breath smells like buttered popcorn and vanilla chapstick.
“Gracie,” I whisper, my breath warming her face. “Do you want me to—”
“Yes. Oh my gosh, yes.”
My heart is pounding, I can feel it in my throat. This is it. I make a move to close the last bit of distance between us before the jarring sound of the front door slamming into the coat rack infiltrates our ears.
We snap apart.
Her dad is home.