Chapter 32 #3
Confusion floods my mind as I try to sort out the timeline. I stand from my stool and start to pace around the kitchen. “Mae said she was fine when I talked with her a month ago. ‘Feeling her age,’ but doing fine. Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you got here?”
“Tell you as soon as I… You didn’t want to hear anything I had to say, Danny. I didn’t know what Mae wrote in the letter. And honestly? I just went through the loss of the only living relative I had left. I’m still processing everything, too.”
My chest caves in, saturated with sorrow. I loved Mae, but so did she.
“Shit. Sorry, Gracie. I hate that you’re hurting.” I stop pacing and direct my full attention to her. “You know how much I loved her, right?”
“I know.”
And just like all those years ago in our secret spot, I plead, “Tell me. Tell me everything.”
She leans against the kitchen island, facing me. “We received the news together, sitting across from the oncologist we’d met a grand total of one time. God, Danny. The conversation was so…polite.”
“Jesus. I’m so sorry. That must’ve been… I wish I was…”
Gracie forges on like she prepared for this exact conversation. “She was projected to live only days, but it ended up being longer.”
It doesn’t surprise me that Mae’s stubborn personality held out longer than expected.
Gracie’s tone becomes harsher, more biting. “Getting a front-row seat to Mae’s fight with cancer has given me some brutal insight into what she experienced with my mother. Cancer is insidious, but swift. It’s inspirational… yet cruel.”
I reach for her, trying to find comfort for both of us. But she pulls back.
“She was all I had left, and losing her devastated me. But you know what hurt the most over the last ten years? Until I lost Mae?” she asks, hands gripping the edge of the kitchen island.
My brain immediately runs wild with scenarios of what could’ve happened while I wasn’t in her life. A horrible thought occurs to me as I squeeze my eyes shut.
“With Mae and your mom, are you…sick, too?” Panic creeps up my back and infiltrates my mind.
“No. When Mae was diagnosed, I was tested for brCA1 and brCA2. The results came back negative for both genes.”
My shoulders sag in relief. The short-term adrenaline I built up in my body comes crashing down, and I stumble a few steps back to sit on a stool by the kitchen island.
“Thank God, Gracie. I can’t even imagine…”
“Losing you. Until Mae, you were my biggest tragedy.”
I go still, blinking at her. “Me?”
She scoffs and waves her hand in the air, angrily brushing me off. “The fact that you can’t fathom it as a possibility tells me everything I need to know about how much I valued you and how little you valued me.”
Can someone have a head injury without being hit?
I’m dizzy, like I’ve been sucker punched and shaken up a few times.
Am I bleeding? I jolt up with renewed, furious energy.
“How little I valued you?” I bark. “You can’t be serious.
” I look around for an audience to agree with me, to see if anyone else is hearing this blatant lie.
“You moved to a different state, Danny. What was I supposed to think when—”
“You were my whole world, Gracie.” My voice comes out broken and hoarse. “You were, are…I, God.” I flounder, not knowing which deep truth to confess first. There’s so much to untangle.
“I never even considered that my decision would cause us to break up. It didn’t even cross my mind.
If I’d known that you were going to end things, I never would’ve done it.
I would’ve quit football entirely if it meant staying together.
Make no mistake, it was you who left me.
I’ve been selfish with you, in so many ways, but the most selfless act of my life was letting you go.
Even if it killed me.” My pulse kicks up and my breaths become shallow.
“Selfless? Selfless?” Her gaze is sharp and unblinking.
She looks as furious as the day she broke up with me.
“You think I wanted to end things? You think it was easy for me to go back to my dorm, alone? Hang with the friends I only made through you? Try to bond with the girlfriends of boys on a team you left in the dust?” She shakes her head and rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands.
“It was selfish of you to take the meetings without telling me. It was selfish of you to not involve me in your decisions. Decisions you made on your own. Decisions I thought we would make together. It was like I wasn’t even a consideration—”
“A consideration?” I’m astonished that’s even a word she would use to describe what she meant to me.
I search for words powerful enough to describe how I felt—feel—about her.
“You were my life source. It was like I could only breathe normally when you were with me. When everything was ripped away from me, the panic attacks would’ve consumed me if you hadn’t been there supporting me those first few months.
You were the only thing sustaining me at the time.
” I wipe a bead of sweat trickling down my hairline.
“After you ended things, it took me…fuck, it took me years before I was even comfortable going out, meeting new people.”
I’m looking everywhere but her face, as I’m not sure what I’ll see. After a few moments of silence, I risk a glance. Her eyes are tightly closed. A few tears leak out anyway.
“Gracie, I’m sorry.” I lift my hands for a hug, then swiftly retreat.
She opens her eyes, their colors looking particularly muted. “Then why did you do what you did?”
I walk around the kitchen island, needing some physical distance between us. “If you were my life source, I was your parasite. My anxiety, the insomnia, the attacks…they would’ve consumed you, too. I didn’t want to drag you down with me.”
Gracie turns toward me and sits back down on a stool. I can hear her foot tapping against the bottom of the island. “That’s the whole point of being in a relationship, Danny. I was helping you.”
“I wasn’t able to be helped, Gracie. I walked around, unfeeling, like a bag of skin and bones. My soul felt detached from my body. When I heard myself speak, it sounded like…like an echo.”
Her brows furrow in confusion, concern etched across her face as I continue.
“If I had stayed, it would’ve only gotten worse. The depressive episodes… I would’ve only been a burden to you.”
She desperately searches me for clarification. “Depression?”
“Therapy helped me identify it for what it was.”
Sharply tapping her fingers on the countertop now, she asks, “Did you ever consider that I wanted you to burden me? To lean on me for support? God, so often, people see the word ‘burden’ as something negative. Giving someone permission to burden you with their baggage is probably one of the most intimate things anyone can do.”
I shake my head. “After everything you went through, you didn’t deserve another unstable man in your life anyway. You—”
“You abandoned me.”
Gracie throws me a searing glare. I’ve only seen it once, years ago.