Chapter 36
Grace
He says nothing back. My declaration that he abandoned me seems to have stunned him into silence.
“Let me ask you something. How do you think I found out about your transfer, Danny?”
He shifts on his feet, visibly uncomfortable. “I know it was the newspaper article, Gracie.”
“Yes…and no. I was in class with a teammate of yours. He walked in, slammed the paper on the desk, and shouted, in front of everyone, ‘your boyfriend is a sellout.’”
He winces.
Shivering, I recall how it felt. “The aggression…it reminded me of him all over again.”
He bows his head, maybe realizing that not everything went the way he thought it had.
“I was a kid.” His voice cracks on the last word. “We planned for you to come with me when I got drafted anyway. To me, it was simply moving our timeline up by a few years.”
“You were thinking about timelines while I was thinking about us. I was so…fragile at eighteen.” My voice comes out soft, and I instinctively make myself smaller, grabbing my elbow.
After Danny dropped Easton, my group of friends dropped me.
It was a slow burn dismissal, one that I didn’t know was happening at first. I thought I was still in the group chat, but I didn’t know they’d created a new one without me.
I thought they weren’t having a ton of parties due to the season starting, but I just wasn’t invited.
The elation I felt at gaining a group of girlfriends quickly fizzled into a devastating reminder that most friendships aren’t actually forever.
“You knew what I was going through. I was at a new college where I only felt truly comfortable with you. Mae was getting older, and I still had so much of my past haunting me,” I whisper, like it’s still a secret I have to keep. “If I was so important to you…”
Danny starts pacing again, back and forth in the kitchen, running his hands through his hair.
“Did I want it to come out the way it did? Obviously not. Am I sorry it did? Absolutely. I am unbelievably sorry, Gracie. I hate that it hurt you, and I wish I could take everything that happened back, even if it meant I never got drafted.”
I raise my eyebrows and tilt my head in annoyance.
“It’s not even the fact that I was the last to know, Danny.
It’s that you didn’t communicate that you were considering leaving at all.
” I obsessively tap my foot, and my voice falters.
“And when we broke up, I thought that I was ending things with my boyfriend of two years, not my best friend of ten.”
His jaw slackens. “You…you didn’t want to lose touch with me?”
“When I said best friends always, I meant it. The abandonment I felt when you left without looking back absolutely wrecked me. But the silence for ten years, Danny? It shattered me.”
He stops moving entirely, and I avert my eyes.
“Your status made you impossible to ignore entirely, randomly pulling me into your orbit against my will. It was a special form of torture to see you in magazines at the grocery store.”
When I look up again, he’s standing right in front of me, nearly chest to chest.
“It was like I couldn’t escape you, no matter how hard I tried,” I whisper.
“I didn’t want to escape you, Gracie. I never did. When you ended things, I was convinced you knew you’d be better off without me.”
I shake my head in disbelief, blinking away tears. My brain is hazy, thoughts scattered, confusing me with all the noise in my head. Overwhelmed, I try to sync up my heart and head but fail miserably.
“Fact for a feeling, Gracie.” His voice comes out soft.
Memories flood my mind and wash away the here and now. He knows exactly what to do to get me out of my head. I grasp for an animal fact—any animal fact—struggling until I land on the perfect one.
“Fact: French angelfish perform a special dance when they reunite with their mate after spending time apart.”
“Feeling: I’ve never stopped loving you.”
My eyes widen. “Danny, you can’t just say things—”
“I was in love with you when we were something, and I was in love with you when we were nothing.”
His lips are moving, but all I hear is ten-year-old Danny, saying I love you for the first time. I hold my breath.
Intense and unwavering, his eyes stay locked on mine. “It would be a fool’s errand to try and fall in love with anyone but you, Gracie.”
Exhaling slowly, I bring a hand to my mouth. “I—”
“You want to know how I spent the last ten years we were apart? I spent every single one of them loving you.”
Danny’s confession steals the air from the room, leaving ten years of unspoken feelings behind.
I’ve never stopped loving you.
His words hit a spot in my chest that’s been sore for so long, it’s painful to hear them.
The biggest lie I’ve ever told myself is that I don’t care if the boy next door loves me or not.
God, I was pretending. I’ve been pretending.
And the response in my body proves it. My traitorous heart flutters in the aftermath of his truth, but there’s also a tightness in my throat.
There are so many thoughts swirling in my head that it’s hard to know what to focus on first. I feel a sense of peace in having delivered the letter, like there was a loose thread in a tapestry that’s been sewn up.
But it’s almost like it was stitched with a different color; although fixed, I can tell what happened. I can tell it was ripped.
Danny stays quiet, head tilted. He rubs my shoulders up and down a few times, warming me up, before leaning away.
I meet his gaze. “Before, when I missed you, I thought I must have imagined it all. Like some kind of fever dream I had for over half my life. Part of me used to wish I made it up, because then maybe the ten years of memories I carried with me wouldn’t be so painful.
Each memory served as a hurtful reminder of what we lost,” I confess as tears slide down my cheeks.
“But love wasn’t enough. When everything happened, I needed to find who I was without you. ”
I pause, carefully choosing my next words. I don’t want to lose him, not when I’ve just gotten him back, but I can’t—I won’t—force this.
“I’m not ready, Danny. And I don’t know when, or if, I ever will be.”
After what I’ve been through lately, my tolerance for risk is at an all-time low. And Danny is the ultimate risk. I know what it’s like to be loved by him, and I know what it’s like to lose him.
He hunches over slightly, like my words have tackled him. His mouth turns down in a frown of hurt before slowly shifting into a thin line of resolve.
“I haven’t even processed Mae’s death,” I continue.
“I can’t feel her anymore. Did you know that when you told me you loved me just now, it was the first time I’ve heard those words in two weeks?
I’m struggling with all of this. It’s only been a couple days, and I’m already feeling…
I just can’t be consumed by you, like before. ”
“Consumed by me? That’s what you think our relationship would be like now? After what I’ve shared with you? After the work I’ve put in to be worthy of you?” he chokes out.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I…I wasn’t expecting any of this, and it feels overwhelming.”
“So we go back to how we were before? We don’t talk at all? I’ll respect your choice, Gracie, but God. It’s…”
“No, I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
He ducks his chin, trying to look directly in my eyes like he’s searching for any indication I didn’t mean what I said. “That’s what you need? For us to be friends?”
“Yes. For now, or… I don’t know how long. That’s what I need.”
Danny nods, resigned.
As he walks to the fridge to refill our water glasses, I barely catch him saying, “We’ll get there again.”