Grace
I’m not hiding in my bedroom. I’m doing legitimate things up here: straightening, cleaning my bathroom mirror, dewrinkling the duvet cover.
My plan was to keep doing these legitimate things until Henry left.
I saw him pull in and say hi to Nadine. Ian and Bella sounded excited to see him when he came inside.
Harry Styles was excited, too, so much so that he ditched me up here and bolted down the stairs like a little traitor.
That was fifteen minutes ago, though, and I can still hear him down there laughing and chatting away with the kids.
Henry is my friend. Last month, in my parents’ yard, I told him that he basically had to be because no one we knew had any idea what it was like to be us.
I could tell him about Tim and Lauren Maxwell, because that’s what friends do.
I could tell him how confusing it is to be mad at a dead person and how it makes me wonder if that dead person loved me as much as I thought he did.
The fact is, though, I don’t want to tell Henry about any of it because the whole thing makes me feel like a fool.
Love is cruel. Love is unkind. Love is, once again, a down payment on heartbreak. It’s all those shitty things and more. Ultimately, though, love is just really fucking humiliating.
Unfortunately, Henry doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, so, finally, I take a breath and try to twist my face into a pleasant expression.
What I find downstairs, frankly, is a lot.
Harry Styles is standing on the coffee table next to two mice in the trap watching Henry and Bella play Mario Kart on our TV.
Ian is standing on the couch cushions asking when it’ll be his turn.
There’s popcorn fish on the floor. No one notices me for what seems like too long.
Harry Styles finally comes over and headbutts my shin.
“Oh, hi, Mom,” says Ian.
“Look, Mommy,” says Bella. “Henry gave us a really old game.”
“Whoa there,” says Henry. “It’s not that old.”
I’m mentally logging my daughter’s bright smile when I see the bandage on Henry’s forehead. “What happened to you?” I ask.
“He electrocuted himself,” says Bella.
“What?”
“He got seven stiches,” says Ian. “He doesn’t have a concussion, though.”
“Wait, what? Really?”
Apparently, Bella just won the game because she’s cheering now while Henry pretends to be mad.
“Let me play now,” says Ian.
“Ian, don’t stand on the couch,” I say.
Bella hands her brother the controller. “Bet you can’t beat him, too.”
“Actually, guys,” Henry says. “I was hoping I could talk to your mom for a sec.”
The kids go blank-faced.
“You can talk,” says Ian.
“Yeah,” says Bella. “We’ll play quiet.”
Henry looks at me, helpless. “Um,” he says.
Along with what appears to be a minor head injury, it’s obvious something’s up here, so I point to the ceiling. “Rooms, kids. You can play later.”
“What?”
“But, Mom!”
I say “Now,” and Ian and Bella head upstairs. Harry Styles is briefly torn but then chases after them.
When they’re gone, Henry says, “Wow, you’re good at that.”
“I have questions,” I say.
“All right.”
“You got them a video-game system? Without asking me?”
“Well, no,” he says. “It’s mine. And my brother’s. They’re just borrowing it. I reserve the right to take it back whenever I want.”
“Okay,” I say, “that’s definitely not ever going to happen. So, thanks for that. I was hoping to ruin their brains. Why do you have stitches? Like, really.”
He touches his bandage. “Bella wasn’t wrong,” he says. “I electrocuted myself and fell. Don’t ever stick your fingers in a light socket, by the way.”
My third question is a medley of questions strung together, but I’m too tired to ask, so I just give him a look of general what-the-hell-ness.
He takes his hands out of his pockets and puts them on his hips.
Then he puts his thumbs into his belt loops.
It’s like he’s just been given arms and he’s trying to figure out how they work.
“Did you get my texts about A Christmas Story?” he asks.
“Turns out it’s a really annoying movie. That narrator, he’s just too much.”
“What’s up, Henry?” I ask. “It’s been a really shitty w—”
“Sorry,” he says. “I haven’t done this in a long time.”
“Done what?”
“Asked someone out on a date.”
I’m so surprised that I take a step backward and replay what he just said in my mind for accuracy. “What?”
He laughs at himself. “Let me start that over. I prepared a sp…I was wondering. Would you maybe want to go to dinner?”
“Right now?”
“No,” he says. “Not now, necessarily. Just in general. At a date and time to be agreed upon later. With…with me.”
I can’t help but laugh now, too, because at a certain point you have to tip your cap to just how shitty timing can be.
There was a moment quite recently when I’d have said yes right away and dealt with the inevitable train wreck of getting involved with Henry.
That feels like years ago now, though. “But what about Meredith?” I ask.
“What about L.A.? What about…everything, Henry?”
“Funny story,” he says. “Meredith thinks I should be with you. And, as far as L.A. goes, maybe I just…don’t go.”
Harry Styles barks upstairs.
“Henry, that isn’t a good—”
“You know, I don’t even really like dogs,” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“But, the other day, I passed through the pet aisle at Giant on my way to get bread, and I found myself wondering what Harry Styles might want for Christmas. The dog, not the British guy. I’m sure he’s doing fine. That thought actually inhabited my brain. Buying a present for a dog.”
“Okay. That’s nice.”
“I don’t even really like kids, either,” he says.
“My niece is adorable, I guess. My brother wears her like she’s a front-hanging backpack.
Anyway, I built my whole adulthood around not wanting to have kids of my own.
It was our thing, Brynn and me. But right now, I’m so emotionally invested in Ian’s art contest that if he doesn’t win, I’m gonna call a bomb threat in to his school.
And Bella likes me now. Seriously. We connected.
Have you noticed that? Before you came downstairs, she gave me this. She made it at school.”
He takes a piece of construction paper out of the front pocket of his hoodie. It’s a cotton ball snowman with buttons and an orange triangle nose. She wrote “Henry” across the top in crayon.
“And you,” he says. “Grace, I really think—”
“Henry, let me stop you, okay, and point out that I’m the fourth thing on that little list of yours, and one of those things is a dog.”
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Right. Can I reorder those? Actually, can I start again…again?”
“Henry.”
“I’m not happy yet, Grace,” he says. “I’m not miserable anymore, though.
And I think that’s because of you.” He looks over at the stairs.
“Them, too, yeah, admittedly. And Harry Styles. But mostly you. And I’ve been paying attention.
You seem less miserable, too. A little. You’re swearing less.
” He points at my jeans. “You’re not wearing your sweatpants as much.
You’ve started going to Edgar Allan’s more.
Maybe that’s, at least in part, because of… me?”
He’s wrong. I am miserable, and I’m probably always going to be, because everything I thought I knew about everything crumbled under the weight of four thousand emails between my perfect husband and some woman.
Henry’s miserable, too, and he’ll realize that again when the novelty of me and my kids and my dog wears off.
“We could love each other, Grace,” he says. “Maybe?”
I take a step toward him, fists clenched, surprised how angry this has made me. “Love? How the hell’d you come up with that?”
He flinches. “We could be happy,” he says.
“You need to understand something, Henry. You and me—we don’t get to be happy, okay? Not anymore.”
“But—”
“You’re lonely. I get it.” I wave my hand over my head. “And all this. The kids, the dog. Me and whatever you think I am. We’re life rafts, and you’re reaching for us because right now we look just a little better than drowning.”
“What?” he says. “That’s not true at—”
“The kids like you,” I say. “Not sure how you converted Bella. Well done. And I like you, too. You’re nice.
But I don’t want to be some guy’s life raft, okay?
It’s exhausting. I’ve got my own fucking problems. Go find Meredith and tell her she’s wrong about you and me.
Or, I don’t know—go find someone else. Go to California.
Just get out of here and start over. Because this isn’t gonna work, Henry. It can’t.”
All of that sounded harsher than I meant it to, and seeing Henry recoil, literally wounded, makes me wish I’d chosen nicer words. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
“All right,” he says. “I understand.”
He puts on his coat. The mice startle when he picks up the humane trap. The cold that rushes into the house when he leaves lingers after he’s gone.