Chapter 13
JESS
I don’t go home.
I can’t. Home is the apartment I rebuilt my life in. It’s the space I filled with things that don’t remind me of Griffin Callahan. If I go there now, with this box of letters burning a hole through my passenger seat, I’ll fall apart completely.
So I drive to Grandma Dot’s.
She’s on the porch when I pull up. It’s like she knew I was coming. Maybe she did. Grandma Dot has always had a sixth sense for when her people need her.
I don’t say anything. I just climb the steps and put the box on the wicker table between us. Then I sink into the rocking chair I’ve been sitting in since I was fifteen years old.
She looks at the box. Then at my face and then back at the box again.
“That boy’s handwriting.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement. Leave it to Old Dottie to crack the code immediately.
“Yep. There are five whole years of letters.” My voice comes out raw. “He wrote me every week. He never sent a single one.”
Grandma Dot rocks slowly. The creak of her chair keeps time with the cicadas. She doesn’t reach for the box or ask to read them and that checks out. I would never expect her to. Instead, she just waits.
“Apparently, he left to protect me.” The words taste like ash.
“There was a woman. She accused him of something he didn’t do.
She admitted he didn’t do it. She was somewhat obsessed with him I guess.
Can’t blame her for that part. She’s got good taste.
Crazy, but you know. Her father owned the Southern Knights at the time.
He threatened to destroy my career if Griffin didn’t get away from me. ”
“And he believed it?” Grandma’s mouth drops open.
“He was twenty-two.” I stare at the fireflies blinking across her yard. “He was scared. He thought he was saving me.”
“Hmm, maybe he was saving you. Was he?”
“What?” I snap and turn to look at her. “Whose side are you on?”
She raises an eyebrow at me and rocks. I fold my arms across my chest. Her question hits me somewhere deep. I think about the rejection letters and missed opportunities. Would they have continued? Would they have crushed me before I had a chance to bloom? They might have.
“Maybe,” I admit finally. “Some of it. But he didn’t give me a choice and that's what pisses me off. He just decided what I could handle and then he left me a stupid Post-it note, Grandma. Three sentences.”
“And now you know different.”
“Now I don’t know anything.” I pull my knees up to my chest, feeling sixteen again instead of thirty. “He lied to me. For five years. He let me think,” I can’t finish.
Grandma Dot stops rocking. “What did he let you think?”
“That I wasn’t enough. That he didn’t want me.
That everything we had was just,” I swipe at my eyes angrily.
“I built walls, Grandma. I built them so high and so thick because I never wanted to feel that way again. And now he’s telling me the walls were never necessary? That he loved me the whole time?”
“Walls keep things out,” Grandma Dot says slowly. “But they also keep things in.”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy crying, ugly, gasping sobs that I’ve been holding back since I opened that first envelope. She lets me cry. She rocks in her chair and waits for the storm to pass and I love her for it.
When I finally catch my breath, she speaks again. “Your daddy chased your mama to the ends of the earth. You know why it didn’t work?”
“Because she didn’t love him back.” I shake my head at the memories.
“No.” Grandma Dot’s eyes find mine in the fading light. “Because he was chasing what he wanted, not fighting for what she needed. There’s a difference.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That boy didn’t leave because he stopped loving you. He left because loving you was the only thing he had left to give.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “He was wrong to leave. Lord knows he was wrong. But he wasn’t chasing his own happiness. He was sacrificing it.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No. It doesn’t.” She pats my hand and settles back in her chair. “But it makes it different from what your daddy did. And that’s worth thinking about.”
The moment she says it, I know I’ll never stop thinking about it. Even though I don’t want to spend a single minute on it.
Stupid boomer wisdom.
I stay at Grandma Dot’s that night. And the next. And the next.
I read Griffin’s letters until I’ve memorized them. I read about the day he left. I can practically see him sitting in his truck outside our apartment for two hours, trying to talk himself into going back inside.
I read about his first Christmas without me, when he bought a gift he couldn’t send. I read about the night of his injury, when he lay on the field and thought of my face.
If I die here, he wrote, at least I’ll die loving you.
I cry until I’m empty. Then I cry some more.
On the fourth morning, I wake up before dawn and walk down to Grandma Dot’s pond.
The water is as still as glass, reflecting the pink-orange sky.
This is where Griffin and I used to swim.
Where we played chicken in the shallow end and ended up tangled together, laughing, kissing and certain we had forever.
I thought I’d lost that girl. The one who loved without armor. But she’s still here. I can feel her, underneath all the scar tissue. She’s been waiting.
The question isn’t whether I still love Griffin. I know the answer to that, I’ve always known it. The question is whether I’m brave enough to let myself love him again.
My father wasn’t brave. He was desperate. He chased my mother because he couldn’t survive without her, and when she refused to come back, he collapsed in on himself like a dying star.
That’s not me. I’ve already proven I can survive without Griffin. I built a career, a practice, a life. I don’t need him.
But wanting someone isn’t the same as needing them. And choosing someone,with your eyes open, knowing the risks, knowing they might hurt you again isn’t weakness. That’s the bravest thing there is.
I pick up a stone from the shore and turn it over in my palm. It’s smooth and cool, worn down by years of water.
Griffin was wrong. He knows he was wrong. He’s spent five years writing letters to a woman who would never read them, and branding my name on his skin because he couldn’t bear to let me go completely.
That’s not a man who didn’t love me enough. That’s a man who loved me too much and didn’t know what to do with it.
I throw the stone. It skips three times before sinking beneath the surface.
My walls kept me safe. They kept me sane.
But Grandma Dot was right, they also kept things in.
They kept in the anger that should have been released years ago.
They kept in the grief I never let myself feel.
And they kept in the love that never really went away, no matter how hard I tried to bury it.
I’m tired of being safe.
I pull out my phone and stare at Griffin’s name in my contacts. There’s been days of silence between us. Days of him waiting, wondering, and probably convinced he’s lost me for good.
My thumb hovers over the call button. But I don’t press it.
Instead, I type a text to Vivi.
Me: What time is the gala tomorrow?
Her response comes almost instantly.
Vivi: 7pm. Why? Are you actually coming? Everyone’s been talking about you and Griffin.
Me: I’m sure they have.
Vivi: You threw a coffee on him in the middle of town and went viral for it. Can’t blame them for being interested lol.
Me: Yes I can. But I’m coming anyway. Save me a seat.
I think about Griffin standing in that ballroom alone with the whispers that are probably flying around town about the two of us. I’m not going to do that to him.
It’s time we start facing things together.