10 - Grayson
Grayson
For a second, I stare at her.
Because she’s smiling at me. Not the sharp little smirk she usually wears right before calling me irritating or arrogant. Not the look she gets when we’re verbally sparring while she decides how hard she wants to swing. It’s almost as if she’s genuinely happy to see me standing here.
It catches me so off guard that I almost forget about the guy I just threatened to pummel and the fact that she’s drunk enough to sway where she stands.
Her fingers tighten around me, trying to tug me deeper into the crowd while colored lights flash across her face and curls.
“You’re hammered,” I tell her.
She gasps, her hand shooting up to her mouth dramatically. “That’s so judgmental.”
“You almost ate shit three times in thirty seconds.”
“I’m dancing.” She slurs as if that explains absolutely everything. “C’mon. Stop standing there all tall and grumpy.”
Against my better judgment, I let her pull me two steps farther onto the dance floor before my brain finally catches back up with the rest of me, and I pull her back in the opposite direction.
“Okay,” I say firmly. “New plan.”
Her brows pull together. “You hate my plan?”
“I strongly dislike your plan.”
“That’s rude.”
“You can file a complaint later.”
By the time we reach the bar, my shoulders are already tight from how hyperaware I am of every point of contact between us.
I guide her onto a stool, stepping back until I can breathe normally again. Avery scoots closer until her knee bumps against my thigh.
She blinks up at me, completely oblivious. “You smell good,” she informs me seriously.
“Chaos.” I stare down at her hand clinging to my arm.
“What?” She asks innocently.
“You can’t just grab people.”
“You grabbed me first.”
“That was because you were actively falling over.”
I order her water and fries because drunk people either need carbs or divine intervention, and I’m fresh out of miracles. The bartender shoots me a look while setting the glass down in front of her.
I slide the water toward her. “Drink.”
Her eyes narrow at the glass as if I might’ve poisoned it.
“You’re usually nicer than this,” she mutters.
“And you’re usually more sober than this.” I lean one arm against the bar.
She drinks half the water before leaning into my space again.
I move back.
She follows.
Jesus fucking Christ.
After our encounter behind the bar, I’d managed to convince myself that the way my body tensed around her was alcohol fueled. But I’m stone cold sober, and wound as tight a fucking spring. Every time she slides into my space, I coil tighter.
Up close, her curls are messier than usual, all bright red tangles falling across flushed cheeks and smudged eyeliner. There’s something disarming about seeing her like this. Avery is normally sharp, even when she’s being difficult.
Tonight, all of that armor feels cracked open.
“Are you here alone?” I ask carefully.
Her expression flickers before she shrugs one shoulder. “Not originally.”
“Your friends ditched you?” I’ve met most of the soccer team. They don’t seem like the type to abandon someone who’s this drunk.
“No. They went home to people who love them.”
The words catch me off guard. There’s enough bitterness in them that I wonder how much of tonight has nothing to do with tequila at all. Before I can respond, she reaches for one of the fries the bartender dropped between us and points it vaguely in my direction.
“You know what your problem is?”
“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
“You’re too…” She squints at me hard. “Good looking.”
I choke on absolutely nothing.
She nods like she’s made an important scientific discovery. “It’s suspicious.” She steals another fry. “Pretty men are dangerous.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Her eyes widen, as if she’s shocked to get an actual reaction out of me. “Oh my God. I made you laugh.”
Considering most of our interactions involve me trying very hard not to lose my patience with her, only to leave infinitely more frustrated and pissed off, her comment hits home. It probably is the only time she’s made me genuinely laugh.
I make a face at her.
Does it affect her the same way it affected me when she laughed in my car? Does it make her want to do it again?
I bury the questions under my rational thoughts and nod in her direction. “You look like a disaster.”
“That’s because my parents emotionally waterboarded me.”
I blink once. “…What?”
She waves one hand vaguely through the air. “You know. Divorced people Olympics. Very competitive. Everybody gets trauma.”
I clear my throat roughly. “What’s going on with you tonight?”
For a second, I think maybe she’s actually going to answer me. The noise of the bar swells around us while she stares down at the fries between her hands, expression going strangely distant.
“Do you ever think maybe there’s just something fundamentally wrong with the way you’re built?”
My brows pull together. “What?”
“Like an Ikea dresser.”
Following her drunk logic is nearly impossible until she continues.
“It comes with everything you need to build a decent dresser. But then the people building it fight constantly and don’t even notice when someone else steals all the tools and pieces.
” She gestures vaguely with another fry.
“So then you end up with this shitty dresser that looks mostly normal from the outside, but really it’s just one bad day away from collapsing in on itself. ”
God, she’s seriously drunk.
But worse, I actually think I might understand what she means.
Tonight, she’s stripped raw beneath the alcohol. Her sadness is slipping through the cracks, no matter how hard she tries to bury it.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I ask quietly.
“Nope.”
“You’re the most difficult person I’ve ever met.”
She points at me again with another fry, but this time, I lean forward, biting it right out of her grasp.
She gasps, then breaks into a fit of giggles. “I like you better when you’re mean.”
The smile slides off my face. “Why?”
“It’s more real.”
“And being nice isn’t real?”
“It makes sense in my head.”
She goes quiet after that, eating fries slowly while the buzz of the bar swells around us. Every few minutes, her shoulder brushes mine again like she keeps forgetting where her body ends and mine begins.
I order her another water, mostly to give myself something else to focus on while she gradually sobers up enough to become argumentative again.
“I should get an Uber,” she announces, sliding off the stool.
The movement almost sends her directly to the floor, but I catch her around the waist before she can tip sideways.
“No, Chaos. You can barely walk.” I rub a hand over my face. “I’m driving you.”
She opens her mouth to argue, then abruptly goes pale.
“Oh no.”
That is never something you want to hear from a drunk person. I barely get her outside before she throws up in the nearest bush.
“Well,” she says weakly afterward, pushing hair out of her face. “That’s deeply humiliating.”
I cringe. “Little bit.”
She glares at me halfheartedly while I grab napkins and water from my glove compartment. While she wipes her mouth and mutters something about tequila being evil, I stand there trying to decide what the hell I’m supposed to do with her now.
Taking her back to her apartment feels wrong. She’s vomiting, barely steady on her feet, and clearly having some kind of breakdown beneath all the sarcasm and drunken nonsense. The idea of leaving her alone tonight settles badly in my stomach.
“Okay.” I make a decision. “You’re coming to my place.”
Her head snaps toward me. “Your place?”
“You need water, food, and somebody making sure you don’t choke on your own vomit in your sleep.”
“Um, I’m not sure.” She looks conflicted about the idea of going to my place.
I add, “You can sleep in my spare bedroom. The bed’s already made.”
I expect another argument. Instead, she goes quiet and climbs into the passenger seat.
She spends most of the drive staring out the window, looking oddly thoughtful for somebody who spent the last hour speaking entirely in riddles. Streetlights slide across her face in soft flashes while I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.
“Are you going to explain what you meant earlier?” I ask.
“Hm?”
“The Ikea dresser thing.”
Instead of answering, she mumbles, “My ex was a guy like you.”
I frown. “Guy like me.”
“Optimist energy.” She waves vaguely in my direction without looking at me. “Big hockey captain. Nice to everybody. Made people feel safe.”
I stare harder at the road ahead. “That’s not exactly an insult.”
“It is when it was all an act.”
The words settle heavily between us after that.
Because for all the shit Avery gives me, for all the times she’s looked at me like I’m personally offending her by existing, I suddenly wonder if this has been sitting underneath all of it the entire time.
I don’t know what her ex did to her exactly.
I only know that every time she talks about relationships, there’s this underlying flinch beneath the sarcasm.
And selfishly, whether she hates me or not, I can’t stand that anyone would look at me and see somebody capable of making someone feel that way.
Once we park, I struggle to get her up to my apartment because she keeps stopping to comment on random things like she’s seeing them for the first time in human history.
“Your elevator is very shiny.”
“Thanks.”
“Do hockey players get issued these apartments when drafted?”
“It comes free with the ego.”
“Hm. That tracks.”
Despite myself, a smile spreads across my face by the time I unlock the front door.
I mentally remind myself that Avery drives me insane. She’s a tornado in human form, impossible to manage, and just because she’s drunk tonight doesn’t mean tomorrow she’ll be any different.
I guide her down the hall and flick on the guest bedroom light.
Warm amber light spills across the made bed, catching on the dark comforter and the stack of books I tossed onto the dresser and never bothered putting away.
Avery pauses in the doorway, blinking slowly like she’s trying to process the existence of the room itself.
I motion toward the bathroom across the hall. “Bathroom’s through there. Try not to fall over. I’ll grab you clothes to sleep in.”
She hums before wandering toward the bathroom across the hall with slow, unsteady steps while I head for my room.
When I shut my bedroom door behind me, I drag both hands down my face.
What the hell am I doing?
I’ve spent the last two weeks actively avoiding this woman.
Avoiding the grocery store near my apartment because I know she shops there.
Avoiding Liam’s invitations out because there’s a chance she’ll show up too.
Convincing myself that whatever happened in that alley behind the bar was just proximity and months of celibacy talking.
Now, I bring her home, taking care of her like some stray animal.
She’s in my apartment, and while I haven’t had a stitch to drink in hours, I’m feeling a little light-headed anyway.
I yank an old t-shirt from one of my drawers along with a pair of sweatpants she’ll absolutely drown in, then head into the kitchen for water bottles and Advil.
The apartment is quiet except for the distant hum of traffic outside the windows and the faint sound of cabinet doors bumping somewhere down the hall while she presumably investigates my bathroom.
By the time I make it back, arms full, I catch sight of her and freeze completely.
She’s standing in the bathroom doorway facing the hallway, halfway through pulling her shirt over her head.
“Shit–” I turn immediately, eyes snapping to the ceiling so fast my neck almost cracks. Unfortunately, it’s not fast enough to prevent me from catching a glimpse of her black lace bra. “Sorry, I was knocking.”
“You were not.”
“…I intended to knock.”
She laughs behind me. I hear her drape something onto the towel rod, but I catch a glimpse of her shirt on the floor. Which means…
Her bra.
Fantastic.
I stare harder at the opposite wall, regretting every second of my life that has brought me to this moment.
She grabs the shirt that I have draped over my shoulder.
“You can turn around,” she says.
Carefully, I glance back.
She’s swallowed by the oversized shirt now, hair messy around her face, bare legs disappearing beneath the hem.
I follow her back into the guest room and set the water bottles and Advil on the nightstand.
“Take these before bed unless you want to wake up feeling like death.”
She eyes the pills. “You really are responsible.”
I snort. “I’m captain of a professional hockey team full of teammates who make bad decisions like it’s their full-time job. Somebody has to be responsible.”
“That explains a lot, actually.”
She takes the pills before sinking down onto the edge of the mattress, oversized shirt sliding off one shoulder slightly. My eyes trail the sliver of her collarbone that’s visible before she fixes it again.
“You always look annoyed when you talk to me,” she says suddenly.
I lean back against the dresser across from her, crossing my arms mostly so I stop noticing stupid things, like the curve of her legs disappearing beneath my shirt or the fact that she smells faintly like my soap now underneath the tequila.
“That’s because talking to you usually raises my blood pressure.”
She huffs out a tired sigh. The thing is, it’s true.
Avery gets under my skin faster than anyone I’ve ever met. She pushes constantly. Pokes. Challenges. Every glance from her feels as if she’s waiting for me to disappoint her. Every conversation with her somehow leaves me feeling irritated and weirdly restless.
But I’m starting to wonder if I hate her as much as I say I do.
I pull the blankets back for her, and it feels strangely intimate. More intimate somehow than accidentally seeing her half undressed in the bathroom doorway. Maybe because this feels gentle and domestic in a way I’d rather not think about.
She crawls into bed slowly, face immediately half-buried in the pillow. The alcohol catches up to her now that she’s stopped moving. Her lashes rest heavily against flushed cheeks, breathing evening out as the tension starts draining from her body.
Earlier, at the bar, she looked like somebody trying to outrun herself, and now, for the first time all night, she looks peaceful.
I wish I didn’t notice.
I shove my hands into my pockets before I can do something stupid like brush the hair out of her face.
“You know what you said earlier?” I ask quietly. “About me being like your ex.”
Her eyes crack open slightly. She watches me through obvious exhaustion.
“We’re not alike.” My jaw tightens. “Because I’m not acting.”
When she doesn’t respond, I wonder if she’s too drunk or tired to process my words. Then her expression softens in this small, almost sad way that catches me completely off guard.
She sighs quietly and reaches over to switch off the bedside lamp, darkness settling softly across the room except for the spill of hallway light behind me.
I’m halfway out the door when her voice stops me.
“I think I’m starting to believe you.”