“You ready?” I ask.
He arches a suggestive brow, one corner of his mouth tugging up with the movement. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s leave.”
This pulls a laugh from me. “Come on. It can’t be that bad.”
He gives me a serious look. “Remember you said that.”
The first thing I notice about Grey’s parents’ house is how quiet it is. There’s no music, no audiobooks, no podcasts, although I think I might hear the soft din of a commercial playing on a TV somewhere down the hall. The inside of the house matches the outside. Shades of beige and decor that was never really in style. Like the inside of a dated hotel.
I expect to see family photos on the wall, middle school pictures of Grey with shaggy hair and braces, but there’s nothing lining the hall to the kitchen where we find Mrs. Sutton sprinkling shredded cheese from a plastic bag onto what looks to be a casserole or pie.
“Hey, Ma,” Grey says.
Mrs. Sutton turns around, looking surprised. I’m shocked she didn’t hear us walking down the hall in the deafening silence, but she seemed lost in her own head.
“Grey,” she says, a tired smile lighting her face. The overly bright yellow lights of the kitchen only seem to highlight the differences between Grey’s mother and mine. Mrs. Sutton is graying, where my mom has seemed to defy age in that way. They both have lines on their faces, but in different places. Mom has them beside her eyes from smiling and squinting outside in the sun beneath her gardening hat. Mrs. Sutton has deep grooves from the corners of her mouth all the way downto her chin, making her appear to be permanently frowning. She doesn’t look rude or hateful, just…unhappy. And I can immediately see why he doesn’t love to spend more time here than necessary. I feel it already, the unhappiness that’s seeped into these walls crawling out and wrapping around my ankles, threatening to pull me down. There’s a heaviness here that contrasts the bright, sunshiny day we left outside.
Grey leaves me to give her a hug, and her eyes connect with mine over his shoulder, the tired smile never leaving her face.
“Hi, Felicity. Thanks for coming.”
I see him tense against her, pulling back from her embrace. “Finley,” he says softly, as if he’s trying not to let me hear, to save her from the embarrassment.
Pink splotches over her cheeks anyway. “Right, I knew that.”
“Easy mix-up,” I say, hurrying to brush past it. Grey, though, seems off-kilter. There are matching patches of pink of his cheeks as well, and the sight of it makes me reach for his hand, giving it what I hope is a comforting squeeze.
When he doesn’t let go, gripping my hand tighter, I know it’s worked.
“What can I do to help, Mrs. Sutton?”
She still seems embarrassed, but also thankful to move on. “Nothing at all. Grey, why don’t you go say hello to your father? Dinner should be ready in another fifteen minutes or so.”
Grey seems to bristle at the dismissal, but when his shoulders slump with resignation, I know this isn’t abnormal. That it has nothing to do with me and is instead par for the course. It makes my chest ache, and I squeeze my hand a little tighter around his.
Without another word, he leads me up a half set of stairs and down the hall. The TV grows louder with each step. It’s the only noise in the house, and it makes it seem slightly eerie. Even the air in here smells stale, although it’s disguised with cleaner and the scent of waxy apple candles. The house feels lifeless. I wantto tug him out of here, back into the sunshine, where his skin glows and his eyes look happy.
He stops at the wide, doorless entrance to what looks to be a bonus room, but he doesn’t move inside. “Hey, Dad. Finley and I are here.”
His father looks away from his TV, gaze focusing on Grey, and smiles at us. “Hey, kids.” His voice is rough and gruff, although he doesn’t look unhappy. He checks the watch on his wrist. “’Bout time for dinner.”
Grey nods, and when I can tell he’s not going to respond, I say, “Thank you for having me.”
Mr. Sutton looks from his son to me, smiling wider. He looks so much like Grey, it’s uncanny. Except for his eyes, which are a dark brown, he’s the spitting image of what I’d guess Grey will look like in thirty years. “It’s nice of Grey to finally bring someone home to meet us.”
I don’t point out that we’ve met before, lots of times, although it’s obvious neither of his parents remembers me all that well. I’m not offended, but I can tell it upsets Grey, which breaks my heart a little for him.
“Glad to be the first,” I say, giving him a sweet smile.
“I’m going to show Finley around,” Grey says, not waiting for his father to invite us into the den. I don’t know whether it’s because he doesn’t want to spend time with his dad, or because he knows his dad isn’t going to offer, and he wants to end the conversation before we hit an awkward pause. Either way, I follow beside him as he gently pulls me away from the den and back down the hall we just walked through.
All the doors are shut, making it feel even more closed-off. He stops in front of the one closest to the stairs and pushes the door open with the twist of the gold knob. “This was my room.”
I don’t know what I expected his childhood bedroom to look like, but this isn’t it. Maybe I thought it would be a time capsule,a shrine to his teenage self, with pictures shoved into the seams of the dresser mirror and cheap plastic trophies gathering dust on a bookshelf, like my old bedroom at my mom’s is. But there’s none of that. This could easily be a guest room with how bare and devoid of any personality it is.
I move slowly into the room, and I hear the door click softly behind Grey, dampening the noise of the TV in the den. “Did they convert it into a guest room?”
When I turn around, he’s leaning back against the door, watching me take in everything. He shakes his head. “No, this is exactly how it looked when I lived here.”
