“Grey Sutton,” I say, and see his lips quirk, a hint of a smile that he ramps back down. “Just by existing, by being the person you are, you deserve happiness.” I swallow, my gaze darting from his. “Love. You don’t have to change yourself, mold yourself into someone other people want. You’re worthy, as is. I hate that people have made you feel otherwise.”
His throat bobs, and his mouth tightens. His expression turns vulnerable, and I swear I can see him as that little boy who rode his bike across town to a fire station and asked to be given to a new family so his own could be happy. It’s painted across his features like the most heartbreaking canvas.
I want to bottle up his heartache and hold on to it so he doesn’t have to feel it anymore. If I could take it myself, I would. But I can’t, and that’s its own kind of heartbreak.
I watched my mom secretly cry over my father after his death. I watched Holden learn to fold in on himself so he didn’t feel the pain of his ex-wife leaving him. I watched all the people I love go through dozens of situations over the years that have made me ache in unimaginable ways. But no one prepared me forthis. For the pain I would feel looking at Grey, knowing how much I love him and how much I want to fix the chasm that has split open in his heart.
Finally, one of his rough palms settles on my neck, his thumb sliding over the pulse in my throat. I wonder if he notices how we’re synced the way I do. He tries to speak, but it gets caught, and he shakes his head before trying again, tongue darting out to wet his lips.
“Finley” is all he says, and then he kisses me. It speaks louder than words, really. There are some things that can only be said with our bodies. Promises that can only be made with our lips and hands. Thank yousandI love yousandI wantyousthat are too big for words.
I know exactly what he’s not saying. I feel it in my bones and my nerves and my blood and all the pieces of my body that were either made to echo his or rerouted the day he came into my life, reorienting to match what we didn’t know yet.
When he pulls back, my mouth is wet, and only when his fingers slide over my cheeks do I realize it’s from tears. Silent ones that dripped down my face as he kissed me.
He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, he just wipes them from my face and presses his lips to the places they were, little promises imprinted onto my skin.
“We better get going,” he says, and the anxiety returns, but it’s not as prominent as before. Now it’s just a low buzz under myskin, a nervous hum that comes with wanting to make a good impression. I’ve met Charlie over the years, but never like this, and I know how important he is to Grey. More important to him than his own father, and that holds a weight that I didn’t feel when going to his parents’ for dinner.
“You sure this is okay?” I ask, looking down at my dress one more time. It’s smocked at the top and has straps thin enough to be dental floss tied in delicate bows at the tops of my shoulders. The cotton is covered in tiny red strawberries, and the whole thing is so pretty that when I saw it, I immediately knew I had to have it.
His hand moves to one of the tiny straps on my shoulder, fingering the bow, tugging on the string that falls to land on my collarbone like he wants to pull it free. My skin flushes, blooming under every light graze of his knuckles and fingertips.
“You’re perfect.”
We meet Charlie at a restaurant on the water, a place with a patio bedecked in fairy lights that hang low, warming up the cool blue-black of the night sky. Fontana Ridge is full of breweries and cafes and diners, but this is one of the nicer restaurants. For one, there’s a wine menu with more than three options. And the wineglasses aren’t even plastic.
It’s the little things.
Charlie is already waiting for us, as Grey promised he would be. He told me that he’s tried beating Charlie places, that he even showed up thirty minutes early one time, but Charlie was already there, halfway through a basket of bread, a smile on his face.
He’s smiling now too, as we walk out onto the patio, my sundress catching in the wind. There’s electricity crackling in the air, the first hints of a summer storm rolling in. Tomorrow, the air will be hot and humid, the sun burning off the excess water lingering on the ground but not managing to erase it from the heavy, muggy air.
But tonight is perfect. There’s a breeze, and lights glow, casting a golden hue over the lake beyond. Stars twinkle in the night sky like God himself is pricking holes in it, letting the brightness of heaven shine down into the dark.
Charlie looks just like I remember him: easy, charming smile, gray peppering his dark hair, laugh lines crinkling beside his eyes and mouth. He doesn’t look like Grey, not really, but I see the resemblance in the way they grin, in how they hold themselves. When I went to dinner at Grey’s parents’ house, I thought I recognized his father in him, but now I’m wondering if it was Charlie. If the charm didn’t come from genetics, but rather it was learned from someone he admired, the person he most wanted to be like.
“Hey, son,” Charlie says, gripping Grey in a tight hug. I see the way it makes Grey relax, how his mouth splits into a smile like he can’t help it. Deep-seated tension releases from him like a balloon with a slow leak.
“Hey, Charlie,” Grey says into his shoulder, holding on for longer than necessary before backing up, his hand settling on the small of my back. “You remember Finley.”
Charlie’s grin widens, eyes twinkling in a way that makes him look like some iteration of Santa Claus in a holiday movie. “Absolutely. So glad you could make it. And I hope Grey extended the invite for Labor Day weekend.”
I lift my brows, looking from him to Grey, who now wears a guilty expression, making something twist in my gut.
“Labor Day weekend?”
Charlie’s gaze swivels between the two of us, his easy smile not even slipping an inch, completely unaware of the tension. “I originally invited Grey out to check out a job that will be opening in the fall, but when he turned me down a few weeks ago, I told him he should still come out to visit and that he should invite you.” He nudges Grey’s shoulder with the palm of his sun-spotted hand. “I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned it to her yet.”
“Slipped my mind,” Grey says. But he sounds faraway, distant. I tamp down the insecurities and anxieties that want to rear up inside me, the possible reasons he wouldn’t want me to go, and force myself to be rational. He hasn’t been faking the way he feels, so whatever his reasoning is for not mentioning it, I shouldn’t worry.
And remarkably, I don’t. I’m able to sink back into Grey’s touch, let a smile tilt my lips, and when he sees it, some of the tension coiling inside him loosens.
Dinner goes long. But the kind of long between friends, where you finish drinks, appetizers, entrees, dessert, all without really noticing they’ve been set in front of you. The kind that when people ask you how dinner was, you talk about the company instead of the food.
We talk about everything and nothing. Charlie tells stories of Grey when he was young, before he met Holden and wedged himself so deeply into our family that if he were to try to extricate himself now, he’d leave a gaping hole. My heart aches as he tells me about the time he picked up Grey from his house when he was twelve and home from school for the summer. He’d tripped and hit his head on the corner of the coffee table, leaving that scar I’ve noticed above his eyebrow. Grey’s parents were at work, and he couldn’t get ahold of them, so he called Charlie.
Something warm swirls inside me when Charlie talks about picking up a drunk Grey from a party in the woods the fall thatHolden went off to college. Charlie had been sound asleep when he got a call from Grey, who had to pause to throw up in a bush.
