Chapter Two – Aston
I should regret last night.
I should be hanging my head and feeling guilty as f*ck for betraying a friend the way I just did. Sleeping with the girl that’s practically his sister? That’s low, even for the kind of crap I pull. I should be feeling like the biggest dick ever.
And I do – well, feel like the biggest dick ever, but not for the reasons I should. I don’t regret it, and I’ll be damned if I’m hanging my head for something I wanted to do. I only feel like a dick because out of more than fifty thousand goddamn students on this campus, at least twenty thousand have to be girls, and I could have had any of them.
And I had Megan.
The one girl that’s dangerous. The one that could strip away my devil-may-care attitude and put me on my sorry ass. She’s the one girl that could make me feel again. She’s the one girl that could shatter what I’ve tried for so long to stick back together.
I should have stayed the f*ck away from her.
But I didn’t.
And now I know what her skin feels like slick against mine, I know the sweet taste of her mouth, I know the tightness of her as she hugged me inside her. I know the feel of her nails in my back, of her breath against my neck, and I know the sound of the sexy little moans she makes.
And I know it’s gonna take a damn miracle to get me to stay away from her now.
My hand reaching for my cell and scrolling to her name proves this, and it proves last night was more than I meant it to be.
I’m pretty sure I showed Old Maid up last night. I press send, remembering our conversation in Vegas, and grin. If anything, I want to make her laugh, because even though I can’t see it, I know what kind of smile she’ll have when she reads that text. It’ll be the one that lights up her whole face, and makes her look even more f*cking beautiful than normal.
Learn some tricks from the big boys in Vegas, did you? she retorts.
I grin even wider and hit reply. You tell me, babe. ;)
I roll over in bed, hitting the empty side. The empty side she lay on last night before she obviously took off. I shove away the calendar, taking note of the date no matter how much I want to ignore it.
This week – the one that’s always the hardest. The one that I hate and love at the same time. The week that changed my life for the better, but forever destroyed my Gramps.
One person’s blessing is another person’s curse.
Despite it being earlier than usual, I climb from the bed, throw on some clothes, and grab my car keys. The old guy will probably whack me with his stick for turning up before lunch, but it’s better than sitting here in my room and wallowing in my own bullshit self-pity.
I slip out of the front door undetected and climb into my car, quickly pulling away from the large house that can become stifling all too quickly. It’s not too far to Gramps’ house, his insistence on moving us away from San Francisco but not out of Northern California the reason I’m at college in Berkeley and not there. San Francisco holds too many memories. Too much shit to ever go back to.
I pull up outside his house, the sun crawling over the front yard an indication I’ll spend my day working in his back yard doing what he can’t. I push open the front door and the smell of his rich cigar smoke hits me instantly. My face wrinkles up like it does every Sunday and I settle for our usual greeting.
It’s safe – and there’s comfort in safety.
“I wish you’d stop smokin’ those damn things, Gramps.”
His low, raspy chuckle reaches me through the house. “You say that e’ry week, boy, and I’ll keep on saying the same thing back – I wish you’d stop goin’ on about me smoking these “damn things.””
I grin, letting the door swing shut, and make my way into the front room. The old, wrinkled man known as my Gramps is sitting in his usual spot in front of the window. The floral chair is as old and weathered as he is, but there’s definitely more life left in Gramps than in his ratty chair.
“I know. It’s worth the shot, though, right?” I shrug, dropping onto the sofa across from him.
He smiles as he turns his face towards me, his dark gray eyes crinkling a little in the corners. “If you say so, boy. What are you doin’ here early, bugging me?”
I look out of the window. “Got nothin’ better to do on a Sunday.”
He chuckles. “Never know, do I? Probably did what you had to do last night.”
“It ain’t right for someone your age to be making comments like that.”
“Why? Because I’m wrinkled? Find me a nice bit of stuff on a Friday at the Bingo and I’ll put you to shame. Ha!” He puffs one last time on his cigar and stubs it out in the ashtray on the table next to him.
“So many things wrong with that damn sentence.” I shake my head.
“So, who’d you annoy this time?”
“Who says I annoyed someone?”
“You’re here at half ten in the mornin’, boy! Something is up. You never get your sorry ass out of bed earlier than twelve on a Sunday.”
“I didn’t annoy anyone. Besides, I knew you’d want my “sorry ass” in your yard today.”
Gramps’ knowing gray eyes settle on me. He taps his fingers on the arm on his chair, each knock of his fingers grating on me. Time stretches as he searches my face, coming to his conclusion. I see it on his face.
“I know what you’re gonna say, and you’re wrong,” I say firmly.
He starts softly. “You’ve never spoken about her.”
“I don’t want to speak about her. I have nothing to say about her.”
“I think you do. I think you just pretend you don’t.”
I shake my head and look away. “And I think you’re shittin’ me, Gramps. I get it, all right? You miss her and you wanna talk about her, but I don’t. I can’t relate to the Mom you knew. She was never, and I mean never, that person to me.”
“You can’t live in hate forever, boy.”
“It’s not hate, Gramps,” I argue. “I pity her. I pity the life she forced me to lead until she died, until you took me in.”
“For all your schoolin’, you never learned to forgive and forget?” he says in a softer voice, his tone coaxing my eyes back to his.
“Forgiving and forgetting are two very different things, Gramps. You can forgive, you can forget, but rarely are they done together. I can’t forget my childhood. I can’t erase the scars. I can’t change the things it’s taught me and I can’t burn those images or memories from my mind. They mean I’ll never forget, and because I can’t forget, I can’t forgive. It’s that simple.”
His gray eyes darken slightly with disappointment and sadness. The usual pang of guilt hits me – guilt for hating the person he loves. Guilt for relief in his despair.
“Gramps-”
“No.” He drags his gaze back to the window, his focus on the yard outside. “I understand. I just wish I understood you, boy.”
“Nothin’ to understand,” I reply. “I’m just getting on with it, Gramps. I can’t let myself live in the crap of my past. Not now, not ever.”
“There’s some weedin’ that needs doing in the far corner, by my vegetable garden. When that’s done, I need some holes diggin’ for some bushes I’m getting this week.”
I take the subject change – and the escape. Both of us, always running away from what we need to say. What we want to say.
“Bushes?”
“For your Nan. Hydrangea. Always Hydrangea,” he mutters to himself. “For devotion and understanding. We all need a little of that.”
I nod although he’s not looking at me. His way of remembering her. I wonder if he’s glad that Nan never saw what happened to her only daughter. I wonder if he’s glad that for all the pain she suffered, she never had to watch her baby die.
I wonder what I vaguely remember as a happy woman would think of me now.
I grab the trowel from the shed, crouching by the vegetable garden.
Nan would probably be disgusted in me. God knows there isn’t much to be f*cking proud of.