He shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried the ‘push it all down, pretend it never happened’ thing. That’s obviously not working out great for me. Maybe I just need to face it.”
Grey was silent for a moment, afraid she’d say the wrong thing, make him change his mind. “When’s the last time you were there?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s been years.”
She hooked her leg over his hip and pulled him closer, nestling her face into the crook of his neck. He wrapped his arms around her tightly. “Maybe we could go for a week or two, make a real vacation of it. We could even rent a house in Cape May or something. You can show me where you had your first boner or whatever.”
He laughed and turned his head to kiss her. The oven timer beeped from the kitchen, faint but insistent. They both groaned as Ethan rolled himself back up to sitting.
“You stay there. We’ll do breakfast in bed.”
She shook her head, stretching her arms above her head. “No, let’s eat outside. If I don’t get up now I never will.”
* * *
—
IT WAS THE first crack in the foundation. Small, but unmistakable.
Grey hadn’t said anything to make him worry. She’d seemed almost too eager to forgive him. But as they sat together on the patio, dousing his bland casserole with ketchup and hot sauce, the roiling unease he’d felt since he’d woken up only intensified. She saw him differently now. There was no way she didn’t.
He didn’t want to go to New York. The idea was still as unappealing as the first time Nora had floated it in his kitchen all those months ago. But he needed to make a gesture, something bigger than a mediocre breakfast, to prove to Grey that last night was just a fluke, that that wasn’t who he was anymore—even if he didn’t quite believe it. He could be better for her. Be brave. He could try, at least.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, though, being there with her. It would be an opportunity to get to know her better, to explore their hometown together, finally take a vacation that hadn’t been arranged by Audrey.
Something occurred to him.
“What about your family?”
She looked up at him, fork poised warily in midair. “What?”
“Would you see them? While we’re there? You never talk about them.”
She shifted uncomfortably. Too late, he realized that there might be something dark lurking behind her reticence. “You don’t have to, if you’re not—if there’s something—”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I don’t even know why…nothing bad happened. We’re just…not close.”
He racked his brain for any information she’d let slide about them over the last few months. “Is it just your mom and your brother?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I never really knew my dad. Actually, that’s not totally true. When my show started airing, he tracked down my number somehow and tried to hit me up for money.”
“Charming.”
“I thought so, too. My mom is remarried now, I don’t know my stepfamily that well, but they seem nice. I think she’s happy. My brother lives in San Francisco, working at some app or something. He just got engaged. We see each other every few years, but we don’t really have a ton in common. That’s pretty much it.” She shrugged, but with a feigned nonchalance that indicated there was something she still wasn’t telling him. Ethan took a stab in the dark.
“Is it…does it have to do with you working when you were a kid, or…?”
She sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“Mine.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know, Ethan,” she said, suddenly as irritated as he had ever seen her. “There isn’t a problem. It was my choice. Although once it stopped being cute little community theater roles and started paying half the rent on our apartment, it didn’t really feel like it was a choice anymore. But I’m still doing it now, so all’s well that ends well, right?” She drained her iced coffee, avoiding his eyes.
“You resent her,” he said quietly. She shook her head.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. In a weird way it feels like I resent her for what didn’t happen. Like once I got older and started hearing stories from other kids in the industry, what they went through…I was really lucky. But if something had happened, there was no one who had my back. I was in a world full of adults with no one to protect me.”
She looked down into her empty glass. “I wish…I wish she’d felt like my mom for longer. She kind of just feels like some lady I used to live with. Maybe that’s horrible to say. But it doesn’t seem like she’s that interested in being closer, either. Everybody’s happy with the way things are.” Her voice cracked a little.
He was silent, waiting to see if she would continue. When she spoke again, her tone was light and forced.
“What about you? You have at least one sister, right?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this is the first time we’re having this conversation.”
“I can, considering how eager we both seem to be having it.” That got a laugh out of her. “Four sisters. All older.”
“Of course you’re the baby, it all makes sense now. What about your parents?”
“They’re older, too.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mom died when I was in high school, right before Sam and I moved out here. My dad is probably still sitting in our living room in Forest Hills, getting hammered and punching holes in the wall.”
“What did the wall ever do to him?” she asked in a manner that, now that he knew her better, he recognized as defensive; the kind of filler that meant she was uncomfortable and didn’t know what else to say.
He looked down at his mostly untouched casserole. “What did any of us?”
She went pale before reaching across the table and covering his hand with hers. Neither of them said anything for a few moments.
“What about Sam’s parents?” Her voice was hesitant.
He jerked his hand back involuntarily, as disoriented as if she’d physically slapped him. “What?”
She pressed on. “Sam’s parents. You said you lived with them sometimes. Are they…are you still in touch?”
“No.” The word was short, staccato, like a gunshot. Her mouth tightened, chastened, and she tried to take another sip from her glass before realizing it was empty.
He reluctantly continued, wanting to assuage her. “I haven’t seen them…not since the funeral. I couldn’t even talk to them. I was such a wreck.” He hadn’t thought about Sam’s parents in years. In his mind, they’d died the day Sam had.
The days following Sam’s death had been a blur. It was hard for him to distinguish his own memories from what he’d been told, or from the footage that had played over and over again for what felt like an eternity. In some ways, being escorted out of the funeral in handcuffs had been preferable to facing Sam’s parents, seeing the pain and accusation laid bare on their faces. Of course he hadn’t been in touch with them since. It was the least he could do. Their son was dead because of him.
Grey pushed back her chair and stood up, the rough scrape of the legs against the pavement bringing him back to the present with a jolt. She moved next to him, placing her hand on his shoulder, and he pushed his chair back, too. She curled herself into his lap and he pulled her to his chest, his racing heart beginning to slow. He leaned his head against hers and closed his eyes.
They sat that way for a long time, still as statues, apart from the breeze brushing a strand of her hair against his cheek. His thumb lightly traced the gap of skin between the bottom of her shirt and the top of her leggings.
He shifted his head until their foreheads touched, then brought his hand up to cup the back of her neck. He had a sudden, overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. The warmth of her skin beneath his hands. Her weight settled in his lap. After everything they’d already been through, he knew better than to take it for granted.