“With my mom,” I grumbled, then I shot my arms out, wrapped them around her, and pulled her into me, burrowing my face in her wild hair. “Go back to sleep.”
“I’m not tired anymore.” Her voice held an edge of laughter, and damn, I wanted to hear that. Especially after what happened the night before. If she was ready to laugh, I was prepared to be the one to make it happen. I flipped her over so her back was to me again, and pulled her to me, leaving absolutely no space between us. I rested my hand on her waist, giving her a tiny squeeze, and everything inside me lit up when I heard her laughter. “No tickling!” She was shrieking and laughing, trying to wiggle her way out of my arms.
Finally, when she was out of breath and smiling, I stopped, but still held her close. Her breathing slowed, and every few moments a rogue giggle slipped out of her, but she didn’t try to pull away or make me let her go. She relaxed into me, running her fingers softly up and down my arm.
“Devon?” she finally asked.
“Yeah?”
“Why were you at the bar last night?”
I let out a sigh. I’d known this part of the conversation was coming, I had just originally thought we would have had it the night before. Grace rolled so she was facing me, but put a little distance between us. I wanted to reach out and obliterate it, but I let her have her space.
“You blew me off, and I wasn’t prepared to let you go. So I went to find you.” I said the words as though they were evident. Self-explanatory. And to me, they were. She’d pushed me away without a reason, and I wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer. “Somewhere along the line, something got between us, and I’m not sure what it was. But I was sure that if I could talk to you last night, I could make it go away.”
I reached out and tucked away a piece of her hair, gently looping it behind her ear, never breaking eye contact. Her hair was impossibly soft and I wanted to thread my fingers through it, feel it slip between them.
“I knew you’d be at work, and I remembered the name of the bar, so I asked my mom to watch the kids overnight and I went looking for you.”
I watched her eyes change, watched her retreat back into her mind, insecurity painting her face.
“Hey,” I said, bringing my hand to her cheek, trying to get her to look back at me. “Don’t run away from me. I’m right here. What happened between those two text messages that changed your mind about us?” Her eyes met mine again, but her teeth were worrying her lip and her eyes still looked unsure. I trailed my thumb down her cheekbone, trying to coax the words from her. Finally, she spoke.
“I moved to Fairbanks with my husband right after we graduated. We agreed we’d go wherever the first job offer came from. Jeff got an offer first, and I was a substitute teacher for a few years before I got my job. During the first summer we were there I took a job as a receptionist at a salon. Shelby, my best friend since middle school, had just graduated from the beautician academy and I got her a job where I worked. She made a good name for herself and started doing makeup jobs outside of the salon.”
Grace grew quiet, as if she were contemplating the next part of her story, and I couldn’t figure out how any of it had anything to do with us.
“Since Shelby is also a model, she did some work with local photographers. Turns out, she worked with Evie and they were also friends. Still are, in fact.”
I had to admit, that information caught me off guard, but it still didn’t give me the insight I was looking for.
“Anyway, she just happened to call yesterday while you and I were texting and we got to talking, and she eventually figured out that the Devon I was dating was the same Devon her friend Evie had been, um, involved with.”
Slowly the pieces were falling into place, and the light was growing brighter and brighter in my mind. Her eyes fell away from me again, to look down at her hands, which were fiddling with some imaginary piece of lint. I watched her turn back inward.