Damaged Goods

by J. C. Hannigan

  “Thanks for the ride,” I mumbled. “I’ll see you later.” I picked up my bag and opened the door, stepping out. The moment I shut it, Kyle’s tires spun as he took off. I watched him go, frowning. I had no idea what this meant for the band or the fundraiser. What if he’d only asked me to collaborate with his band because he was into me?

  If that were the case, Marcus and Cam wouldn’t have agreed, I reminded myself, the soothing thought easing my anxieties.

  My stomach was rumbling again, reminding me that I’d missed lunch. I adjusted my bag and ran up the empty driveway, leaning over to grab the spare key from under the floor mat. I unlocked the front door and walked in.

  Stella’s excited barking greeted me, along with the smell of dinner slow-cooking in the crock pot. After I had patted Stella enough times to satisfy her and let her outside, I grabbed a granola bar out of the pantry and sat at the kitchen island, longing looking at the counter where the crock pot sat. I didn’t know the first thing about cooking, though, and I wasn’t sure if it was ready or not.

  I ate the granola bar instead, allowing my thoughts to drift to my day. Soon enough, my thoughts turned to Grayson, and I began to scrutinize the meaning behind his words and actions. He perplexed me.

  I was completely lost in my musings until Stella’s annoyed bark brought me back. I shook my head, standing up to let her back in.

  “Better take you on that walk, huh?” I commented. Stella wagged her tail, her tongue lolling happily out of the side of her mouth.

  * * *

  In the span of two weeks, Marcus had turned into a crazy band manager. He had put up posters with the event details all over the school and town. My name was on the poster: under Kyle’s and before Marcus’s. They had decided to rename the band to Autumn Fields, despite my insistence I didn’t want it changed. I was already having a hard enough time dealing with seeing my name on the posters.

  “A fresh start is good,” Kyle had argued with me, giving me a pointed look. His words were heavy with meaning, only that meaning was rather difficult to decipher. I didn’t want to encourage his foul mood by asking him to clarify, so I just dealt with the name change vote.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about officially being a part of their band, especially with the new tension.

  Band practice on the first Wednesday night after our talk had been interesting. Kyle’s usual playful banter and easy-going personality was gone, replaced by a serious, brooding musician. It made things a little awkward and tense.

  Still, we had gotten a lot accomplished. We solidified the rest of our set, along with “Plain Sight”.

  The Battle of the Bands was fast approaching, and I grew more and more nervous with each day that passed. Thanks to the posters plastered everywhere around town and in the school, I was getting more attention than normal.

  Most of the attention was good—encouraging, even—but it still didn’t help ease my nerves. I was a twisted mess of coiled anxiety, teetering on the edge of depression.

  Grayson had also fallen off the face of the earth…again. For an entire week, he didn’t reach out to me at all. I almost worried myself sick wondering what he was doing. I had sent him several messages and even tried calling him a few times. My calls went straight to voice mail, and my text messages went without response. After five days, I felt stupid.

  Kyle had noticed Grayson’s absence from school and his attitude toward me warmed considerably, which only frustrated me further.

  By Friday morning, I still hadn’t heard from Grayson.

  I was mad that he still hadn’t responded to any one of my texts at least saying that he was okay. I was mad that Alicia was right: that I did care for him far more than he cared for me. That much was clear…you don’t just disappear without a whisper to someone you supposedly cared about.

  I was mostly mad at myself though, for allowing myself to get tangled up in these emotions, knowing that commitment was not in his vocabulary. He had warned me. I’m not boyfriend material.

  But then again, we still hadn’t officially clarified anything. I was beginning to realize that what happened between us meant more to me than it did him…and that stung.

  To distract myself from the icy pang in my heart that Grayson’s absence had left in his wake, I threw myself into music. I focused on the battle and my feelings of nervous anticipation. I wrote constantly in his absence, coming up with some of our best songs yet. We were essentially ready for the Battle of the Bands, which was good, considering it was the very next night.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Grayson would show up for it.

  Focus, Everly, I told myself, frowning at the intrusive thought.

  I opened my front door, intent on making it to the bus in time. I saw the familiar, forest green truck parked in my driveway, with Grayson leaning against the driver’s door. I came to a sudden stop, still on my front porch, as if those intense blue eyes boring into mine had the power to freeze me.

  His hands were in his jacket pockets, the chilly November air blowing his hair around his face. There was a little more stubble on his chin, and dark circles under his eyes that concerned me.

  I walked toward him, my eyes transfixed as if I was starving for the mere sight of him—and I was.

  “Where have you been?” I whispered, stopping near the front of his truck. I purposely kept the distance between us, needing it to keep the tears that wanted to spill at bay. Even when I tried to distract myself with band stuff and friend stuff, I was still undeniably twisted with worry, confusion, and anger over Grayson’s disappearance.

  It wasn’t the first time he had disappeared off the face of the earth—he had done it many times—but this time, the disappearance weighed heavily on my heart. I couldn’t help but over-analyze everything that had happened between us. Insecurity had snaked its way in.

  The way Grayson was looking at me did nothing to help my confusion. The electricity between us sizzled stronger than ever, that magnetic pull making me want to step into his arms and just be held by him even though he had caused many tears. My body and heart argued that it didn’t matter. He was here now.

  My mind had grown more stubborn, though, and it shouted that I deserved more.

  “Let me guess, another one of those ‘I’ll tell you someday’ things,” I answered for him, my eyes narrowing at his silence.

  I didn’t wait for him to reply; I looked away as if his eyes seared me and started to walk towards my bus stop.

  “Everly, wait,” he said, his long legs easily catching up to me with three strides. I closed my eyes, blinking back tears as his hand gently touched my arm. “I want to tell you, it’s just a really long story.”

  “Start with where you were the last week,” I demanded hotly, turning to face him.

  He kept his hand on my arm. “I was dealing with family stuff,” he answered. I looked into his eyes, seeing open honesty and pain, which he quickly tried to mask.

  I took a shaky breath. “Ok,” I said, believing him with every fiber of my being. “What happened?”

  He looked at me, conflicted. “I want to tell you, Everly, but I’m not used to letting anybody know my business. I want to…but I don’t know how to let you in.”

  Grayson saw the emotion dance across my face; he stepped toward me, wanting to shelter me from it. Before he could reach out and touch me, he froze, realizing that he had caused that pain. I could tell that he didn’t want to cause me pain; he didn’t want to keep me on the outside. He just had no idea how to bring me in.

  “You start by talking to me, Grayson,” I told him softly. I closed my eyes against the touch of his hand on my cheek.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “And I will, but first…we should get to school.”

  I opened my eyes, blinking at him with astonishment. “You’re really concerned about school now?” I asked doubtfully. “After you’ve missed basically an entire month since it started? It’s only November!”

  Grayson smiled at me, almost sadly. “It’s nev
er too late to try, right?” He looked as if he didn’t believe it. I got the impression that he wasn’t talking about school, either.

  “It’s not,” I whispered, because it wasn’t. His lips curved up in another small smile, which faded from his face as he gestured to the truck. Resigned, I climbed in and buckled the seat belt.

  Grayson slammed his door and put his hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, but he made no move to start it. We sat inside his truck, parked in my driveway for several minutes. I watched as his knuckles whitened, and he drew in a jagged breath. I turned my body toward his, wanting to reach out but afraid to touch him.

  “Grayson,” I started, but he shook his head, silencing me. He was battling against the walls that he had encased himself in for so long. I waited in silence, my eyes trained on his face.

  “My mom overdosed.” Grayson’s voice was tense, as if speaking hurt him. His eyes were stormy, but he kept them focused at something straight ahead, unable to look at me. “Prescription sleeping pills that I hadn’t known she had. She took the whole bottle, washed it all down with whiskey. I wasn’t there. Nobody was.”

  “Grayson,” I said again, my voice breaking. My heart shattered into a hundred pieces as I looked at him. I didn’t know the whole story—why she would do such a thing—but I knew that I wanted to ease his pain.

  He ran his hands through his hair, tormented, his expression grim. “She’s dead. Her funeral was singlehandedly the worse experience of my life. I got into a fist fight with my dad.”

  I bit my lips to keep from asking why. I knew that grief could do strange things to a person.

  “I blame him. I still do.” Grayson shook his head, finally meeting my eyes. The anguish in his nearly broke me. “Dad broke her beyond repair. He utterly and completely destroyed her. The vibrant woman that I knew was gone, and she barely got out of bed. She didn’t work, and she didn’t stop drinking. She was constantly sleeping. He left me to pick up the pieces; me to try and get her back to the land of the living. Nobody gave a shit about her, then when it was too late, they all came crawling back crying about ‘if they’d only known’ how bad she was suffering.”

  Grayson’s tone was bitter and broken. He punched the steering wheel blindly, needing to release some of his anger.

  It was as through the dam had broken and his words were pouring forth. He was finally letting me in, and as I sat there listening, my heart ached for him, for the need to fix it somehow.

  “It’s not your fault, Grayson,” I told him, my hand rising to touch his cheek. He turned away from it, unable to be touched.

  “Yes it is,” he argued, his jaw clenching and his eyes hard. “I moved out. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I left her, too…I had to get away, and now she’s dead.”

  “Grayson.” I scooted towards him, forcing him to come closer. “You couldn’t have handled that on your own. She was hurting, and you couldn’t fix it. And it wasn’t your responsibility to fix it. It was up to her, and she didn’t, or couldn’t…for whatever reason.”

  Grayson clenched his jaw again, nodding once to acknowledge me. I could tell he didn’t believe me, though; that he still shouldered the blame.

  He took a deep breath, and I could almost see the shields going back up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to unload that on you. I just didn’t want you to think I willingly left you without a word…I just couldn’t…”

  “I understand,” I assured him, feeling guilty for assuming the worst. While I sat there, thinking he’d used me and didn’t care about me, he had been burying his dead mother and dealing with the fallout of his emotions of guilt and losing her. “I wish you had told me. I could have been there.”

  While his body was calm and poised, his eyes still swirled with the emotional turmoil he felt within. Tormented, he finally met my eyes. “I don’t want to break you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “You won’t,” I told him, needing him to believe it. “I…care deeply about you, Grayson, but I will not break. I’m stronger than I look.”

  “I know you are.” Grayson smiled slightly, almost bitterly. “But love can destroy even the strongest.”

  I inhaled sharply, dropping my gaze. I had never uttered the “L” word, but I suppose that it was obvious. I sat back, turning my face away from him as I bit down hard onto my bottom lip.

  “Love can be good,” I whispered, blinking back tears.

  He was silent as he studied me. “Maybe it can be,” he said, sounding as if he wanted to believe it. He finally started his truck, glancing over his shoulder as he reversed out of my driveway.

  He drove faster than the speed limit, his eyes locked on the road. I kept mine trained out of the window, watching the landscape without seeing it.

  Grayson didn’t exactly have the healthiest introduction to love and what it was supposed to be like. You weren’t supposed to be so enthralled with someone that you couldn’t function if they ever left. It unnerved me that Grayson worried it would be like that for me; that I would break the way his mother had.

  Alicia’s concerns danced around in my head too, reminding me that maybe I wasn’t as strong as I thought. While I knew I wouldn’t break to that degree, I definitely had fallen hard for Grayson. That was irreparable, but I didn’t think it made me weak. I didn’t think it would destroy me in the ways that he feared. I was stronger than that.

  He pulled into the school parking lot, finding a space to ease his truck into. Once he had parked and killed the engine, he turned to face me. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”

  “So don’t.” I shrugged, feeling as if the entire thing was rather ridiculous. I opened the door, grabbing my bag from the floor of his truck. I paused, looking at him again. “I’m sorry about your mom, Grayson. I’m here if you need to talk to me…about anything, but please don’t treat me like I’m glass or assume that I can’t handle what you throw at me.”

  * * *

  It seemed like the entire school was abuzz with the upcoming Battle of the Bands. Between all the posters that Marcus had put up and his table-top speech in the cafeteria at lunch, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t know about the battle.

  After lunch, my hands shook as I grabbed my binder for third period. Too many people had come up to me during the break to talk about how huge this opportunity was for our band, and for our school, which only made me more nervous.

  “Everly,” Kyle shouted. I looked over, seeing him jogging toward me with a big grin on his face. He was apparently back to normal. “Wait up!”

  I paused, tapping my finger against my binder as I waited for him. “What’s up?”

  “We’re having an impromptu jam tonight,” Kyle told me, his charming smile lighting up his expression. “Can you make it?”

  I thought about it. I hadn’t seen Grayson since that morning in the school parking lot, and I desperately wanted to see him and make sure that he was okay—or at least as okay as he could be given the circumstances.

  “I could make it for a bit,” I relented.

  Kyle’s grin intensified, the florescent lights bouncing off the white of his perfect teeth. “Great, I’ll give you a lift?”

  “I have to do some things first, but I’ll be there,” I told him.

  Kyle’s smile faded slightly, but he nodded. “Okay, cool. See you later then.” I watched as Kyle walked off, frowning at his back.

  “Hey,” Grayson’s voice was a welcoming distraction. I turned to see him leaning against his locker. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he hadn’t run off after my grand speech in the parking lot.

  He seemed back to his normal, stoic self, only his eyes betrayed any emotion as he gazed at me with longing, desire, and something else…something that made my heart stutter in my chest. “Lots of people are talking,” he remarked, his eyes transfixed on my lips.

  “Oh?” I frowned, wondering what they were saying.

  �
�You’re a pretty hot topic right now.” Grayson smiled mischievously. “I saw the posters…” He trailed off, nodding at the one that hung across the hall, stuck to some random kid’s locker.

  I glanced at it and blushed deeply. Marcus had his mom take it at the beginning of the week and I hadn’t known she was taking it until the flash was blinding me. Kyle and I were in the middle of singing “You’re Not With Me”. There was a lot of emotion behind that song; I had written it for Grayson and was singing it amidst his disappearance. The emotion was etched on my face…and Kyle’s as well, as he stood slightly off to the side, singing his parts as he looked at me with broken longing.

  I had to admit, it was an intense photo. I hadn’t really realized how intense until Grayson pointed it out.

  “I like it,” he assured me. “You look…” he trailed off again, his eyes back on my face. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “I like the name, too.”

  “Yeah, well, Marcus insists that it fits the image, but they’ll probably change it seven more times.” I shrugged. The hallways had almost completely emptied. I bit my lip, thinking about the science class I would be late for if I didn’t hurry. “What are you doing after school?”

  “I was thinking about ending the day early,” he confessed, titling his head as if inviting me. I was about to lecture him before thoughts of how he’d just lost his mom stopped me. Grayson didn’t need a lecture right now; he needed someone to talk to…and a distraction. I could be both.

  I couldn’t deny that my own selfish reasons of wanting to be with him were also major contributing factors.

  “Let’s go, then,” I said, spinning my lock combination again. I threw my science text book back inside and grabbed my bag.

  His eyes widened in surprise as I turned on my heel and started walking toward the parking lot. His long legs easily kept up with my short strides. He walked alongside me, his hands in his jacket pocket as he smiled.