by Mignon Mykel
Urging her to spend the weekend with us.
“Sydney just wants us to get together,” Grace blurted out. “I’ve told her it wasn’t happening.” She pulled her lips in and her brows rose, as if the words were a slip and she hadn’t meant to say them out loud.
Even though I had told Sydney the same, hearing that Grace turned down the notion left my chest tight and uncomfortable. “Yeah. Her matchmaking skills leave room for improvement,” I tried joking, but it fell flat on my own ears.
Grace crossed her arms over her chest, adding to the slight distance between us. I felt as if she were holding herself together, putting a wall up.
Goddamn, I made a mistake with her.
They always said sex ruined friendships.
Yeah, well, with Grace, we did the sex thing first and fell into friends last so I wouldn’t necessarily say it was sex that put this divide between us.
But my feelings for her certainly hadn’t gone anywhere.
Fucking feelings.
“I see Syd and the kids all the time. You guys have fun and maybe I’ll stop by on Sunday before you fly home,” she said, still trying to get out of the day.
Yeah.
Not happening.
I hated this wall. I hated that she was hugging herself, guarding herself, from me. That shit was stopping. I was going to fix this friendship.
I knew she was going to think this phrase inside out, that she likely had with the three other pleas I gave her, but I said it all the same. “No. I want you to hang out. Please, Grace?” If she said no this time, I’d let her be. I wasn’t going to beg.
As badly as I wanted to, I wasn’t going to do it.
But, as she always managed to do, she surprised me. Spoken hardly over a whisper, she finally said after a grand pause, “Ok.”
I plopped Brody in the sand next to his brother and Sydney looked up at me quizzically.
“I’m going to the rail,” I said, well aware that my sister would figure out why I was heading to the railing.
Sure enough, her eyes casted in the direction of Grace. When Brielle fell asleep in Grace’s arms a little while ago, she had placed Sydney’s youngest in her car seat before excusing herself to the rails, where the seals and sea lions were sun bathing on the rocks below.
Sydney looked back at me, a small smile on her face. “She’d be good for you, Soy. You guys get along so well.” In less than four hours, Sydney had brought up Grace and me being good together no less than five times but more than that, Grace being good for me had been on my mind no less than five times today. A relationship just wasn’t in our cards, but our friendship? That could be fixed, even if Sydney didn’t realize it was broken.
“Yeah, well…” I wasn’t sure how much my sister knew about Grace and I and our history, and I didn’t exactly want to ruin whatever little trust I still held with the blonde beauty by telling Sydney something she didn’t already know.
“Different states, Syd,” I repeated instead, standing up and brushing the sand from my jeans, heading toward the only woman who completely held my attention for the last five years.
Before coming down, I had changed into older, worn Levis and a hooded sweatshirt, ditching my loafers for running shoes. This was a much more comfortable ensemble. No sooner than I pocketed my hands in the large hoodie pocket, my sister yelled out, “It’s not like you don’t have a career that you could transfer!”
With a strained chuckle, I moved a hand to squeeze the bridge of my nose as I walked away. My sister could be really fucking loud when she wanted to.
And there was no way Grace didn’t hear that, even if she were a distance away.
Sure enough, Grace looked back over her shoulder, catching me as I walked toward her. Her smile was nowhere to be seen but she didn’t look upset. No, she looked thoughtful. She watched me take a few more steps and before I reached her, she turned her attention back to the rocks below. Here, I could hear some of the chatter as the marine animals talked and fought over prime sun spots.
“How’s it going?” I asked, leaning forward on the rail next to her, leaving a good foot of space between us even if all I wanted to do was wrap myself around her and rest my chin on the crown of her head, as if my being around her could help ward off any of the negative thoughts she had in her head.
Grace nodded a few times, all while not turning her attention toward me. “It’s so beautiful out here.”
“It is.” And it was. I didn’t make it out to San Diego as much as I would like, but La Jolla was one of my favorite spots in the world. The crashing waves on the rocks on windy days, the heat of the sun with the cool breeze on nicer days…
“Look,” I said, just as she started, “I don’t—”
We both stopped, turning our heads to look at the other.
“You first,” I said, feigning a calm I certainly didn’t feel. Acting relaxed on the rail was taking more energy than chasing down a suspect.
She shook her head. “No. You first.”
I knew that that was her way of protecting whatever she had to say. I knew she was afraid of what my response would be to the words she wanted to give, and again, I fucking hated myself for putting this distance between us.
But I was hell bent on fixing that.
“I was just going to say that I’m sorry for the way I acted when I met Jeremy. I just,” I sighed, looking back out over the water. I took a moment before confessing, “I didn’t like him and realized I might have been a little bit jealous. I still…” I paused, shaking my head lightly and narrowed my eyes as I looked out over the water, thinking back to the day I met him.
Grace had been incredibly happy.
So fucking happy.
And as screwed up as it was, I had hated that someone else put that fucking smile on her face. So yeah, I had been jealous. Really green with envy of the man who couldn’t keep his hands off of my best friend but couldn’t manage to keep his eyes on her, and only her.
If Grace had been in my arms, there’d be no way in hell you’d catch me checking out every other woman walking around. Yeah, yeah, I knew that being in a relationship didn’t make a man dead, and that looking and touching were two different things, but it was the way Jeremy looked at other women that didn’t sit well in my gut.
Nor did the way he held Grace, like she was a possession and he was keeping her from me. The man fucking growled when Grace had hugged me hello. I went after perps daily who had similar attributes as he did, and that was what didn’t sit well.
No, I still didn’t care for the way Jeremy was with Grace then, but it wasn’t really my place to try and steal her sunshine from her, not when Grace fought for those very moments.
The ‘jealous’ bit of my speech caught Grace’s attention. She still relaxed into the rail, but her head turned toward me. Her eyes were narrowed as she thought about what I said. “Jealous? But why?”
If that didn’t just deflate the ego a little.
She didn’t say it in a malicious way though, but rather, in a thoughtful way—as if she had some sort of inkling that was part of the reason I stepped away from her those months ago.
I shifted in my spot, releasing some of the tension in my legs as I realized I locked a knee. I rolled my shoulders and tilted my head to the side as if to crack it, but I hadn’t been successful in that releasing pop in quite some time.
Probably too much stress.
Grace seemed to notice my unease and to my utter surprise, my uncomfortableness seemed to ease some of her own. She turned to lean a hip on the rail, crossing her arms over her chest, and offered me the first beautiful, full, smile I had seen on her face since the first moment I saw her on July 18, the day I met her douche of a boyfriend.
And you know what? If me being uncomfortable gave that to her, I’d be uncomfortable for the rest of my life.
Grace
Sawyer, jealous? Seriously?
I understood Jeremy being jealous of my friendship with Sawyer, but Sawyer being jealous over a boy
friend of mine? The reality of that happening had simply felt fantastical.
I mean, I had momentary thoughts in that direction, but I just figured that was me wishing for more with the man I couldn’t have.
Five years ago, when Sawyer and I slept together, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t the best sex of my life. He’d been completely attentive to me, something I couldn’t say of the few other men I had been with.
But Sawyer’s attentiveness in those moments really didn’t surprise me.
From the moment he and I met at Sydney and Cael’s engagement party, through the events that led up to the wedding, he was easily attuned to what I was feeling. And while I loved spending time with him, I was very much a realist.
Long-distance relationships could work under a few circumstances, and two people having careers in two different cities, two different states...well, those things weren’t the most conducive to a long-term relationship.
And I wasn’t really all about the random hook-up once a month or so, whenever one of us could find time to go to the other.
So being friends with Sawyer worked. It made sense.
While my mind was well on track with that, my heart sometimes had a difficult time keeping up—but again, I was a realist.
Sawyer being jealous though put a bit of a twist in the entire situation. Because if he was jealous, that meant…
Well, that meant that his head and heart were likely fighting the same battles mine were.
Wouldn’t that just be some kicker?
The man in question shrugged his shoulder. “I got used to what we had, I guess,” he finally answered. “And you being with him meant all that was going to change.”
I supposed I understood that, but putting the shoe on the other foot— “Are you saying you were never with another woman after we were together?” I highly doubted it. “Should I have been jealous you were with other women? It didn’t ruin our friendship.” I shook my head slightly, trying to get a full grasp of what he was saying.
He shifted in his spot. “Well, no. I had…” He frowned, not finishing his thought, but just the start was enough to have me feeling the teeniest bit jealous. “I see your point,” he finished, all while I was suddenly seeing his point.
Sawyer wasn’t a monk. We had a great night in bed once, became friends, and he probably had a number of sexual relationships after that night. I probably was always semi-aware of it happening, but the fact that it was pretty obvious right now?
Yeah, I was a little bit jealous.
Not that I had a reason to be.
We were friends. Or, we were. I wasn’t entirely sure what we were right this moment. But still, I was understanding what Sawyer meant by saying he’d been jealous over Jeremy.
Sawyer cleared his throat and sighed once. “Look, I don’t really want to hash all that out.” He waved a hand dismissively near the rail before leaning into it, his forearms dangling over the metal beams. With one leg straight behind him and the other cocked near the rail, he was the picture of relaxed, but I could see the tension in his shoulders under his shirt, the bunching of the muscles in his forearms, the storms in the yellow swirls of colors in his eyes.
Once again, I was brought back to his comment of being jealous.
And once again, I tried to convince myself it didn’t really matter. Not truly.
Well, it actually did matter. I cared about Sawyer. But we couldn’t be in a relationship. It simply wasn’t feasible.
“I’m sorry though, for what it’s worth,” he spoke through my thoughts.
I shook my head. “It’s ok.”
“No, Grace, it’s not. I was jealous and I took a step back from our friendship.” He turned to face me, his gaze penetrating. “And I hate what it’s done to you, what it’s done to us.”
It was my turn to shift. I wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but I was unsure. Who was to say he wouldn’t pull back again someday? If I even got back to the even ground I once had with him, what would the consequences be when he stranded me again?
“Fuck,” he mumbled, startling me. Reaching for me, he brushed a strand of hair behind my ear while I stood there. Just stood there. Like a dumbass. “Out of your head, Gracie. Please,” he pleaded.
The sadness in his eyes, mixed with the tiredness in his body, had me aching for him. Aching for the man who was once a closer friend to me than even Sydney had been. The same man who knew me more than my parents likely did.
They credited my quiet ways to me simply being an observing soul, but Sawyer always saw right through it.
His hand moved from his fingers grazing my ear, to his palm settling behind my head and he pulled me close, completely forgetting any boundaries that may have existed, that should have existed, between us. But the moment I stepped toward him, the moment his other hand wrapped around my waist and my cheek rested on his chest, feeling the thumping of his heart, my mind quieted.
He may have been the one to put the anxious thoughts in my head.
He may have been the one who had me treading lightly.
But he was also the only one who had the ability to calm it all.
Sawyer
I couldn’t handle the train of emotions running over her face. It was like the first time I met her, but only a thousand times worse and completely my fault.
At Sydney and Caleb’s engagement party, when I’d first met Grace by the gift table, her face was filled with tamped down panic at being in such a large crowd of people she didn’t know. Even that first time, I knew she had slight anxieties and maybe that was why it was so easy to be carefree with her.
Not carefree in the way that I was frivolous with our friendship, but carefree in the way that I could be my joking, light self. It was easy to forget the drudged down depression that my job sometimes brought to my door, because I fought so hard to keep a smile on Grace’s face.
God, I would do anything to have her smile back right now.
Instead, I pulled her close. With her head tucked to my chest and under my chin, I was thankful she didn’t pull away. I needed to hold her, to ward off her fears and thoughts, because I couldn’t stand to see them in her blue eyes any longer.
Holding her this close wasn’t doing my psyche much good though. I could smell the coconut shampoo she used in her hair and the hemp lotion she used on her skin. Lotion that I once teased her mercilessly for but still bought her for Christmas and her birthday.
I could feel as her body relaxed, fraction by fraction, until her hands went from her sides to rest on
my sides.
“I missed you, Gracie,” I whispered down into the crown of blonde hair. “I’m sorry for being a jealous prick and not reaching out to you.”
“I forgive you,” she whispered back. I knew she believed the words, just as I knew it also wasn’t going to be just that easy. She was going to question everything and I was going to have to fight to prove that what I said was true, but I was not afraid of spending the weekend showing her that we could be the friends we once were, again. I was going to keep in contact with her when I got back home. I was going to text her, email her, call her… At least once a day, like I did with Sydney.
I was going to do it, and I was going to prove that she could still find her calm in me.
Because I found my calm in her.
I looked out over the water, not really paying attention to the mammals talking below, or the voices drifting with the wind. I knew that Sydney had a first class seat to the embrace her brother and friend were in, and I didn’t care. Right now was about easing Grace’s fears and thoughts, not about anyone else at this park.
When Grace finally pulled away, she did so with her chin tucked into her chest and a slight blush rising on her cheeks. Maybe I wasn’t as successful at easing her uncomfortableness as I had hoped.
I let my arms drop to my sides, stuffing them in my pockets to refrain from pulling her back.
Or from lifting her chin up and pressing my lips to hers.
Because su
ddenly I wanted that even more than I wanted to fix my wrong-doings—and fuck if that made sense because kissing her would only add to my list of wrongs.
Kissing Grace would lead to more, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind, but neither one of us was in a position where more could work.
I mean, I could move and transfer to a division out here, or she could even move and relocate her boutique, but something told me that wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded. I was too new of a detective to transfer to a division that I wanted though and I’d likely be stuck working crimes and cases that my heart wasn’t in because as sad and hard as they were, the group of detectives who made up special crimes-type forces tended to stick together for years on end. Getting a position at Salt Lake City had been pure luck and I enjoyed the positive outcomes of our cases.
Hated the negative ones, but the positive ones made the job well worth it.
“How about we start over?” I offered, not knowing what else to say. Her body language was much more relaxed and her eyes didn’t seem as troublesome as they had been, but I knew getting to her was going to take much more than some words and a hug.
“What do you mean?” Her gaze was on me again and the blush that had adorned her cheeks, as cute as it had been, evened back to her normal complexion.
“Start today over. No more stifled answers.” I gave her a playful wink, trying everything in my arsenal of tricks to get her to be completely relaxed with me.
Grace nodded, her eyes once again holding a hint of unease. She glanced over to where Sydney and the boys were still playing in the sand and I followed her gaze over my shoulder. Sydney looked up and waved with a smile before going back to driving a truck through the sand.
“She honestly thinks we’re going to get together,” Grace mused and as much as I wanted to agree with her flippant statement, there was part of me holding back.
Part of me that wanted to say screw the logistics, the facts on why we couldn’t work, and find a way to give them all the bird and prove them wrong. I would have to think about that.
