by Mignon Mykel
Jeremy and I had met at Bean There, as clichéd as that sounds. Meeting over coffee.
But it was true.
He had been standing behind me while I waited for my iced latte and when I felt him move too closely, my anxieties had me fumbling my cup when it was ready, spilling the cold beverage on the floor and on his tennis shoes. He’d simply laughed it off and while it hadn’t completely eased me, I was willing to grab lunch with him when he asked.
I had been with Jeremy two months before my attack. It was another month before I asked Sawyer to meet him.
And if I thought Jeremy’s indifference to my panic attack had been a slight fixable flaw, the way he acted after meeting Sawyer was a much larger issue, and I hadn’t been blind to it.
One time, one time, I had picked up my phone to tell Sawyer something during our drought of not speaking, and Jeremy had asked who I was texting. When I told him, he became angry.
Not in the ‘throw pillows and fists’ way, no, but in that quiet way some men got.
And because it wasn’t like Sawyer was reaching out to me anymore, it was easy to let talking to him go to appease Jeremy. Jeremy was my boyfriend and my potential future; Sawyer was a friend.
I saw the error in my ways now, of course, but at the time, it made sense.
Currently, Sawyer moved to stand beside me, putting a plate in front of me before sitting in the stool next to me, another plate in front of him. Giving me time, he cut into his stack of French toast. I watched the easy movements, the bunch of his forearms and the tightening of his fingers.
I lifted my eyes to his face, seeing that his eyes were focused on his task but his shoulders were bunched. Sawyer had enough on his plate; he didn’t need to shoulder my burdens, too.
Maybe if he knew the worst of the worse, he would step back. No more hand holds or brushing lower backs. Maybe he’d be content with long distance friends who spoke on the rare occasion.
His eyes lifted to mine now.
Insert some witty ‘turn off your head’ comment, but he was keeping quiet. He was giving me time and God knew I loved him for it.
My breath hitched in my chest.
Loved him like a friend. Like a friend…
We didn’t know—
Oh, but we did. We knew one another far better than I knew any other person, and he knew me inside and out. There was very little Sawyer didn’t know about me, and what he didn’t know, he usually could sense.
I moved my gaze from his intense yellow one, looking down at my plate and folding my hands in my lap. Suddenly I wasn’t very hungry.
With a sigh, I opened my mouth to begin but Sawyer reached out and put his big hand on top of my folded ones. “You don’t have to, Gracie. Honestly. It just…” He shrugged a shoulder. “I guess it just hurts a little to know we were still close at that time but you didn’t let me know about it.”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it,” I told our hands. “I’m a twenty-six year old adult. I can handle my issues.”
He squeezed my hands then shook them ever so slightly. “You are not a burden. Not now, not then.”
I offered him a small smile and, as badly as I wanted to keep his hand on mine, I moved my hands so I could cut into my French toast. I needed something to do when I told him this story. Not because it was horrendous, but because it was embarrassing.
Having panic attacks was freaking embarrassing.
When I picked up my utensils, surprisingly Sawyer didn’t take his hand completely away. No, he placed it on my knee. Even through my leggings, I could feel the heat from his palm.
But I couldn’t think about that. No. I had a story to push through.
“It was just like any other day leading up to it. It was a Thursday and all week had been great. I had a super busy Wednesday morning and items were flying off the racks. I went in Thursday morning to restock and get the store ready for opening.” I put a cut off piece of French toast in my mouth. It was heavenly.
Wide eyed, I looked over at him. Waiting to not have food in my mouth, I finally told him, “That’s phenomenal. I’m totally using cinnamon and vanilla from now on.”
Sawyer chuckled, single-handedly cutting a piece of his own with the side of his fork, keeping his other hand on my leg. “Told you so.” So like Sawyer, he didn’t pressure me to go on with the story.
“It’s really not that exciting. My story,” I clarified.
He squeezed my knee, looking at me as he chewed. Finally he said, “Then don’t finish it.” There wasn’t an ounce of irritation in his voice.
But it confused me. He wanted to know the story, he said as much, but now he didn’t?
He squeezed my knee again before letting go, but not to leave me. Instead, he moved his arm to hook over my neck, pulling me close. Afraid I was going to fall off my stool, my hands faltered and grabbed at the countertop. Chuckling, Sawyer brushed his lips to my temple again.
Goodness gracious, he had to stop doing things like that.
“You worry so loudly, Gracie.” He pressed his lips to my temple once more before letting go. “I just want to know because it hurts me to know you went through it. That’s all. I don’t need the details, not really.”
Under it, I could hear his real reason.
He wanted me to be open with him. He wanted to know, because he needed to know we were back to where we once were, able to openly communicate.
And I wanted to give that to him.
I took a bite of turkey bacon and placed the rest of the slice down on the plate, thinking back to that day.
“It wasn’t even that busy. It was just that everything happened at one time. A customer had a question, the phone kept ringing, and the delivery guy needed something signed. It was just too much all at one time.” I shrugged a shoulder. “I excused myself from the three people who needed me and left the front of the store empty so I could hyperventilate and cry in the back office.” I gave Sawyer a forced smile. “See? Nothing terribly exciting.”
Sawyer’s fork was in a piece of toast and he was randomly swirling the piece in a dollop of syrup, watching the movements as he did so. He was contemplating something.
“Sydney told me it was the worst she’d seen.”
Ah. So that’s how he’d known. Not some super Spidey detective senses. Just a sister. To be honest though, I didn’t really care that she told him. I should have been the one to tell him.
“That’s because she came into the store an hour later and I was still huddled in my office.” It was my turn to trace random designs in my syrup. “She cleaned up after my mess, more or less, and closed the store for me before helping me home.”
“Here or your place?” He gave up on his breakfast, putting his fork down on his plate.
“My place.”
“Was…Did she stay with you, or…?” I could actually hear the hurt in his voice. I could feel it. “I mean, you had Jeremy, right?”
I offered him a half smile, even though even I could tell it was a sad one. “Yeah, but he didn’t really understand.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I swore Sawyer called Jeremy a ‘fucker’ under his breath and you know what?
Yeah. Yeah, he was.
He told me to wipe up my tears, take a deep breath, and to calm myself. He had plans for us that night and couldn’t have me blotchy-faced.
At the time, I was thankful for something to do and to get my head off of the events of the morning, but thinking back…
What a fool I had been to stay with him.
Jeremy and I were new enough in our relationship at that point that he shouldn’t have been cold toward me. Heck, if you cared about a person, you didn’t act that way ever, no matter how long you’d been together.
“It’s over now though, so,” I told him, “hindsight’s twenty-twenty.”
“I wish you would have told me.”
I turned in my stool now, facing him and taking him in. Still sporting sleep-rumbled hair and yet he was still the most beautiful man, i
nside and out, I had ever met. “I wish I had told you, too.”
Sawyer
If I didn’t hate the guy before, I definitely hated Jeremy now.
What the fuck kind of man acted like that when his girl was hurting?
An asshole. That was the kind.
I briefly wondered if he was giving Grace any sort of trouble now that they were no longer together. With his possessiveness the one and only time I met him, I would bet my paycheck that he was, but with how he reacted to her anxiety attack, I wasn’t so sure.
Shortly after Grace finished her story, we finished eating and she offered to clean up, allowing me to shower. Sydney was due back in another hour but I was hoping that maybe Grace would want to go out and do something with me.
Anything, just get out and be.
I showered quickly but thoughts of Jeremy and Grace kept circling in my head. There was no fucking way he was ok with them being broken up, not if Grace was the one to do the breaking.
I had to ask her about it.
That thought in mind, I stepped out of the shower and after drying, pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee, finger combing my hair as I made my way back downstairs. Grace was sitting on the couch, crossed-legged, her phone in her hands in her lap. With her head down, her long blonde hair obscured her face. She had taken down her bun while I was showering and now the long locks had crazy waves in them.
Did I go to sit beside her? Call her name?
Or do what I would have done last year upon seeing her?
Hell, all morning I had been making these choices. Hold her hand, or leave her be? Touch her knee, or keep on eating? Pull her close, or keep my distance?
And all morning, I chose to keep her close.
So why stop now?
So far, she hadn’t pushed me away.
I walked up behind her, behind the couch, and tugged on a lock of her hair before placing my hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently. She shut off her phone as her head tipped forward more.
Her shoulders were tense. The woman held on to her stress there. Knowing I could keep my hands on her forever but not quite sure that was an appropriate step—yet—I squeezed once more before walking around and plopped down beside her.
“You can say no,” I started, angling my body toward her but still keeping a respectable distance between us. “But I thought maybe you and I could go out and do something. Picnic or something.” It would also allow me to figure out how to ask her about Jeremy.
She lifted a brow. “We just ate.”
Ah, but she didn’t refute the doing something with me.
“So we do something beforehand.”
“What about Sydney?”
“We let her know we didn’t care for her ditching us, so we ditched her.” I gave Grace a cheeky grin.
Please say yes. Please say yes.
She shrugged a shoulder, nodding. “Ok. Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.”
Fuck yes.
Containing my smile, I stood and offered her hand. “Awesome. We can grab something from Panera.”
She laughed as she took my hand, standing. “You’re totally still hungry right now, aren’t you?”
For a sexy quiet blonde, absolutely. I was ravenous.
“Just go with it,” I told her. Knowing Sydney and her organization and need for proper things, I let go of Grace to move into the kitchen, searching for some sort of thermal type bag.
Finding the motherload of all thermals in the pantry, I grabbed a large one and a few smaller ones and moved to return to Grace. “You can even order hot food and it will keep.”
“You’re a nut,” Grace said, a smile wide over her face. She shook her head at me and led the way into the mudroom, where she grabbed her keys, and with me following, we made our way out to her car. She punched in the code to the garage when we were both out, allowing the door to close and lock up the house.
“I can drive.”
She looked at me. “But I know the area better. I live here.”
I wasn’t about to be driven around by Grace. No way, no how, not happening. Not that I didn’t think women could drive, they could. But I was playing the ‘impressing the girl’ field and that included driving her.
“Let me drive. Please?”
It had to be the puppy dog eyes I gave her because she sighed and handed me her keys. “Fine. But make sure you put the seat back when we’re done!”
“Deal.” I took the keys from her and walked her to the passenger side door, opening it for her. When she sat, I handed her the thermals which she placed at her feet, and I closed her in, rounding to the other side to get in myself.
Once we were settled and on the road, I played my luck again and reached over to put my hand on her knee. God, I loved having my hands on her.
Sure, I couldn’t feel skin, but I could feel heat and that was working for me. Grace turned her head toward the window, but not before I caught the upward swing of her cheek.
I may have gotten lost on the way to Panera.
I knew where one was, I’d been there before with Syd and Caleb, but the roads were tricky sometimes. Grace, sweet, sweet Grace, simply sat in her seat, tight-lipped smile as to not laugh at me, and let me do my thing.
After we grabbed food—and maybe swiped a set of regular utensils because plasticware was disgusting—putting it in the thermals, we continued on our way to Torrey Pines, a nature reserve just north of San Diego. I had been there once before with Sydney, during one of Caleb’s first major road trips after they married, and I’d enjoyed the serenity of the reserve. There was a beach but also a number of trails to hike around, as well as great views of the ocean.
Which I’m sure Grace could get anytime she wanted, she lived in San Diego after all, but I wanted to experience this with her.
As we drove into the reserve itself, Grace read the signs. “No food on the reserve.”
“But ok on the beach,” I finished for her. I rolled her car up to the gate to pay our parking admission, and drove us through the marked roads down to the beach. Being early December, it was nearly deserted by the shore but plenty of cars filled the lots. With a familiarity I missed, we talked about everything and nothing at all as we brought our thermals down to the beach to eat. I kept the topics off of Jeremy, as badly as I wanted to dive into that a little more. She would tell me if she felt something was off, wouldn’t she?
We joked as we ate, giving me a sense of peace that maybe things with Grace weren’t so far unattainable as I feared. It was easy to forget that, just two days ago, I was running around SLC, hoping and praying that the missing vic would turn up alive. It was easy to forget that I got home late, dead on my feet, and more than ready for a three-day weekend.
And now my three-day weekend was halfway over.
Getting “my” Gracie back was a bonus, but I was quickly realizing that what I had with her, this friendship, could be so much fucking better. Hell, I always knew it but it was something that was easy to deny.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I wanted to deny it though.
“Two meals in a row,” Grace commented when we were finished, bringing the thermals back to the car. “Surely that’s a record for you.”
“Back to back six-plus hour sessions with a single person. Now that’s a record,” I teased back, although it was likely extremely true. I dated, I wasn’t saying I didn’t, but dinner and a romp in the sheets was the extent of it. No sleepovers. No breakfast. Not even necessarily plans to see the woman again.
I unlocked her car and opened the passenger door for Grace to place the thermals inside.
“I must be special,” Grace said, her chin in her chest as she busied herself with putting the thermals on the floor of the car. She tried putting it out there in the same teasing tone but I could hear the question, the slight weariness, in her voice.
But God, was she ever special.
“Let’s walk?” I held out a hand to her when she stood, closing the car door. Her blue eyes took in my hand before shiftin
g up to mine. Then, with her shy, pretty smile, she placed her tiny hand in mine and I tugged her close.
I hit the lock button on the fob and placed the keys in my pocket, keeping my other hand around Grace’s. When I angled my fingers to interlock with hers, I said a silent victory cheer in my head when she willingly locked hers around mine.
In comfortable silence, we walked toward the trails, following some other smaller groups of people and eventually peeling off from them, heading in another direction. This particular trail was empty but led to an overlook that could easily be crowded any other day of the week.
As we walked, the wind began to whip through the area, causing the trees to silently swish and the sand to stir. Grace reached up to pull her hair over her shoulder with her free hand, holding it against her collar bone. Still, she kept her hand in mine.
Not unlike me, she was quiet but, rather than anxious, I could tell her mind was just as quiet. Her body wasn’t tense, her hand wasn’t shaking in mine, and she still had the ghost of a smile on her face.
My sweet Grace was content right now, and if that didn’t put me on the top of the fucking world, I wasn’t sure what would. Not even thirty-six hours and I knocked that wall down.
Again, I silently shouted a victory in my head.
I had to let go of her hand for us to go through a tighter incline, but when she reached the top she waited for me, sliding her hand back into mine without asking. We were nearing the overlook now and Grace slowed down as we walked.
“It’s so beautiful up here,” she said quietly, a slight hint of awe in her voice. “I’ve never actually made it here before and I’m kind of kicking myself right now.”
“It is pretty beautiful, isn’t it?” I continued to walk with her toward the edge, leaving out the part that I was glad I could experience this first time with her. To see the awe on her face, hear it in her voice…those were things that were going to stay with me.
