Eleanor & Grey

by Brittainy Cherry

  “Call my cousin a bitch one more time, and I’ll show you a real bitch,” I barked.

  Landon glanced at me and rolled his eyes. “Yeah whatever, weirdo.”

  “You don’t have to be an ass, Landon,” Greyson said, standing up for me. “And she’s right—Shay didn’t do anything to you. You’re the one who cheated on her. It doesn’t make her a bitch because she doesn’t want you back.”

  Wait, what?

  Did Greyson East just stand up for me and Shay?

  Well, okay then.

  I guess I’ll be having his kids someday.

  Those stupid butterflies in my stomach wouldn’t leave, so you can imagine my relief when Greyson stood up to go. My skin was pretty pale and when I blushed, it was obvious. I turned into the ripest tomato known to mankind. I didn’t need him to witness that.

  “Whatever, man. Let’s go,” Landon said, looking past me like I didn’t even exist. That was fine, though. I looked at him the exact same way.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Eleanor.” Greyson waved goodbye as he walked away. “Enjoy the book.”

  Under my breath, I said bye before going back to my novel. Every now and then, though, Greyson would float around in my head along with Ron Weasley.

  Not much later, Shay reappeared, and we started our walk home. “So, it seemed you and Greyson were having a good conversation,” she remarked.

  I shrugged. “It was fine.”

  “He’s a really nice guy, Ellie. Nothing like Landon. Greyson is genuine.”

  She said it as if she was trying to talk me into allowing the butterflies in my gut to remain, while I was trying to somehow rip off their wings.

  I shrugged once. “He’s fine.”

  “Just fine?” she mocked, nudging my arm, probably seeing my reddened cheeks.

  “Yup.”

  Just fine.

  Shay was crashing in my room that night, and when we walked into the house, the living room television was glowing bright. Some horror movie was playing so I hurried over and grabbed the remote, quickly shutting it off. There they were, passed out on the couch. Dad was lying out flat and Mom was wrapped in his arms.

  “Should we wake them?” Shay asked.

  I grabbed a blanket and covered them up. “Nah. They always end up in bed by the morning.”

  This was a normal sight with my parents—Mom wrapped in Dad’s arms after they’d fallen asleep watching television. Whenever she would shift around on the couch, Dad would smile, readjust his arms around her, and get comfortable again. I’d never seen two people who’d merged so completely as one. If it hadn’t been for my parents, I’d have thought soul mates were a lie.

  2

  Greyson

  “I’m just saying, I don’t get it. I’m real good-looking, she’s real good-looking! I just don’t get why she wouldn’t want to be with me,” Landon said, tossing his hands around like a madman as we walked home from the party. “I mean, we’re pretty much the Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson of Raine, Illinois. We’re meant to be together!”

  He said it so passionately, I could hardly tell if he was kidding or not.

  Honestly, he would’ve done a lot better dating Shay if he’d been this obsessed with her while they were dating. He pretty much shot himself in the ass by acting like one.

  “I think you should let the idea of you and Shay go, man. I don’t think she’s interested.”

  “She just doesn’t know she’s interested yet. You’ll see. You’ll all see!”

  I rolled my eyes, but let him keep talking. There was no point in trying to reason with someone as wasted as he was right now.

  “Anyway, sorry I made you talk to her weird cousin,” he said, running his hand through his hair.

  “She’s not that weird.”

  “Cardigans every day. Head always in a book. Weird.”

  “Just because someone is different doesn’t make them weird,” I said, getting a bit defensive about Eleanor. Sure, she had her quirks, but so did Landon. He bit down on forks and pulled them out of his mouth, making an unbearable sound. He couldn’t watch a movie without going “Wait, rewind that, I missed something.” He couldn’t get the hell over his infatuation with Shay because she bruised his massive ego.

  Sure, maybe Eleanor wore a lot of cardigans, but at least she wasn’t a jerk.

  “Alright, alright. I see you made a new friend today,” he said, tossing his hands up. “I still think she’s a weird loner, but whatever.”

  I guess in a way Eleanor was a loner. She was a professional at keeping to herself, outside of Shay.

  Sometimes I wished I could be more like that.

  It seemed less complicated.

  Landon lived on the same block as me, and when we walked up to my house, his over-the-top chatty persona faded as he took in the howling that was coming from my house.

  Mom and Dad were home.

  That was always a treat to partake in.

  Landon stuffed his hands in his pockets and he gave me a pathetic smile. “You wanna crash at my place tonight?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, it’s fine. I’ll just hurry to my room. I’m sure my dad will find a reason to storm off soon enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Night.”

  He scratched the back of his neck, hesitant about my choice, but he started walking away. “All right, night, Greyson.” He paused, then turned back to me. “I’ll leave the window to the first floor guest room open tonight if you need it, okay?”

  Even though he was sometimes a crappy human, he was a damn good best friend.

  “Thanks, Landon.”

  “Yup. Night.”

  Once I reached my front porch, I hadn’t gone inside. I knew nothing good would come from walking into that place.

  My parents were in yet another screaming match.

  That was nothing new. Whenever they were both home, fighting was what they did best. Mom was probably wine-drunk, cussing out Dad, and Dad was probably whiskey-drunk, telling her to shut her piehole.

  Though, I was pretty sure whatever was going on was Dad’s fault. He was pretty good at screwing up and making it look like Mom made the mess. I’d never met a person who was so damn good at gaslighting another person. Mr. Handers taught us that word last year in English class—gaslighting—and the moment I heard it, I knew it was my father to the T.

  He was a professional manipulator. Both at work, and at home. He was so good at making my mother think she was completely mad. If she smelled perfume on his clothes, he’d say it was hers. If she found lipstick on his shirts, he’d convince her that she placed it there. If he told her the sky was green, she’d doubt her own eyesight.

  He once forced her into the hospital to test her psyche.

  The tests showcased that she was sane. She’d married an asshole.

  Dad stayed eerily calm during Mom’s meltdowns, too. Which was another mind game of his—making her seem as if she was crazed, even though he was the one driving her to the looney bin. Sometimes I thought he left other women’s numbers in places just so she’d find them. I wouldn’t put it past him.

  When I was younger, he’d try to get me to side with him—to use me to throw Mom under the bus. But I never did. I’d always known that the only thing Mom had done wrong was fall in love with a monster.

  My father was a liar, a cheater, and a messed-up man.

  Actually, there was one other thing Mom had done wrong. She stayed.

  I never understood that.

  I didn’t know if it was because she loved him, or loved the comfortable life he created for us. Either way, it wasn’t healthy. I guess that’s why she was hardly ever home. Maybe she got comfort from seeing the world on Dad’s dime. Maybe spending his money made her feel as if she was somehow winning.

  “I know you’re messing around with her, Greg!” Mom hollered as I sat on the top step of the porch. I rolled my hands over my ears, and tried my best to drown out the sounds.

  I wished Grandpa wa
s still around. For the most part I tried my best not to think about him being gone, because it really messed with my head, but some nights I just wished I could sneak off to his house and watch old kung fu movies with him and eat insane amounts of popcorn.

  The best thing about my grandfather was the fact that he was nothing like my father.

  He was a good man through and through, and the world sucked that much more now that he was gone.

  It had been a few weeks since I’d lost him, and honestly, I still didn’t know how to stop missing him.

  The guidance counselor at school told me that over time it would get easier dealing with loss, but I didn’t find that true. It didn’t get easier; it just got lonelier.

  I glanced back and looked through the window. Something shattered in the living room. Mom had thrown a wine bottle at Dad’s head, but she’d missed—she always missed.

  Housekeeping was going to have the time of their lives getting that red wine out of the carpet again.

  “Just leave, Greg! Go!” she hollered at him. “Go be with that whore!”

  Like always, Dad stormed out of the house.

  I think it worked best for him when she told him to leave. Then he was free to go to whoever he was sleeping with behind Mom’s back.

  He paused when he saw me sitting on the front porch. “Greyson. What are you doing out here?” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  Avoiding you.

  “Just got home from hanging with Landon.”

  “Your mom’s acting like a nutjob again. I’m wondering if she’s been taking her pills.”

  I didn’t comment, because any time he called her crazy, I wanted to punch him square in the face.

  Dad narrowed his eyes and nodded my way. “I heard Landon started an internship at his father’s law firm.”

  “Yeah.” I knew where this conversation was headed.

  “When are you going to come down to EastHouse and learn something, huh? I can’t run that place forever, and it’s about time you figured out the basics. The sooner you learn, the sooner you’ll be ready to take over one day.”

  Here we go again.

  My father was determined to have me work at EastHouse Whiskey headquarters, because he was certain I’d be taking over the company one day. My grandfather had started EastHouse, and he’d run it with all his heart and soul for years until his retirement. My father had followed in his footsteps.

  It was a family business, and I intended to take over someday to honor Grandpa.

  I just didn’t want to do it any time soon.

  “Are you deaf, boy? Am I not speaking English?” he hollered.

  I stood up and stuffed my hands into my pockets. “I just don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”

  “Not ready? You’re sixteen years old, and you don’t have any time to waste. If you think this basketball thing is going be your one-way ticket out, you’re fooling yourself. You don’t have what it takes to make it on basketball alone.”

  There were three things to note about his comment:

  I was seventeen, not sixteen.

  I didn’t want to be a basketball star.

  Piss off, Dad.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and walked past him and straight into the house. He hollered that we weren’t done talking about the internship, and we’d pick it up at a different time, but I wasn’t too worried about it. He never stayed home long enough to really hammer into me.

  As I walked inside, I saw Mom picking up the shattered pieces of glass from the bottle.

  “Mom, here, let me get that before you cut yourself,” I said, watching her sway drunkenly back and forth.

  “Back off,” she said, pushing my arm away. She looked up at me, with mascara cruising down her cheeks, and frowned. She placed her wine-soaked hand against my cheek and parted her lips to speak. “You look just like your father. You know how angry that makes me? It makes me hate you almost as much as I hate him.”

  “You’re drunk,” I told her. She was the kind of drunk where she didn’t even look like herself. She looked wild in the eyes, and her hair was tangled. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “No!” She pulled her hand back and slapped me across the face, muttering, “Fuck you, Greg.”

  My eyes shut as my cheeks stung. Her eyes watered and she placed both of her hands over her mouth. “Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry, Greyson. I’m so sorry.” She began to sob into her hands, shaking. “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t do this.”

  I wrapped an arm around her, and squeezed lightly, because I was pretty sure if I didn’t hug her, she wasn’t getting any hugs at all. “Yeah, it’s fine, Mom. You’re just tired. Just go to bed. Alright? Everything’s okay.”

  I gathered the large pieces of glass and tossed them into the trash can as she wandered off to bed. She’d probably be gone before I woke the next morning, off to catch a flight to her next adventure. But we’d cross paths again when she needed her monthly fight with Dad, and a bottle of wine to toss.

  I headed to the bathroom to wash the wine from my hands and face, and when I glanced in the mirror, I hated what I saw.

  Because I did look like my father, and I kind of hated myself for it, too.

  When I went to bed, I tried to shake my parents from my mind, but when I did shake them, Grandpa entered my head, and that just made me sadder.

  So I thought about Eleanor Gable.

  The girl who read books at parties, and really liked dragonflies.

  Those thoughts weren’t as heavy as all my others.

  So, I let them stay.

  3

  Eleanor

  It had been two days since the party, and I hadn’t even finished reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. My focus was shot, and I couldn’t shake Greyson from my mind.

  It wasn’t even the way he looked or the things he said. It was just small things about him.

  I didn’t talk to a lot of people, but I noticed them well enough.

  I noticed the way he became uncomfortable with certain things, the way he’d tap his fingers against his legs and never stood still.

  I noticed the way he kind of smelled like red licorice.

  Thinking about him was like a bad daydream I couldn’t wake up from. A part of me wondered if he thought about me, too.

  This was a whole new concept for me.

  I didn’t do crushes, unless we were talking about fictional characters. I always found guys my age to be idiotic and shallow. Everything about high school was the worst kind of cliché.

  To me, everything seemed so contrived and fake. It was all based on superficial things like looks, popularity, and how much money your parents made. I just didn’t want any part of it.

  Until Greyson and that stupid grin showed up. Now I was one of those girls, wondering about him when I shouldn’t have been, and reading one too many articles about having a crush.

  “Hey, Snickers,” Dad said, popping into my room while twirling a pencil between his fingers.

  “What?! Nothing. Stop. Huh?” I huffed quickly, hurrying to close the internet browser on the desktop computer. My breaths went in and out as I tried to cover up my nerves. “Hi, Dad,” I said on an exhale, giving him a wide, toothy grin.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing. What do you need? What’s up?”

  He rubbed his hand against his stomach and narrowed his stare. My father had a nice gut on him, and he called it Doritos, after the cause of the creation of said gut. Mom was a vegan and she always tried to get him to go down that line with her, but he was completely against giving up bacon—which I understood.

  For the most part, Mom was good at keeping Dad’s diet in check. He’d been pre-diabetic before she’d gotten him to somewhat follow her eating plan. She’d tell him it would make her happy if he had a salad with dinner, so he’d have the salad, because making her happy was his favorite activity.

  I always giggled a bit when he’d rub Doritos as he tr
ied to figure something out, as if his belly was a magic lamp with all the answers.

  “I just wanted to let you know it’s just you and me for dinner tonight. Your mom’s not feeling great.”

  My gut tightened as worry took over. “Oh? Is she okay?”

  “Just a little tired.” He smiled. “She’s all right, Ellie. I promise.”

  He called me Ellie and not Eleanor, so I believed him.

  He scratched his chin. “So, dinner?”

  “I can’t tonight. I’m babysitting Molly.” I’d been babysitting Molly Lane twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, for the past few months after school. She was a spunky five-year-old girl who lived a few blocks away, and she kept me on my toes. “I should actually head over there soon.”

  “Oh, it is Monday, isn’t it?” He wiggled his nose. “Well, I guess it’s just me, Frasier, and Mickey D’s for dinner tonight.”

  “Does Mom know about the McDonalds?” I asked, knowing about Dad’s latest diet plan.

  He pulled out his wallet and held up twenty bucks. “Does she have to know about it?”

  “Are you bribing me?”

  “I don’t know—is it working?”

  I walked over and took the money from his grip. “Yup, it sure is.”

  He wrapped his hands around my head and kissed my forehead. “I always knew you were my favorite daughter.”

  “I’m your only daughter.”

  “That we know of. There were a lot of rock concerts in the early eighties.”

  I rolled my eyes, a small chuckle coming from my lips. “You know Mom will smell the French fries on you. She always does.”

  “Some things are worth the risk.” He kissed my forehead one last time. “I’ll see you later. Tell Molly and her parents I said hi!”

  “Will do.”

  “Love you, Snickers.” He’d nicknamed me after his favorite candy, a term of endearment.

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  After he left, I began getting ready to head over to Molly’s. I always took some of the old chapter books I’d loved as a kid to read to her before she went to bed. Molly loved books almost as much as I did, and I secretly felt a bit of jealousy that one day she’d get to read the Harry Potter series for the first time ever.