Chapter Twenty-Seven

Grayson

 

"What is it?" Cal asked, as he flicked on his blinker.

I looked down at the cracked screen of my phone and grimaced. "Text from Rett."

"What did he say?"

I sighed as I stared at the backlit screen. In the dark, the afterimage was burned into my retinas like an accusation. "He wants to know if we're going to the pub tonight on account of the fact that it's apparently Friday." I leaned my head back on the headrest. "I actually had no idea it was Friday."

"Me neither."

"You gonna answer him?"

"What should I say?"

"Um..."

"Hey man," I spoke aloud as I pretended to type. "Can't make it, sorry. Me and Cal are driving all night so we can bang your sister...together."

"What the fuck, dude?"

"Calm down, I'm just kidding." I switched off the blinding light of my phone. "But seriously, what the hell should I say?"

"Tell him..." Cal trailed off as he switched lanes to get around a semi-truck. We had to be going at least eighty miles an hour, but I trusted Cal. I always had.

"Tell him that my dad's hosting a trivia night tonight," Cal said in a burst of inspiration.

I sat up straighter. "That's fucking brilliant," I said as I started to type.

"Yeah, tell him that all these teams signed up and the place'll be packed."

"Rett hates people," I said, nodding. I hit send and waited. Then laughed. "He says fuck that then, he'll see us later." I exhaled sharply. "Shit, I feel like an asshole lying to him though."

"Let's figure out one thing at a time here, okay?" Cal said, his voice tight. "Deal with the whole Harper thing first?"

I nodded. "You sure about her address?"

"She sent me a Christmas card last year. I put her address into my phone."

I looked at him. "Just in case...?"

"Just in case," he said smugly.

I shook my head in disbelief. "You are one weird dude."

"I'm a prepared dude. It's coming in handy now, isn't it?"

"I guess so," I said, falling silent as I looked out the window into the passing darkness. When Cal had suggested it, it made total sense. Go see her. Go get her. We were both falling apart, fraying at the edges, sniping at each other and utterly and completely failing at being reasonable human beings. It was clear what we both needed to do. If nothing else, we needed more closure, something to put to rest this strange, anxious love affair we had going on.

But now, as we zoomed through the night, bouncing along the bottom of New York State in Cal's pickup, I started to have second thoughts. Harper had put it out in no uncertain terms exactly why she was heading back to New York City. The career, the one she'd always been wanting, was finally coming true. Of course we had to let her leave, wasn’t that what being there for her was all about? Wasn't this all about her to begin with?

As I looked out the window, into the inky black darkness of the Southern Tier, I felt my fist closing, my fingernails digging half moons into the side of my palm. "We said this is about her, didn't we?" I suddenly burst out.

Cal sort of jumped, like I'd caught him thinking. I looked over at him to see that his shoulders were nearly to his ears. "What?" I asked.

"Yeah. I guess we did, didn't we?" Cal said slowly.

"No," I said, heading him off at the pass. "I'm not talking about that. Because yeah, fuck that dude, I'm not into you that way.

"Thank fuck for that," Cal said, grinning. "You're not my type."

I rolled my eyes. "I was going to ask though, isn't this sort of about us too, in a way?"

"What do you mean? Are you coming on to me, man? I'm flattered and all..."

"Oh shut up for a second and let me finish," I complained. "I’m trying to figure shit out too here." Cal opened his mouth like he was about to give me even more shit, but mercifully fell silent and started listening as I tried like hell to form my thoughts into words.  "What I'm saying is we started something here right? You and me and her. It's a two-way street... though I guess in this case it's more like a three-way street... but still, we said it's about her. But it's not only what she wants, it's what we want too, isn't it?" I was actually honestly asking this question. "Isn't it?"

"And what the fuck do we want?" Cal asked.

I spread my hands helplessly. "Her?"

Cal tapped his fingers on the steering wheel a second as he processed this, and then cleared his throat. "You mean, for like a girlfriend or something?"

I nodded. "Don't pretend you're not thinking the same thing," I told him.

"But like, we...share her or something?"

"We share bath towels right now, right?" I felt the need to point out.

Cal made a grossed-out sound. "Yeah and you never pick yours off the bathroom floor."

"Well I promise if we have to share Harper, I'll treat her a little better than a bath towel," I replied snottily.

"And I'll treat her better than you," Cal replied, equally snottily.

I looked at him. "So is this why we're driving down to New York City? To see if she'll be like... our long-distance girlfriend or some shit?"

"Or some shit," Cal repeated. "I don't know. All I know is that I can't stop thinking about her and I know you can't either, so we gotta go see her."

I nodded into the darkness. "Yeah," I said softly. "We gotta go see her."