Chapter Thirty-Seven

Harper

 

Sundays were the worst part of my week.

"I look forward to this all week," I sighed. "And then it feels like it's all over in a second."

"Hey," Gray protested as he trailed his fingers up my thigh. "It lasts a hell of a lot longer than a second."

I laughed and twisted to the side to run my fingers through his short brown curls. "Yes it does," I reassured him, kissing the tip of his nose. "I'm talking about how you always have to leave again so soon."

"We'll be here again next weekend," Cal added. He lifted his leg from where it had been slung over mine and sat up. "Only five more days."

I reached out and twined my fingers in his, loving the way his smile crinkled in the corners of his bright blue eyes. But try as I might, I couldn't smile back. "How long can we keep this up?" I sighed.

"I'm good with forever," Gray said softly.

"Oh!" I said, shocked, and suddenly burst into tears.

"Hey, hey, hey," they both chanted in a panic. Gray started rubbing my arm so fast it was like he was trying to start a fire while Cal leaped from the bed and dashed to get me a drink of water.

I coughed into the back of my hand and wiped my eyes. "Holy shit," I gasped, taking a deep breath. "Where the fuck did that come from?"

"Why don't you tell me?" Cal said softly, handing me the water.

I thanked him with a wan grin and lifted it to my lips, trying like hell to answer his question. But there was no answer. Other than, I'd been a wreck all week. Tearing up in meetings, laughing like a lunatic at things that weren't funny. "My emotions are all over the place," I sighed as I set the glass down on the bedside table. "I think...I think this is taking a bigger toll on me than I'd like to admit." I looked into their uncomprehending eyes. "The separation," I clarified.

Cal — my problem solver — visibly winced, and I reached out and grabbed his hand, my heart aching for having hurt him, however inadvertently. "Hey," I reassured him. "You can't fix it. At least, not right now. There's nothing to be done, right? At least you'll be down next weekend, right?" I smiled brightly. "It'll be here before you know it."

He winced again. "What?" This time it was Gray who was worrying.

"Rett," Cal sighed, and I felt Gray tense a little.

"What's wrong with my brother?"

"He's... a little pissed at us," Gray explained.

"Because we keep ducking him," said Cal. "To come here."

I let out a deep breath. "Shit," I muttered.

"It's been forever since the three of us hung out," Cal went on. "And you know, we used to spend a lot of time together."

"Every waking moment," I nodded.

"Luckily he's got this huge project at work," Gray added, drumming his fingers on my comforter. "So he's not really too upset...yet. But when the project is over..."

"And it's over this Friday," Cal finished. "He's gonna want to celebrate."

Gray nodded, biting his lip, and suddenly grabbed my hand.

I took another deep breath. "Okay!" I said brightly, clasping both their hands more tightly. "Then it's settled. Next weekend, I come to you guys."

Cal wrinkled his nose. "Stop it," I chided him. "We talked about this. We switch off, three weekends to one. We'll just move my weekend up, right?" My voice was rising a little higher, nearing hysteria as I tried like hell to make all the pieces fit together in my head. "I'll come home, and we can see my brother, and it'll all look completely normal, right?" I looked back and forth between their distressed faces. "Right?"

Gray lifted my fingers and brushed a kiss across my knuckles. "Harp," he said gently. "None of this really counts as normal anymore."

I looked between his soft brown eyes and Cal's sharp blue ones and for some reason the tears started welling again. "But that's okay, right?" I said, and there was no disguising the note of pleading in my voice. "Because who cares what's normal when it's good, right?"

Cal and Gray were both silent a while. "Sure baby," Cal finally said. "That's exactly right."

I lifted my chin and tried to keep from slumping over as they both got ready to leave. I kept my goodbyes bright and cheerful and positive, even though I desperately wanted to just curl up in a ball and cry for a solid year.

"Okay," I breathed to myself once I was alone in my apartment again. "Okay."

The place seemed so empty, and echoingly huge without them there to take up the space. I wiped away the tears that refused to stop leaking from my eyes and I went to my messy work desk.

I've always been a pen and paper girl. Friend after assistant after mentor had tried to wean me off my notepads and calendars, but I'm a stationery freak, through and through. So instead of apps and cloud drives, I have scrawled appointments on wall calendars, and a paper day planner studded with so many scraps of paper sticking out of it that it resembled an octopus.

It was that day planner that I opened — carefully — right now, and flipped to the next weekend. "Okay," I repeated as I ran my finger down the line of deadlines and appointments. "That's not that much." I'd just need to reschedule one early morning meeting I had Saturday morning, because I'd want to be on the road by nine, but other than that, I could do it. I could go see them, go back to Reckless Falls.

I leaned back on my heels and grinned for a moment just thinking about it. Showing up at Cal's house, the three of us playing house in our hometown. Gray could make soufflé in an actual soufflé pan and maybe Cal would take me out snowshoeing. I'd never tried it before. And then, when I was all cold and sodden at the end of the day, they'd take me back home and we'd figure out ways to get warm...

The sudden rush of heat through my body sent me standing bolt upright. I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said aloud...again...since that seemed to be the only thing I could tell myself that made it possible to keep my shit together. "It's only a week. I can handle waiting." I grinned and looked back down at my day planner. "So long as I don't ruin anything by having my period that weekend."

Before I even finished my sentence, my blood was running cold.

My period.

I knelt back down and frantically paged back through my day planner. I always recorded the first day because this pill I was on sometimes made me skip periods, so my doctor asked me to keep very accurate records. I flipped back to January and ran my finger down the column.

Nothing. No red circle.

I flipped back other month and suddenly all the breath left my lungs at once.

There it was. The red circle.

And it was around December twenty-first.

Just before Christmas. Just before I'd come home to Reckless Falls.

Just before my first time with Cal and Gray.