The next day, Grayson basically slept from morning until afternoon. Then, he played some Diablo on his old PC, ate a grilled cheese sandwich his mom offered him, and it was dinner all too soon.

His mom had set it up all nice, with the matching blue jay print napkins, wooden napkin holders and cutlery on the right-hand side of the table. The food, by itself, was delish, too. The roast beef was succulent, the carrots buttery crispy, and the mashed potatoes just the right amount of gooey. His parents chatted with him amiably, asking if he’d heard about the monthly Hamilton flea (“not yet”), how Kyle was doing (“crazy in love”), and what his plans for the next few days were (“some more blessed sweet nothing”).

As he swilled his delicious meal down with milk (his mom’s orders), he reflected on Kyle and Kyla’s news at the end of their dinner last night. Apparently, they were off to a relationship conference in Toronto (damn, was Kyle thirsty to have this marriage thing work). Anyway, the best part was just who they’d left in charge – the bitchy maid of honor – Anna, was it?

So, basically, Grayson himself was free as a bird.

It made him enjoy the glorious apple pie his mom had set for dessert in front of him. As he swallowed the last piece, he paused to take in the scene. Someone looking in would’ve thought this is the ideal picture of homely tranquility. With the kitchen all done up in its usual sunny splendor – egg yolk-yellow cupboards and smiley ceramic sparrows on every other surface, his mom in gingham, his dad in one of his mauve button-ups, everyone smiling – this was, well, nice. It made him wonder if, maybe, he’d misjudged them in his critical youth; been too hard on them.

And then, rising with a smile that suddenly looked hardened, like chinaware about to spontaneously combust, his mom spoke as she collected the plates.

“Here’s a new development. Grayson, I’m not sure you know this, but your father has been cheating on me.”

She said all of this in a what-do-you-know casual voice as she placed the plate stack beside the sink.

The silence was the ticking of a bomb about to go off.

“Alice, really?” Grayson’s dad said, in a low voice.

“Just making conversation,” she said, cheerily, while starting to load dishes into the dishwasher.

His scowl contorted into a sneer. “Well, how’s this for conversation. This isn’t a new development. Grayson, you probably already know this, but your mother hasn’t been sleeping with me.”

Grayson stood up, his eyes already on the door. “Guys, seriously?”

The way the dishes were rattling, his mom was clearly shoving them into the racks with more force than needed. “Thirty-five years,” she said, her voice shaking. “Thirty-five years.”

He heard the scrape of wood on wood as his dad pushed back his chair, standing up.

“And now you’re throwing Grayson into this, too? On the first long trip he’s had back in years?”

“He deserves to know,” his mom insisted.

Grayson walked to the entranceway, pausing, looking from one parent to the other. Would they notice?

“He deserves not to have to deal with your nagging and drama, like I have had to,” his father said.

“Don’t you dare presume to know what my boy needs,” his mom said, indignantly.

As Grayson left the room, he felt an ironic scowl creep over his face. Yes, he knew the answer; not a chance.

Clearly, things at home weren’t different at all. He hadn’t misjudged his parents in his critical youth. It was the same old, same old.

Up in his room, blasting Slipknot from his old Sharp boom box, he couldn’t manage to blare out the odd crash, nor the yelling that echoed from below.

Grayson walked over to his window. The leftover duct tape, from the time when his mom had tried taping it shut, was still there, its seal long broken. If he opened the window, would he still be able to...

Hell yeah.

Access to the roof was as easy as... well, access to the roof. Climbing out, Grayson made sure to close the window behind him. There, looking upon the sleepy, cookie-cutter neighbourhood, he sighed. There. That’s more like it.

Sitting on his ass on the roof tile, he could’ve sworn he was seventeen again; it was the last year he’d endured life at home. Since then, he’d made the odd visit or two to Hamilton, spent a handful of days here, but never stayed in his parents’ house, or his old, pretty much untouched room like this.

Hearing some dubious crash downstairs, Grayson sighed. And people thought this – marriage– was the answer. Why couldn’t Kyle see the fatal jaws of the trap he was walking straight into?

Maybe it was Kyle’s parents. They were pasty-white and as bland as two data entry specialists could be expected to be. Their marriage was happy, if you considered ‘happy’ to be swapping pointless remarks once or twice every hour or so and responding to whatever the other said with a vague smile.

Down the street from Grayson’s house, a black cat was creeping. Looking like an on-mission ninja, its spine stiffened as it neared Grayson’s house.

It froze.

Some more yelling, and then another particularly expensive-sounding crash, reverberated from downstairs. The cat turned on its heel and ran off in the opposite direction.

Grayson watched it go with his brows lowering. What the hell was he doing?

Back in his room, he didn’t have much to unpack; he’d only unzipped his Eddie Harop suitcase for a change of clothes, and his toothbrush.

His walk downstairs and went out the door absolutely unnoticed. As he pulled his Tesla out of the driveway, he reflected, grimly, that his absence would probably go unnoticed until midday tomorrow.

No matter. Grayson knew just the place he could stay at – maybe.

When he pulled up and into her driveway, there was space behind her blue Volkswagen. There were two halves to the pagoda-style house, but he was pretty sure they were both hers. As a graphic designer, Jenny had it made.

Grayson stood in the middle of the driveway, smirking as he looked from one slate grey door to the other.

Which one to take?

He chose the right, even though he wasn’t sure he was making the right decision coming here. During his last visit, a few months’ back, things with Jenny had gotten... intense.

Sure enough, as if she’d been waiting on a spring by the right door, it seemed only seconds separated Grayson’s finger pressing the ding-dong-dang-dong doorbell and the door being thrown open.

“You’re here!” she cried, trapping him in her arms.

Grayson let himself sink into the hug, taking in her overpowering scent – cherries. He’d always wondered if that was on purpose, how her clothes and every part of her seemed to share the smell – or if it was just a natural result of all the cherries she consumed.

He’d never gotten a chance to ask, especially since the few times he’d seen Jenny over the years, they had never done much talking – at least using words.

Grayson let his eyes rove over her. Her blonde hair was collected in a high pony, her blue eyes bright and smile wet-glossy. She had a lilac button-up and high-waisted skirt on, and she looked damn good.

“So, you must be super psyched about the wedding...” she said.

“I guess.”

She’d changed the interior of the place, somehow; made it more modern and cold. It was all black and white, and clean to the point of making him overly aware that he’d walked in with his dirty shoes.

“And it’s been so long...”

The scolding in her voice was almost imperceptible. Almost.

It’d been months since Grayson had seen her; months since they’d talked, too.

When her mouth lifted to his, and he reacted instinctively into the kiss, Grayson closed his eyes and let himself imagine it.

Jenny was his date for the wedding and his girlfriend for the next few months. He knew she’d want it, because she had hinted as much during their sporadic pillow encounters over the years. Yes, they’d be long-distance for a bit with lots of Skype dates. She’d probably sent him those oatmeal raisin muffins she was so good at making. Then, one of them would move to the other, probably her to him. Then, he and Jenny, his wife, would have a nice vacation to Grand Bend, or Montreal, if they were feeling exotic. Maybe a few years later, when they got bored, he and Jenny would have a child, maybe even two, if they were feeling ambitious. And then, at night, when the scrumptious apple pie was eaten and the plates cleared, while they did their parental duty of yelling at each other for trivial bullshit, their little boy – Ryan, let’s call him – would sit up on the roof, death metal blaring as he stared into the future knowing just what ‘love’ was.

Grayson peeled himself away from those lips and all they wanted from him. No, he couldn’t do this. Just look at her downturned eyes.

Doing this again, this doomed couple of nights, this forceful make-believe, it wasn’t fair to her. Not this time.

He drew back to the door. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go,” he said, and left before she could say anything, before he could feel her burning, disappointed eyes, into his back.

Yup, looks like it was going to be the nicest hotel Hamilton had.

—

10 PM BY NOW, GRAYSON was in better straits, although that didn’t last long.

At the ringing of his phone, Grayson picked it up, looked at the caller ID, and then put it back down again. Great, a call from her.

At the end of dinner the other night, when the happy couple had insisted he and Sweatpants Bitch exchange phone numbers just in case of a wedding planning emergency while they were away, he’d been less than enthusiastic, although not overly worried. Kyle was the most organized person he knew.

But now she was actually calling him?

Grayson may have been bored, but he wasn’t that bored. Whatever “emergency” her uptight ass thought was going down, it was probably nothing.

He opened up his laptop, his gaze falling on the Skype icon in the bottom right of his MacBook screen. Yeah, why the hell not? Call up Piper.

Although he wasn’t a hundred-percent certain the fourteen-year-old would pick up, it was a Thursday night after all. He did answer on the first ring. One loopy smile, then, “Heya, Gray!”, and they were in business.

Grayson had known he was getting in deep when Big Brothers had paired him with the taped-glasses black-eyed kid, but Piper defied all expectations. He was like a magnet for the schoolyard bullies, who punched and mocked the poor loser whenever he made the poor choice of being in a hundred-mile radius of them. Home life for the kid wasn’t much better, with a mom who was absent and a dad who came to terms with this by drinking until he passed out.

“How’re things, buddy?” Grayson asked.

Piper squinted, sneezed, scratched behind his ear like a ferret. “Ah, you don’t want to know. What about you, though? Any hot babes in Hamilton?”

Grayson smiled thinly. “Dude, I told you, calling them ‘hot babes’, especially when you’re fourteen, is not a wise move. Anyway, haven’t gone out yet, so I couldn’t tell you.”

Piper nodded importantly, like this was a secret world-class mission only they were privy to.

“What about your friend, though? Did you convince him to call it off?”

“Ha, not yet,” Grayson sighed. “Tell you the truth, I’m not sure his fiancée is completely unacceptable.”

To Piper’s questioning, glassy-eyed stare, he continued, “I don’t know. She was funny and seemed genuine. Anyway, I can’t say yet. Though she hasn’t totally won me over, yet.”

His phone went off.

“Yeah, yeah, answer it!” Piper urged in a shrill, excited voice.

Grayson clicked it off. “Just the bitch of honor.”

“The bitch of...”

“The maid of honor,” Grayson made a face. “Just this humorless woman who was at a dinner I went to last night.”

“Another one of the ladies?” Piper said, significantly.

“Hell no. The woman’s uptight, not at all my type, just... No,” Grayson shook his head firmly. “Anyway, cut it out, you hear? You’ll have plenty of time for that when you’re old and bored, like me. Enjoy your youth, play video games, eat too many chips and enjoy not getting fat.”

Piper rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say.”

Hearing a knock at his door, Grayson got up. Peering through the eyehole, he groaned, “Got to be fucking kidding me...”

Back at his laptop, he said, “Piper, buddy, got to go. We’ll talk later. Take care of yourself, man.”

“Wait!” Piper said. “Is that one of them? Could I...”

“Goodbye, Piper,” Grayson said firmly, hanging up.

Dragging his ass to the door, which she was still knocking on, he opened it.

“You really don’t give up, do you?”

“And you really don’t pick up, do you?” she shot back, putting a hand on her hip.

Grayson paused, momentarily stunned. Ms. Grey Bitch looked... well, not grey, and maybe even good.

Her blouse almost showed the shape of her curves, while her brown waves, when not amassed into a rat’s nest on the top of her head, actually framed a face that was admittedly good-looking.

“Nothing to say?” she said.

“What’s the big deal, anyway?” he asked.

“What the big deal is Mary-Kate just sent me a memo of wedding details and it’s not at all what Kyla wanted.”

Grayson stared blankly at her and she rolled her eyes, “Mary-Kate, the wedding planner?”

“Oh yeah. Thought the name sounded familiar.”

She was eyeing him like she was considering rolling her eyes again. Instead, she said, “So, you’ll do it – help me talk to her?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She shrugged, “Not really, no. You agreed to help while Kyla and Kyle were away at that relationship conference.”

Don’t remind me, he thought.

“Alright,” he said. “What’s the plan, then? We track this wedding coordinator down at her house in the middle of the night and shank her?”

Judging by the expression on her face, she wasn’t even considering laughing at that.

“Tomorrow I have an appointment with her at her office, on Clair Creek Street.”

Grayson nodded, already turning away. “Tomorrow then.”

As she left, he kept the door open partway and watched her go. For some reason, he wasn’t, totally, not looking forward to tomorrow.