Chapter 24

Grayson

On Wednesday, I was dying to get out of the house. Carter’s family had started to arrive, and the house was filling up. Carter and I were still not exactly on speaking terms, and I had to keep forcing a smile not to let anyone know something was up between us. It didn’t look good that the groom and the best man were fighting.

“I’m headed out to pick up the tuxes,” Carter said to John when we were in the kitchen.

“Let me,” I offered.

Carter looked at me with a blank expression.

“You have a lot of guests to entertain. I’ll run out and collect the tuxes.”

Carter hesitated before he nodded. I was making a good point even though I knew he wanted to turn me down. Carter gave me the slip for the tuxes, and I headed out. It felt good to be out of the house, away from the crowd and the drama. It was a beautiful day, and I felt like I could breathe again.

I parked the car and climbed out, walking to the menswear store. The assistant took the slip from me and disappeared into the storage room to retrieve the tuxes. There were five of them, one for each of the groomsmen, one for Carter, and one for John. I made a point of checking them all before signing off on them. The last thing I needed was for something I had taken care of to go wrong.

After having tried to sabotage everything for so long and the incident in Vegas, I didn’t want anything to go wrong, not even by accident. It wouldn’t go down well, and I was already on the verge of losing Carter.

When I left the store, satisfied with the tuxes, I ran into Callie. She came out of the gift shop next to the menswear store.

“Callie,” I said, and she froze. She looked startled to see me. “What a coincidence. How are you doing?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m all right,” she said. “How about you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been better. I think tensions are running high with the wedding coming up, so I think it will be better afterward.”

Callie nodded, and an awkward silence stretched out between us. I had never had an awkward silence with her before.

“I’m done with my errands,” I said. “Do you want to grab lunch with me?”

Callie hesitated. She looked like she wanted to say no. The woman in front of me now was so different from the woman I had gotten to know over the last few days.

“I want to chat, catch up. It’s hard to find a space just to relax in all this chaos.”

Callie nodded. “Welcome to my life.” She looked like she thought about it more before she said, “I guess I can fit in a quick lunch.”

I smiled. Some of her time was all I needed. I wanted her to loosen up, to be with me the way she had been the last time we’d been together. We had shared such a great night, with no secrets and no walls. All of that seemed to be back, and I wanted to push through it.

“Let me put this away,” I said and jogged across the road to hang up the tuxes in the car. When I returned, Callie and I walked to the nearest bistro and sat down at a table on the curb. A waiter asked for our order. Callie requested orange juice. I asked for a coffee.

“So, how are things going?” I asked.

“I’m wrapping up the final wedding plans. We’re set for Friday.”

I nodded. “That’s good. And you as a person? Are you doing okay?” She was being so cold to me, I was starting to think maybe it was personal.

“I’m fine,” Callie said tightly, and I didn’t believe a word of it.

I tried to joke around a bit, to get her to respond, but instead of joking like she had before, or even biting my head off like she had at first, Callie seemed set on being closed off.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Callie shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re being so cold to me. Is it something I did? Is it because we’ve been together twice?”

Callie shook her head. “It’s not that,” she said. “I don’t want to go there.”

I reached across the table and put my hand on hers. Callie froze, but she didn’t remove her hand.

“I’m a good listener,” I said. “You were there for me when I needed to get it all off my chest. I want to return the favor.”

Callie glanced down at our hands again and slowly pulled her hand out from underneath mine. She folded her hands in her lap under the table so that I couldn’t reach them. She was closing herself off from me completely.

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

What the hell was I supposed to do with that? Was the whole world against me now? Was I never going to be forgiven for what I’d done wrong? I was a human being for God’s sake. I had feelings, I made mistakes and I acted out sometime. Didn’t we all? Why was everyone so hard on me?

I sighed, losing my patience. I shouldn’t have acted this way, but I only had so much to offer before I got offended. “You see when you say something like that, it makes me feel like it’s me because you’re not giving me anything else to go by. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

She frowned, and I could tell she was getting angry.

“It said it’s not you,” she said. “Isn’t that enough? It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Then what’s it about?” I asked. I was pushing, and I knew it, but I hated how she kept me at arm’s length now when we had been so extremely close before. I was being deprived of a drug I had become addicted to.

“It’s none of your business,” Callie said. The orange juice arrived. She took one sip before she shook her head.

“This was a mistake,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

She fished in her bag for a twenty and threw it on the table before she stood, took one more gulp of her orange juice, and walked away. She left me behind, gaping, wondering what the hell had just happened. What was I supposed to do if she wasn’t going to tell me what was going on? She had said it wasn’t about us sleeping together, but I couldn’t see what else it would be. Not if she wouldn’t talk to me.

It had to be me one way or the other.

Maybe it was still about what had happened between me and Carter. I had no idea what was going on.

I finished my coffee alone, which had arrived as Callie had left, and tried to figure out what was going on. She had seemed so open to me, so eager to be there for me through my ordeal with Jenna’s death and Carter’s wedding. We had been in love. I had felt something with her I had never felt with anyone before. And now it was all gone as if it had never existed. It was as if I had imagined it all.

But I knew it had been real. I didn’t have an imagination good enough to imagine something so perfect. Now, she was being funny with me, and I didn’t know what to do. I got pissed off when people fucked me around, and with Callie acting like she was my lover the one moment and my enemy the next, I defined it as being fucked around. I understood why Carter wasn’t speaking to me, and even though I had apologized in every way I knew how, I knew it wouldn’t just go away. Callie had no reason to treat me like this, but she was insisting on doing the same.

Well, this was all bullshit.

I paid for the drinks and walked to the car. I drove back to John’s house, concentrating on the roads so I wouldn’t get lost. A part of me wouldn’t have minded driving around the neighborhood all day looking for the right house. It would have postponed when I came home again. I didn’t want to face Carter and everyone he was so glad to see when we were barely speaking. I didn’t want to feel like a piece of shit when I had done what I could to stop my mistakes. I wanted us to be normal again. I wanted Carter to understand I was fighting my demons and I was happy for him because was my best friend.

God, I just wanted all this shit to go away. There were only a few more days left until the wedding. After that, I would head home to Dallas and put it all behind me. With Carter moving to Austin, I guess it wouldn’t matter if we talked or not. It would all just become run of the mill again.

Just like life had been after Jenna. After a while, the pain had become a constant, familiar company in the darkness. Her death had moved further and further away until eventually, being hurt in public and mourning outright seemed stupid.

The same would happen with my friendship with Carter. Eventually, it would just become one of those tragic things that had happened once upon a time.