Chapter 15
Grayce
I was starting to wonder what had happened to me. Was I in some strange, Twilight Zone situation where I had become a completely different person? One who had casual sex with near strangers and blew off work? What the hell was I thinking?
By the time Tyler got on the Palisades Parkway, my curiosity was off the charts. I couldn’t think where we were headed or what we might be doing.
I looked over at the gorgeous man behind the wheel. When Carter had betrayed me, I felt worthless. I’d wondered what could be wrong with me that I wasn’t enough for him. When I walked out of our house for the last time, I wasn’t sure if anyone would ever want me again, but I knew I couldn’t stay with a man who had proven he didn’t.
“Hey, you okay? You seem deep in thought,” Tyler said, reaching a hand over to stroke my cheek.
“Yeah, I’m good. I was just thinking what a nice day it is.”
“If this lawyer thing doesn’t work out, you probably shouldn’t go out on the professional poker circuit. You’re a terrible liar.” He laughed, but he let it go.
I wondered just how many women had shared his bed. How many had shared moments like this with him after having slept with him. How many had hoped it meant more than just a good time. I wondered how many had sat by the phone, waiting for the text or call that never came. At least I wasn’t so naïve.
“We’re going to be in the car awhile, Grayce. It would be nice if you actually talked to me while we’re driving, you know.”
I laughed. “Sorry, yes. Okay. So, what would you like to talk about?”
“Hmm, tell me something embarrassing,” he said, smirking.
“Really? You’ve seen so many of my finest embarrassing moments since we met. Let me think.” I tapped my lip with my index finger. “I know. My first day at Thomas and Thomas, the law firm I worked at before? They do a one-day orientation with all new employees. After lunch, I went to the bathroom and came back out. I had on my best suit, and I really wanted to look sharp. Well, after lunch, all the partners came in to meet the new recruits. I mustered up all my confidence and sat down at the conference table. When I looked down, there was a toilet seat cover hanging from the back of my Italian leather pumps. I was mortified.” I sighed and looked over at Tyler, who was laughing so hard, he had to wipe tears away from under his glasses.
“That is phenomenal. Thank you for that. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while,” he said, gasping for breath.
“Okay, your turn. Although, I doubt you have any epically embarrassing things to tell me, so I’m certain I’ve won,” I said confidently.
“Well, I don’t have anything that good. But okay, there is something.” He cleared his throat. “I had a nickname for you before I knew your real name.”
“Oh Jesus, I’m afraid to ask. How dirty?” I looked at him expecting it to be something related to my tits or ass.
“Not at all, actually. I called you Lavender Girl.” He cast a look in my direction.
I thought he was trying to tell if I thought it was cute or weird. “And why Lavender Girl, exactly?”
“Well, the first time I saw you in the gym, you were wearing a lavender and black outfit. I thought you were gorgeous.” He paused. “Well, I mean, you are.”
I could feel the crimson rising in my cheeks, so I tried looking out the other window.
“See? That! That right there is why it is inevitable that I am going to kick Carter’s ass at some point. I don’t know why you let him make you feel like you’re less that you are. You’re incredible, Grayce. He’s the only one who can’t see it.” He took my hand and pressed it to his lips.
After a while in the car, I realized that we were heading up to the Peekskills. I hadn’t been up here in a long time. Carter and I had come to a cabin in the area when we first got engaged. He had been a big part of my life. The last couple of days, though, was starting to make me believe there would be a time when I didn’t think of him as often…eventually.
Tyler and I pulled into a gravel parking area and got out of the car. He walked around to the tailgate and I joined him. He pulled a small backpack out from the back and retrieved a can of bug repellent.
He sprayed himself off, taking care to spray his legs, shoes, and shorts. “Here,” he said, “turn around and I’ll get you too.”
I put my hands over my eyes, nose, and mouth, and turned around so he could spray me.
“You’re pretty pale,” he said. “You want sunscreen too?”
I nodded, and he tossed me the bottle. I got my legs, arms, and chest. The cream I had applied before we left had my face covered.
“Lift your hair,” he said.
I lifted my ponytail, and he rubbed the sunscreen on the back of my neck, my upper back, and the backs of my arms.
“Okay, ready?” Tyler threw the sunscreen and our bottled waters into the backpack, along with his keys.
We stopped at the hydration station outside the bathrooms before we headed out on the trail.
“So, hiking, huh?” I asked. “You seem like such a city guy. I’m a little surprised.”
“Oh, I’m full of surprises, Grayce. You’ll see.” He chuckled.
“So, do you always come up here?” I asked.
“Not always, but sometimes. I also go to a park in Queens that has a couple of good two- and three-mile-long trails. This is so much prettier, though.” He took a deep breath. “I mean, our place is pretty peaceful for New York, but this? This is next level.”
“How often do you hike?”
“Well, it depends. When I was a kid, I used to hike with my dad a lot. Now, when I’m feeling stressed or want to get out of my head, I come to the woods.” He stepped off of the trail, striding up to a huge pine tree of some sort.
“Come here, Grayce,” he said, and I stepped over to where he was standing. “Put your hand here.”
He placed my palm against the bark.
“Do you feel that?” He put his palm next to mine and looked down at me.
“I feel…bark,” I replied.
“Yes, bark. But it’s hard, compared to your hand, it feels almost impenetrable. It’s solid. But, in the right hands, this can become almost anything. The wood from this tree could become a porch swing, or a cradle, or become part of someone’s home. Over hundreds of years, people learned to harvest the resources around them, and use them to create something completely new, but just as beautiful.”
He grinned and shrugged. “That’s why I come out here. To remember that.”
He stepped back to the trail, and we continued on.
“So, were you a philosophy major in college?” I chuckled.
“Kinesiology, actually, with a minor in psychology.”
“Really? Wow. The kinesiology makes sense, being a trainer and all, but psychology, huh? What made you choose that?”
“Well.” He shook his head. “Huh.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s just. I don’t talk about this with people. I mean, my buddies I grew up with, Shane, Jeremy, those guys know. But I want to tell you about it, which is…I don’t know. Different.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything that you don’t want to. I didn’t mean to pry.” I was suddenly concerned I had somehow overstepped.
“No, that’s just it. I want to.” He walked over to a large rock in a small clearing and sat down, patting the surface beside him for me to sit as well. He retrieved our water bottles from the bag and handed over mine.
“I had always wanted to be involved with sports. I loved sports growing up, played football and baseball. I wasn’t a superstar, just loved to play. My dad was a teacher. He taught woodshop at Townsend Harris.” He took a sip from his water.
“So, you grew up in Queens?” I asked.
“Sure did. So, anyway, Dad was a teacher, and Mom was an accountant. He always told me how much he loved teaching. He was a smart guy. He could’ve done anything he wanted, but he loved helping people learn and grow. So, I started looking into training as a way to incorporate sports and fitness with teaching. I know people think it’s a BS gig, but I really do enjoy it.” He gave me a half-shrug. “Anyway, my senior year of high school, I was out one night with some friends. I was out after curfew, like a lot of nights. When I got home, the front door was unlocked. I knew something was wrong.”
My heart sank at the look of pain on Tyler’s face as he told the story, looking off into the distance, as if he could see it unfolding.
“I went in through the front door, and the place was ransacked. Shit knocked all over. I ran upstairs, and into their room. In their room…” He put his face in his hands.
I put my arm around him, rubbing his back with my palms. “Tyler, it’s all right. You don’t have to tell me. It’s okay.”
“No, I – I’m not sure why, but I feel like I need to tell you.” He blew a breath out between his palms and started again.
“They were both in their bedroom. I saw Dad first, and I knew right away he was gone. It—it was so bad. I ran around the bed, hoping that somehow Mom was okay. She was on the floor on her side of the bed, and she was gone too.” His eyes were rimmed with red, spilling forth with pain.
“Oh, Tyler. No.” I began to cry as I looked into his eyes.
He took a deep breath and blew it out. “So, yeah. Seventeen. Both my parents gone, and I hadn’t been there to help them. If only I hadn’t stayed out past curfew, I might’ve been home. I might’ve been able to stop it. But I wasn’t.”
I stood in front of him and pulled him to me, putting my cheek on top of his head. He wrapped his arms around me for a moment, tightly.
I felt like a complete jerk for asking him about things that brought all that up. “Thank you for telling me your story, Tyler. It means a lot that you’d share it with me.”
He lifted his head and looked up at me. “Thanks for letting me share it with you.” He sat upright and sniffed. “Come on, let’s walk some more. I need to get some of this energy out.”
“All right.” I handed him my water bottle and he packed it back up with his own.
We walked in silence for a few minutes.
“I forgot to tell you the rest of the story,” he said.
“It’s okay.”
“Nah, that was the whole point.” He gave me a weak smile. “I moved in with my uncles Billy and Jimmy for the rest of my senior year. I worked construction with them that summer after high school – really every summer during high school. The guy who murdered my parents was caught. He’s doing life upstate, but that’s only because my uncles and I didn’t get to him before the cops did.” He picked up the pace a little as the trail flattened out.
I could understand that pain and rage. If it had been my parents, I’d probably feel the same.
Tyler continued, “The guy was high on bath salts or some shit when he broke in. Thought it was someone else’s house – someone he knew. So yeah, the study of psychology was some vain attempt for my young mind to process and understand how someone can be fucked up enough to take someone’s life – to rip someone’s world apart.”
“I’m sorry you went through all that.”
“Yeah.” He smiled at me again. “I’m glad we talked about it, but can we talk about something else?”
“Sure.” I tried to think of a new topic as we veered off the main trail and over to another one. “You mentioned that you were thinking of going back to school. What are you thinking of doing?”
“Well, I talked to my buddy Shane about it. He’s a teacher, like my dad. His new wife is one, too. Anyway, he thinks I should maybe look into being a counselor. He always sort of thought I was taking the easy path with training anyway – he never thought I was living up to my potential.” He laughed. “Nothing like your friends to tell you you’re a lazy piece of shit, huh?”
“Yeah, no kidding. Always there to give you a reality check – or their version of it – whether you want one or not. Ella’s been all over me for six months about getting out there – starting to date. That’s what last night was all about.” I stopped, remembering what that had led to.
“Does Ella have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“No, a son-of-a-bitch ex-husband who threw her down the stairs while she was six months pregnant with Noah, her son,” I replied, venom infusing the words.
“Fuck. That’s awful. I’m glad she got out. Any man who hurts a woman doesn’t deserve to breathe in my book.” He shook his head. Suddenly, he chuckled. “So, what’s Ella going to think when you tell her about us?”
Us? What us? I wondered what he meant. I knew last night shouldn’t have happened. I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted him so damn bad. Still, I wasn’t under any delusion we were more than just roommates who accidentally fucked.
“Oh, huh, I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “She’ll ask a lot of details, I guess.”
He must’ve sensed my trepidation. “Grayce, you’re…you’re not like any of the other women I go out with, you know.”
“Well, I’m probably a bit long in the tooth, for a start,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Hey.” He stopped and turned to me. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that you’re kind of the whole package. Smart, independent – maybe a little too independent at that, and fucking gorgeous. Most girls I go out with…well, they’re just that. Girls.”
We started walking again, and I was grateful so I didn’t have to meet his eyes.
He said, “Of course, I guess most of your lawyer friends don’t exactly date trainers, bouncers, or part-time models either, huh? We do live in pretty different worlds.” He shook his head and looked annoyed.
“Tyler, last night…it was…” I paused, trying to gauge where he stood on our insanely gratifying but poorly considered hookup.
“I was amazing, I know. No need to thank me, Grayce.” He threw his head back laughing, and I rolled my eyes and smirked at him.
“I won’t dignify that with my agreement,” I said.
“So, you do agree I was amazing.” He gave me that look of his when he knew he was right, with one eyebrow arched.
“Look, I shouldn’t have…I mean, we shouldn’t have—”
He stopped mid-trail, then turned to face me. “I know what you’re going to say. It shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake. Blah, blah, blah. Look, Grayce, I get it. I don’t fit into your neat little buttoned-up world. I work three jobs, one of which involves getting my picture taken half-naked for money. I’ve dated a lot of women. A lot of women. And to top it off, when you met me, I was technically, though temporarily, homeless. You see yourself with some preppy suit, not someone like me. It’s cool, I guess. I get it.”
He turned and kept walking while I felt like the worst person ever. He had given me the best night of my life and opened himself up to me, and I turned him into a one-night stand. I was a total piece of shit.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I said. “It’s just, I don’t want things to be complicated between us, and you’ve said yourself you’re not a girlfriend kind of guy.”
“No, Grayce, you said that. I told you I had dated lots of women. I never said I wouldn’t date the right one exclusively.” He stopped again and turned to me. “Look, there’s just a few things I want to make clear, okay?”
I nodded.
He continued, “First, you may see what happened last night as a mistake, but I don’t see it that way. It was a great night. I might not ever forget how great it was, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up about letting go and having a good time once in a while.”
I shrugged a nod of agreement.
“And the other thing is that if you want to find some country club guy, if you think that’s what you need to make you happy, that’s fine. But Grayce, so help me, I do not ever want to see you letting some guy treat you like shit again. You’re better than that, and you deserve better than that. Promise me you hear me.” He had his hands on his hips like a frustrated parent.
“You’re right, Tyler, you are. I promise – I hear you.” I felt embarrassed in a different way than I had before.
“So,” he continued, “if you just want to be friends, that’s cool, we can be friends. But I don’t think I deserve to be completely discounted just because I don’t have a Madison Avenue office and bunch of sycophantic assistants following me around all day just waiting to wipe my ass.”
He gave me a serious look, then started to laugh. It put me at ease, and I laughed too.
“Dude, you are going to be hell on your daughters if you ever have any,” I said, and he laughed harder.
“Okay.” I stuck my hand out for him to shake. “Friends, then?”
He shook my hand and we finished our hike.