Walking home after our interrupted date left me with an aching chest and a bad taste in my mouth. I felt the disappointment rolling inside of me, thin liquid that seemed to be staining my every thought and move. I should probably have taken a cab, but I needed the time to clear my head.

I waited until just after midnight, but Grayson never called, and eventually even the coffee I was drinking couldn’t keep me awake any longer. Madeline patted me on the arm when she eventually heaved herself off the futon, muttering something about sleeping.

“He’ll call tomorrow,” Madeline said, nodding. She looked very sure, and I smiled. Even through my sleep deprived haze, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling immensely grateful to my roommate. She always knew how to make me feel better, starting with horror films and coffee and ending with assured promises.

I hid my yawn behind my hand, stretching as I popped my back. We really needed to just shell out the money for a real couch. “Thanks, Madeline. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I smiled at her quickly before turning my attention back to the TV.

Finally, too tired to stay up any longer, I stumbled to my room, checking my phone one last time before sighing and setting the alarms for the next morning. I’d be working all day, and Alana would only be there for the morning shift, so I really shouldn’t have stayed up so late waiting for a phone call I never even got.

I told myself I shouldn’t be mad. It wasn’t like Grayson said he’d call or owed me anything; he had to meet with his manager and he’d probably gone to sleep hours ago like a normal person. I was the one who was still hung up on our quasi-date, wishing we could just pick up where we left off when he got done with his meeting.

I’d just have to find a different evening that worked for him, and the two of us could resume our date. After all, he promised he’d make it up to me for leaving early.

I shuddered, my heart beating a little too rapid as I thought about what that promise would entail. I’d never felt this way about someone before. It was like every bit of me was a wick and he could ignite me into a fire with a mere look, let alone a kiss.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when he left. I felt like I was falling for him.

As I fell asleep, I couldn’t help but imagine impossible scenarios where he stayed.

The next day passed uneventfully. I burnt two batches of hash browns before Alana switched places with me and I jumped each time the door opened, but other than that, the day went smoothly. Business, as usual, was busy and consumed most of my thoughts. Luckily, there wasn’t much down time, and I didn’t have to spend too much time pondering why Grayson wasn’t stopping by.

I’d gotten spoiled, having him all to myself. He didn’t really know anyone else here, didn’t want to get spotted by fans, and was dedicating all of his time to me. It really shouldn’t bother me that he was busy now. I myself was usually busy, and he never complained.

Still, when the dinner shift ended and I still hadn’t heard from him, my stomach plummeted.

I sent the cook home after I cleaned off the grill and did the dishes, even if I kind of wanted the company. I dwelled a bit in the disappointment that was still curled inside of me, frowning as I swept and mopped, stomping a little as I wiped down the tables and put the chairs away.

I spent a little longer at the diner than normal, cleaning and recleaning the appliances. I didn’t want to see Madeline and have her sympathetic eyes follow me as I grumbled around the room, essentially pouting. I knew I was being ridiculous. I just couldn’t seem to help it.

Eventually, though, the night was dark, and I had to admit that there was nothing left to do at the diner, save making a mess on purpose to clean up. The idea briefly appealed to me, but I discarded it quickly and grabbed my coat and keys from the back. I’d just go home and mope there. Maybe, if I went to bed early enough, Madeline wouldn’t feel the need to say anything at all.

I was almost to the apartment when my phone rang. I jumped, grabbing at it quickly. I nearly dropped it when I read Grayson’s name on the screen.

“Grayson,” I answered my voice a little breathless. I pretended it was because of the walk.

There was music playing, low and distracting, in the background where he was. His voice was almost too low to hear. “Jade,” he drawled.

I stopped walking, frowning as I plugged my other ear and tilted my head to try and hear better. “You alright?”

“Perrrfect!” he replied, his voice a little slow. “I’m perfect, Jade.” He laughed, but it was off. Too sharp. Not like Grayson at all.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Um, you sure?”

“Yes.” The word was slurred, and I realized with a start that he was drunk. I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked the time. 9:35. “Perfect.”

I crossed one of my arms across my chest, leaning on the wall of a building, so I wasn’t directly in the middle of the sidewalk. The music seemed to be getting louder from the other end of the line.

“What are you doing?” I asked unsurely, biting my lip. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

Grayson, though, didn’t seem to mind. “Drinking!” He laughed.

I smiled a bit. Maybe nothing was wrong, and he really was just drunk. It wasn’t like it was an unheard-of event. “Sounds like it.”

I heard Grayson sigh heavily. “I miss you. I want you to be here.”

My heart started racing. God, even sloppy drunk that man could break me. My mouth dried at the picture of Grayson, gleeful from a few drinks, laughing and cheeks burning red from the alcohol. He would be too handsome with flushed cheeks and glassy eyes.

“But Chris,” he spat the name, “said you can’t come over.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That so?”

“Yes,” he said quickly, “I already asked. Chris is an asshole.” I heard someone talking away from the phone, too far for me to understand any of the words. I imagined it was Chris, defending himself. He let out another breathy sigh.

“Chris is an asshole,” he repeated, but this time he laughed a little.

I wasn’t entirely positive Chris couldn’t hear me, and while Grayson probably wouldn’t mind if I didn’t mince my words, I thought his manager would. “Maybe,” I said diplomatically. “But I’m sure he’s not that bad.”

Grayson didn’t say anything, but the phone shuffled, a sound like fabric over the microphone breaking through. I could see him shrugging, lips pursed.

I wanted to see him. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

He was still quiet. I frowned. My heart stuttered. “Or, well, you don’t have to or anything, obviously, I was just—”

“I want to!” he interrupted. “I want to; it’s just Chris.”

I thought maybe I was too hasty to defend Chris. Maybe he was an asshole.

“I might be busy. But I’ll call you. I’m coming by Monday no matter what,” he seemed to be saying the last part away from the phone as if it wasn’t directed at me at all. Which was fine by me. I was glad Grayson was willing to defy Chris if he tried to keep us separated for a third day in a row.

“Good.” I smiled, leaning my head back on the bricks behind me. He didn’t reply, but his breathing was even, and I felt my pulse slow down incrementally. “I’ll be glad to see you.”

He exhaled into the phone. “Me, too,” he said quietly.

I heard the muffled voice of whom I assumed to be Chris again, and then he was grumbling. “I’ve got to go, Jade. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I nodded before I remembered that he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, okay. Have a good night.”

“You, too.”

I hung up the phone, smiling a bit as I shoved it into my pocket. He wanted to see me. The thought played on repeat during the rest of my walk home, warming me better than the coat I wore could.

I unlocked the door, raising an eyebrow to see Alana laying in the living room of my apartment. Madeline sat next to her on her knees, two sharpies in her left hand and a straw between her lips.

“Is everyone drunk today?” I asked aloud. Alana and Madeline giggled, despite having no way to know what I was talking about.

I shrugged off my jacket and tossed my keys on the desk we kept near the door, dropping the coat to the floor. I’d deal with it later. I threw myself on the floor and grabbed Alana’s cup, taking a swig.

Ugh. Vodka. I passed it back.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked, peering over Alana’s side to see the design that Madeline was coloring on my cousin’s stomach. It looked like a squirrel, maybe. Or a dog. It was definitely brown and probably an animal. I gave Madeline a thumbs up when she gestured to the artwork.

Alana tried to roll over, but Madeline stopped her. When she settled, she blinked up at me. “Coloring,” she replied.

I laughed. “I see that. Why?”

“Because!” Alana grinned, looking a little less drunk than Grayson had sounded, but only by some. “Todd is watching the boys. All by himself. So, I am having fun.”

I sat back up, stretching my arms over my head. “Alright,” I said. “Enjoy yourself, girls.”

Madeline dropped the pens, her arms shooting out as she wrapped her hands around my arm. “Uh uh! We have to talk.”

I pulled back, tilting my head. “We do?”

Alana sat up, crossing her legs and staring at me with wide eyes. “We all do. You promised.”

When I frowned, Madeline sighed heavily. “Jade,” she spoke slowly as if she was hard of hearing, “in the kitchen. You promised.”

My stomach dropped. “I did no such thing.”

“Did too!”

“No, no way.” I tugged my arm free. “You promised we weren’t done; I didn’t promise to say anything.”

Madeline and Alana exchanged a look, faces scrunching in concentration as if trying to remember if that was the way the conversation had gone. Eventually, Madeline shrugged, and Alana whirled back to me. “Doesn’t matter,” she said definitively.

“I’m not talking.” I put my foot down.

Madeline shrugged again. “Don’t care. Listen then.” Then she started to laugh, and Alana joined, the girls nearly falling over in their giggle fit. She tried to stand again, but this time both of them reached for me, Madeline’s nails digging into my arm while Alana whacked me on the side of the head.

“Ow,” I complained, rubbing the spot. Alana just smiled.

“It’s about Grayson,” she sang, wiggling her eyebrows. They laughed again.

Well. I supposed I wasn’t that tired. I could maybe stay for a little bit and listen to whatever they had to say.

Once it was clear I wasn’t leaving, the girls stopped their giggles and tried, in their drunken stupor, to stare at me seriously. It was interrupted with frequent grins, but I gave them points for trying. Alana always drank hard when she did, and Madeline was a light weight. I was lucky they were even awake.

“We saw him at the bar,” Madeline started.

“Fitzgerald’s! The one we all got kicked out of in high school!” Alana interrupted. She threw her head back, silent laughs shaking her shoulder. “Todd was so scared!”

I smirked at the memory. I was younger than my cousin and her husband, but I remembered I was the only one that the bartender thought was old enough to be there.

“Anyway,” Madeline shot Alana a look, “we saw Grayson at the bar. He was getting trashed.”

I swallowed a grin. “As opposed to you two gentle, casual drinkers.”

Alana swatted at my shoulder lightly. “Shut it. Do you want to hear about your boyfriend or not?”

My face burned. I felt light headed suddenly. All the blood from my body seemed to be in my face. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Madeline grinned, her mouth open wide. It must’ve hurt; it was such a big grin. “That’s not what he said.”

The blood rushed from my face, as quickly as it had come, momentarily deafening me. All I could hear was the whooshing of my blood and the hammering of my heart. “What?”

The girls broke, giggling themselves into a heap, arms thrown around each other. I barely contained the growl that they were taking so long to tell me the story. “Guys!”

“Sorry!” Alana gasped, wiping away tears that had formed from her laughter. “Sorry, it’s just—your face.”

“Aww,” Madeline teased. “Our little Jade likes him.”

“Shut up,” I replied automatically, my mind still whirling. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Alana said innocently. I glared at her, and she relented easily, holding her hands up. “Okay, okay. We-ell, if you must know, Madeline and I were at Fitzgerald’s for a drink—”

“Or two.” Madeline held up two fingers.

Alana nodded. “Or two. Or three or four or five.” She started to giggle again but composed herself when I groaned. “And we saw little Grayson all by himself! He had on that stupid hat and sunglasses, inside, as if that would help him not be recognized.”

“And then!” Madeline interjected. “We went and sat by him, and we all got a few drinks. It was good, Fitzgerald’s has really stepped up its game.”

“Madeline,” I almost smacked myself in the forehead. They were too drunk to be telling any story.

“Sorry. Anyway, so we sat by him, and man was he drinking!”

“So we asked him—”

“We asked him why he was drinking—”

“And it was because of you!”

They both beamed at me. I blinked back.

“Sorry, what? What about me?”

“You! Apparently, his manager Craig—”

“Chris,” I corrected.

Alana nodded emphatically. “Yeah, Chris. That’s what I said. Apparently, his manager Chris forbade him from seeing you or something and Grayson threatened to fire him because, and I quote—”

Madeline joined in, both of them lowering their voices. “Fuck him to tell me who can be my girlfriend.”

My mouth fell open, my jaw dropping. The girls exchanged a look.

“That’s you!” Madeline explained, smiling. “You’re the girlfriend!”

“He—Chris forbade him from seeing me?” I couldn’t believe it. That guy was an asshole.

“And Grayson refused!” The girls were positively gleeful about Grayson’s supposed refusal.

His manager thought I was so bad for him that he tried to forbid him from even seeing me. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath or swallow around the lump in my throat. I frowned, dropping my head to look at the carpet after seeing the girls’ faces fall. What could Chris even know about me that was bad enough to warrant such a response? It couldn’t have even been a suggestion if Grayson felt the need to threaten his job to get him to lay off. That had to be—I didn’t even know what that had to be or mean. Just that it wasn’t good.

No wonder he called him an asshole. No wonder Grayson hadn’t called me earlier today.

Maybe it was for the best, though. I didn’t want to be the reason that he was fighting with his manager. Grayson hadn’t said much about the guy, not really, but I knew enough about the industry to know that managers were important and that Chris had been with Grayson since he started, basically. Their careers had grown together, and I had always thought that Grayson seemed to like the guy, if not respect the hell out of him.

What reason could Chris have to think I was so bad for his client? His friend?

I swallowed thickly, laying down on the carpet. It was thin and old. We’d never replaced it. It was dirty and old, like most of the things in my life. Maybe that alone was the reason. Grayson was in a completely different league than me. Maybe Chris saw that while Grayson still didn’t.

“Hey,” Madeline said, drawing my attention back toward my friends. She was pouting, and Alana wore an identical expression. “This is good news.”

I snorted. “Yeah, it’s great.”

“No, seriously,” Alana argued. “He likes you, Jade. Really likes you. Fuck his manager or whatever. This is a good thing.”

I didn’t want to argue with them. I knew what they were saying and where they were coming from. Alana and Madeline, at their core, always had good intentions. I didn’t want them to feel bad for not realizing sooner how wrong they were this time.

Clearing my throat, I tried to ignore the clawing dread in my stomach. I wasn’t good enough. Grayson was going to see that soon. My eyes burned.

“I know,” I lied, trying to smile. It came short of genuine, but the girls brightened a bit at my display. “I think I’m just tired. I’m going to hit the hay.”

Madeline nodded and Alana, in a rare display of affection, threw her arms around my neck, hugging me. “I like him. He’s good for you,” she whispered. “Let him be.”

I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing tightly once. Then I dropped my arms and stood, nodding. “Night, girls.”

“Night.”

I took a shower and changed into sweatpants and an old t-shirt, plugging in my phone and setting the alarms, running over the schedule for the upcoming weekend before climbing under the covers; my thoughts looped over and over again the entire time with one horrible thought.

I wasn’t enough. And Grayson was going to figure that out soon.