Page 93 of Lessons In Grey
My eyes lifted back to his.
He was watching me expectantly. “Tell me. I want to know.”
“Why? Nothing exciting happened. I went shopping for decorations, that’s all.”
“So tell me about it,” he pushed.
“It’s nothing like your life. It was mundane.”
His look only deepened. “I don’t care. I like mundane. Tell me about the car that didn’t slow down enough when you were walking across the street, or the lady who bumped into you, making you irritated because your arms were full. I want to know. I want to talk to you. I want to hear all about it.”
I pulled at my sleeves, watching my fractured fingernails bend under the pull of my sweater. I needed to take more vitamins, which I’ve known for a while, I just didn’t care enough to do it.
“It’s been a while since you’ve just talked to someone, hasn’t it?”
My eyes lifted, finding his. “We’ve had conversations,” I reminded him.
He smiled. “Yes, we have, but now things in your life have settled. It’s different now, so tell me about the mundane.”
I thought about it, my shoulders falling, guilt filling me. “Oh” I frowned. “I’m not good at…this,” I said, gesturing to both of us.
He started cutting up the veggies, a pan on the stove warming with olive oil. “Neither am I, we’re learning together. Tell me about your day, and I can tell you about mine,” he suggested again, giving me a knowing smile.
I studied him for a moment before releasing a breath. “Okay, um…” I shrugged. “I got a coffee from the café just a block down from Scarlet. I started on one side of the store, and I made it to the other, and then I went to get a tree.”
He chuckled in amusement. “Baby, tell me about your day.”
I searched his eyes, my heart picking up for no reason at all. “This is dumb.”
His eyes were filled with light. “More detail, come on. Go.”
I sighed, more irritated than anything else. “Fine.” And I went into detail about my day. I told him about how I beelined straight for the nutcrackers as soon as I had gotten there. I told him about the dozens of blankets I had wanted to buy before settling on the four I decided on. I told him about the cute Christmastreats, the ornaments that I wanted to buy boxes of, and how long it had taken me to get the tree.
I told him about the struggle of getting everything in here, and how I had nearly fallen off the ladder a dozen times today. We ended up laughing as he cooked salmon and veggies for dinner. It was far easier than I thought it would be.
We ate dinner at the table, and he listened while I shared the most mundane stories of my life. Stories about grocery shopping and getting coffee on cold mornings. About the late nights I spent studying. About the nights Charlie and I had stayed up all night writing songs until mom came in and lectured us about being up on a school night.
He listened to it all. Laughed and commented and pushed me to drink more water because it was important for my mind and for my body.
It was the first time I had talked about me in years. The first time I had reallytalkedin years. It felt good. And it wasn’t anything traumatic either. It wasn’t about what happened, it was all good. Purely good.
Soon, we found ourselves on the couch. I was leaned back in one corner, my knees pulled up to my chest, turned towards him and he sat just beside me, turned to face me, so close that my toes were tucked under his leg, arm slung over the back of the couch, surrounded by Christmas, looking so out of place with his tattoos and suit, that it almost seemed unreal. At some point during the long conversation, he had taken his tie off, unbuttoned the top two buttons, taken off his shoes.
It felt easy. I couldn’t remember the last time anything had felteasy, but this did.
I wiggled my toes, glad for the warmth as I pulled at my sleeves, my cheeks sore from all of the smiling and laughing. The lights lit up the room, the sun long since set, the dark curtains cutting off most of the lights from the city around us. It truly did feel like a Christmas Wonderland in here, but from an old gothicfilm.
His eyes had warmed, his expression softened. The tension in the air was palpable, but so was the relief. “You needed this, didn’t you?”
I nodded, looking around the room, feeling like a weight had been lifted from my chest. “More than I thought.”
I found his eyes again, searching them, the anxiety that came with looking too long never coming. I felt my smile fall as I continued to search for something I wondered if I would ever find. “I hated her,” I finally confessed, the words coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “I did. For the…longesttime, I hated her so much. She was always so…happy. Just pure goodness everywhere she went. Everyone smiled when they saw her. As if she were some sort of goddess, and I was just this little demon follower always striving to be her level of perfect and constantly failing.
“Their smiles were so big when she walked in, and then I followed and their smiles dropped, as if I killed the light in the world just by being me. They never even tried to hide it, their discontent with my being alive, and then she died, and I hated her even more because I knew that no matter how hard I strived, I would never be good enough for anyone like she was. Everyone in this world would always compare me to Charlie Glass.”
I rubbed my shins and shrugged, the guilt touching me. “And then I just hated her for making me hate her. I hated myself for ever thinking that because I loved her. I loved her more than…God more than reason. Now I feel happy, but I’m going to feel guilty too, when the high of this wears off because how is it right that I’m finally happy when her entire world stopped at 23 and mine kept going?”
He reached over, taking my hand in his, sympathy clear in his eyes. “That’s why,” he said easily. “Because her world ended that day, but yours went on. You deserve to be happy for both of you. Live a life she would smile at. Which,” he went on when I openedmy mouth, “is the lifeyouwant. She’s your sister, Emily,” he continued as my teeth clicked shut, “she would want you happy in the way only you could be.”