Chapter 1: Grace

Grace

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… Back up one second. What are you saying? Are… are you breaking up with me?” I asked, dumbfounded as I stared at my boyfriend of four years. He stuttered and stammered his way through what I thought was the lamest breakup line on the planet. He’s bored? What does that even mean?

He sighed and dropped his hands to his sides in defeat. “Come on, Grace. You can’t say you didn’t see this coming,” he said. A lock of his dirty blonde hair, messy as ever, fell over his forehead. He brushed it away and settled his gaze back on me.

“We literally celebrated our fourth anniversary yesterday, Aaron, so no, I didn’t see it coming. What does that even mean? You’re bored? I don’t understand how you can just throw away what we have like… like… What are you talking about?”

“It means what it means. We’ve been together forever, Grace, and I want to see what else is out there for me. I don’t see it as throwing anything away but building a solid foundation for future relationships. We both know what we want now. It’s better this way, you’ll see. It’s not you, Grace. It’s—”

“If you finish that sentence, I will probably scream,” I threatened, but he knew I wouldn’t. I, Grace Gilmore, would never do such a thing. He smirked, confirming my suspicion. My lips parted, a protest on the tip of my tongue, but I thought better of it and kept my thought to myself. My face, however, must have given away my disappointment and frustration.

Aaron’s expression softened as he reached for me. He’d reached that way a million times, his hand palm up, asking me to join him wherever he was going. For four years, I did exactly that—I followed. For some ridiculous reason, I let him take my hand and lead me to a place to discuss the terms of our separation that was quieter than the center courtyard of the stupid university I chose to attend because he was there. What an idiot, I thought. When we were well away from nosy students, he pulled me onto a park bench beside him. For a second, I thought he’d changed his mind, perhaps realized he was making a mistake, but when Aaron opened his mouth again, he dashed all hope I had of saving our future.

“Look, Grace, I love you and all but…” he said hesitantly as if he had to make it up as he went. “Well… It’s just not the kind of love that keeps two people together forever. Does that make sense?”

I wasn’t sure that was the whole truth, but his expression was plain as day either way. He wanted off the hook with as little pain and suffering as possible. Reasonable, I suppose, but he knew me well enough to know I’d never fight with him. It was kind of a cheap shot all things considered.

I wanted to hate him. I really, truly wanted to look at him and seethe with anger, but if what he said was true, then I deserved better. Why would I settle for someone who wasn’t all in? I stared at the students passing through the courtyard, happy people who weren’t in the middle of a breakup.

“Grace?” Aaron whispered, his fingers gently brushing over mine. “I’m sorry.” I knew he was; I could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes, but those things didn’t make the pit in my stomach any easier to resolve.

“I wish you’d told me sooner. We could have avoided the hour-long awkward dinner last night,” I said, realizing maybe I did know something was wrong but refused to admit it to myself.

“What we have is comfortable, but I think we both deserve more than just comfortable, right?” he asked. My eyes stung, and my throat ached with the impending thunderstorm of sobbing, so I bit my tongue and pointed my stare to my shoelaces. Shoelaces didn’t break a person’s heart. Shoelaces stayed exactly where they were supposed to, right there holding your shoe to your foot like a supportive…

“Grace? Where are you right now?”

I shook my head clear of my rambling thoughts.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked, all the while the gears in my head turned. What would I do? I had two classes with Aaron, not to mention he was my ride to and from those classes. He was my tutor in Advanced Physics, all my friends and family adored him, half his stuff was at my apartment, and a lot of mine was at his. There was not one thing in my life that wasn’t inextricably connected to his. He was ripping half of my life from me, leaving a shredded lump of a broken heart behind… and maybe a toothbrush.

“We take it a day at a time,” he said. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

“Like our relationship never meant anything to either of us? Is that how—”

“No, that’s not how I feel. Grace—” He stopped short and sighed again; this time, it was the frustrated sigh he always used when I was beginning to annoy him. He ruffled his hair, then said, “I think you are a great person. You’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had, and maybe I’ll never find anyone else like you again, but I can’t take it anymore. I need more in my life besides this comfortable thing we have. I want excitement and adventure. I want passion and all-consuming love, not mediocre happiness and lukewarm affection. I want… I just want different.”

Well, that hurt.Different. I couldn’t be different, no matter how hard I tried. There was just no changing me, but frankly, I quite liked who I was. However, my inability to be mean or get riled up over something had been a point of contention between us for as long as we’d known each other.

“I’m sorry I don’t freak out over things, yell and scream, and generally behave like a child when things don’t go my way,” I said with as much edge to my tone as possible—so, none.

He groaned and stood quickly, then pointed his finger at me.

“See that right there! You’re so mad at me right now, you must be, but I bet if I asked you to forget about it, you’d take me back with no questions asked! I never know how you really feel because you refuse to do or say anything that’s not totally, completely rational and nice all the time. You make me feel like a crazy person for having feelings, Grace!”

“So, if I were a brat, you’d like me more? If I behaved like a madwoman and treated you like crap, maybe you wouldn’t walk away?” I asked, confused.

“I didn’t say that, but some emotion other than sickeningly sweet would be nice. Do you even like me?”

“That’s… How preposterous. Of course, I like you, Aaron. I love you. I’ve been with you for four years, haven’t I?”

“Time in a relationship does not equate love,” he snapped.

“I think it shows a vast amount of commitment, which I believe equates to love. I do love you, Aaron. I try so hard to make you happy and to be a nice girlfriend, but…” I stopped, too afraid I would hurt his feelings.

“But? Go on. Say what you’re thinking right now,” he said. He seemed on the edge of his seat, his eyes searching mine for something I could neither define nor understand.

“Nothing. It’s… it’s nothing.”

“Agh!” he yelled and tugged at his hair. “Why can’t you just yell at me? Tell me to kick rocks or… anything? I want to feel loved, Grace. I need to know that you’d fight for me, and right now, all I’m getting is a stoic woman who says she loves me but is too afraid to fight with me to prove it!”

“I’m not afraid. I just don’t see how it solves anything. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Aaron. Why would I say things that I know would hurt you?”

“You would do it if you really loved me! If this were meant to last, you wouldn’t worry about those things because fighting with me means you have something to lose!”

I thought for a moment and realized I was in way over my head. I had no idea what he was trying to say, but I was desperate to understand. “So, you want me to yell at you and say mean things, so you’ll stay with me?”

“No, I don’t—forget it, Grace. It’s over. We’re done. Have a nice life.” He shook his head, took two steps, turned back, and said, “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m not, but this thing between us, it’s not working anymore. I need more than a robotic girlfriend who can’t show any emotion other than… whatever nice twenty-four-seven is.”

With that, he walked away and out of my life forever. I thought about what he said, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I grew until I was ready to give him a piece of my mind. So, I was a nice person? I, for one, thought the world could use kinder people, but what did I know? I stomped after him and caught him by the elbow before he reached the crosswalk. He spun around, his eyes red and wet, with a hopeful look on his face. I stared into his bright blue eyes wishing things could just go back to the way they were.

“Yes? Is there something you wanted to say to me?” Aaron asked, almost begging. He held his breath, waiting.

“There is. You’re just a… a big… You’re a giant… Ugh, you’re just a meanie-head!” I said, then turned and walked away, feeling like I’d just scolded a toddler. I didn’t bother to wait for his reaction since I had essentially proven his point. I didn’t know how to be mean. I was on nice autopilot with no end in sight.

I turned the corner, intending to head to my apartment to have a good cry, but I tripped over my shoelace that had come untied. So much for shoelaces being supportive and staying where they belonged. I fell face-first, smack into a giant wall. Not a wall, but a person who was much taller than me, though being a short stack basically ensured everyone was taller than me.

“S-sorry,” I mumbled directly to a lovely striped sweater. I was too embarrassed to look at the face that belonged to the sweater, so I aimed my gaze at his chest and blushed until my cheeks burned. An awkward silence followed, so I bent to tie my traitorous shoelace. Once it was fixed, a hand appeared in front of my face. I took it, and the stranger helped me back to a standing position.

“It’s not a problem,” he said with the strangest accent I’d ever heard in my life. It made me look up, and I immediately wished I had kept my eyes where they were. “Are you alright?”

I nodded, then stuttered again. “Y-yes… I’m, um, fine. Thanks.”

He smiled politely and stepped aside for me to pass. When he smiled, a little dimple appeared in his right cheek, and I couldn’t stop staring at it. I had only broken up with Aaron, but I found myself forgetting the last four years of my life as I stared at the stranger’s perfect face. Golly, that’s a pretty smile. One side of his mouth relaxed, morphing the beautiful smile into a cocky smirk, which was, unfortunately, still quite lovely.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked, probably mortified by my staring. Or, more likely, gaining a serious ego boost from my unwavering, borderline obsessive consumption of him with my eyeballs. I realized he asked me a question when he shifted his weight and leaned against the wall comfortably.

“Oh! No, I’m okay. Sorry again,” I said, wondering why I couldn’t have fallen against the actual wall and avoided the situation altogether, then darted away from the picture of perfection. Come on, Fate. Was it really necessary for the guy to have dirty blonde hair and blue eyes? More than that, why did his hair have to be so perfect all messy and adorable like he’d just rolled out of bed looking like a model?

I swore I felt someone following me down the sidewalk, so I double-timed it in case he was looking for another ego boost. I couldn’t say why I thought he would follow me, but after the day I’d had, I wasn’t prepared to rule anything out. I pushed thoughts of the stranger from my mind and let it settle on thoughts of Aaron instead. I tried to analyze our relationship as I fled home, but it was useless. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what he wanted from me. He knew me well, ever since fifth grade, yet he seemed to be under the impression that I would magically change into another girl if given enough time.

When I reached my apartment, I climbed the stairs to the third floor instead of taking the elevator. I figured I’d burn calories ahead of time, since I knew I’d eat all the ice cream in my freezer obsessing over what I’d done wrong, devising ways to fix it, and planning how to get Aaron back. I’d call Myra a dozen times, and a dozen time’s I’d get her voicemail. I loved Myra to death, but when my best friend moved across the country for school, it threw a wrench in my life. In fairness, it wasn’t all her fault. I went east while she moved west, but it sucked any way you sliced it.

Once inside my lonely apartment, I released the tears I’d kept locked away for nearly two hours. I let them slide down my face as I pulled a half-gallon of Neapolitan from my freezer, dug a spoon in it, and flicked on the television. Of course, the first thing to pop on-screen was one of those painfully sweet romantic comedies where the guy always gets the girl, and the girl is so incredibly perfect and well-rounded, it makes viewers want to reach through the screen and smack her. I wouldn’t. I’d never dare, but I’d think it!

I flicked the television off and tossed the remote onto the coffee table. My mind began to wander as I dug through the striped ice cream—strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate—now they didn’t betray a girl. Partway through drowning my sorrows with sugary goodness, Aaron sent me a text message.

Aaron: I’m sorry, Grace.

It was all he said, but it was enough to push me over the edge again. I sobbed over my ice cream, more of a melted bowl of tear-filled grossness than anything else at that point. I knew, deep down, that Aaron was right. As much as I loved him, our relationship had never been exciting. It was always comfortable, but I suppose that’s what happens when you already know everything about each other.

I thought about when I met Aaron, long ago in elementary school. He was the class patrol kid, the goofy one with glasses, and a penchant for tattling. I, on the other hand, was the kid who always managed to smooth things over before anyone got into trouble. Aaron didn’t care for my personality much back then, but by middle school, we were close friends. Then, in high school, something happened. We went to see a movie together like we did every Friday night, but on one particular night, he grew brave. I was startled by something on the screen, a crazy man chasing a horde of idiotic teenagers or something similar, and I tossed the popcorn in the air with a little squeal. He chuckled, caught the empty bucket, leaned in, and kissed me.

I chuckled through my tears, remembering the moment. Aaron was as shocked as I was, but it all worked out—for a while, anyway. All through high school, we were Aaron and Grace, Grace and Aaron, rarely one seen without the other somewhere close by. In hindsight, that was probably the root of the problem. There was a massive part of my heart that wanted to run to his apartment and beg him to try again, but there was also a little whisper in my mind that said he was right. Maybe this way we could salvage a friendship?

I sighed and gave up on my ice cream. I sat it on the table with the remote and tried to think of something other than Aaron and our failed relationship. If we ever got back together, it certainly wouldn’t be because I stalked him or begged. No, a little time apart for self-improvement and reflection would be good for me, even if it did hurt.

I found myself thinking of the stranger, only then noticing the way he made me feel. I loved Aaron, no doubt in my mind, but there was something about the overly confident stranger that made me feel… Ugh, I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly. It was just… odd. I shrugged it off as a mild attraction to someone that faintly resembled Aaron, but thoughts the stranger kept invading my mind no matter how hard I tried to think of anything but men.

“I wonder who he is?” I asked aloud, but my ice cream didn’t respond, which basically made it the best conversationalist in the world. “He was hot enough to melt you,” I said, then took another bite. Bite, bite, bite—brain freeze! Traitorous ice cream!

I dropped the carton and the spoon and closed my eyes to ride out the pain. It faded quickly, but as soon as it did, the vision of the stranger was front and center again. I decided to make up stories about where he came from with that crazy accent because that was much more fun than trying to fix my broken heart. And that’s what I did for a long time. By the time Myra returned my call, I’d made up a dozen stories about the tall boy I’d run into, but all were forgotten when I answered the phone.

“Hey, Myra,” I said.

She sighed, then said, “Lay it on me, babe. What happened?”