Page 91 of My Grape Crush
“Whatever you do, don’t look at the photos, okay? Don’t feed the insanity.”
“You need to talk to your mom.” Dani fidgets with her hands in a detached, distant way, and I feel this numbness consuming me. “I'm going to go home now.”
My tattered heart wilts. Will Mom be anything other than repulsed? Her youngest son reappears, delivered to her by a dark-haired angel she had already envisioned, I could tell, in a wedding dress. And I upend her moment of motherly glory with this?
She won’t understand. Mom never understood my struggles with women. She figured a man with looks had the world at his feet, the pick of the crop, like how the great Peter Trenton rolled. Not a wallflower who became more and more isolated with his increasing fame.
“Can I see you later?” I ask. Hopeful, borderline desperate.
Dani bites her lip. Even a reluctant maybe would prevent my future mental health from imploding. A hard no, and I may never recover from the damage I've created from one careless moment.
I cross both sets of fingers, feeling light-headed, unaware my lungs have stopped working.
Finally, she says, “Let’s play it by ear, okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DANI
At midnight,I sit on my balcony, drinking jasmine tea and trying to stay awake. Darkness swirls around me, my blood half anxiety. I’ve tried to read but can’t concentrate. I keep checking the time. Even The Ramones are a pulsating sound that rearranges my atoms and squashes all thoughts.
God, if Joey fails me, I’m in serious shit.
My mind tries to pick apart the reasons why Rhys hasn’t shown up. Visitor hours ended at eight, and his last text landed at four when he asked if he could swing by. I said yes. I need to see him. I need him to cradle me in his arms and protect me from this exploding shitty day.
To tell me it will be alright, even if it isn’t.
Because I’ve been a woman in meaningless motion. I tried to eat but picked listlessly at a poke bowl Uber left on my doormat. I vacuumed, Windex-ed, and laundered. Nothing could occupy my restless mind, or make me forget my clit was now, in Osoyoos, arguably as famous as Rhys.
The only comfort I will feel is when we are here, no more than two feet apart.
At twelve-fifteen, the waiting game finally ends. Rhys buzzes from the intercom, my nerve endings tingling the entire time it takes him to ride up the elevator. As soon as he steps out into the hallway, the energy shifts. An ominous kind of stillness floats around him.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry I’m so late.”
I step aside, holding the door open. “It’s fine. Come in.”
He kicks off his flip-flops, eyes sweeping the living room in a way that bubbles up the same self-consciousness as when Brett first came over and detailed what I needed to upgrade.
“I’d invite you in,” I joke through my insecurity, “but you’re in. It’s no palazzo.”
He quirks a brow. “This is cute. It suits you.”
I shut the door, and a silence falls, me trying to figure out where to start. Rhys is tired-eyed, far from immaculate, and still takes my breath away.
He’s also impossible to read.
“Can I get a glass of water?” he asks.
“Sure. Are you hungry? I’ve got?—”
“I’m good with water. Thanks.”
I gesture at my sofa that, admittedly, has seen better days. “Have a seat.”
Through the opening that divides the kitchen from the living area, I watch him sink onto the cushions, attention fixed on the blackness outside. I was low-key hoping his mood might have picked up because he was right. The algorithms shut down the worst of the images. Being a sucker for torture, I tracked the comments on his feed. Lots of support, surprisingly, with Myla universally trashed for being a vindictive bitch. A small drop of mercy in an ocean of bad luck.
“Here you go.” I hand off the water to him, and he downs it in three thirsty gulps.
