Page 100 of Eleanor & Grey
My heart skipped a few beats, but I tried my best to ignore it. “I’m sorry you’re hurting so much,” I told him.
“How long is it going to hurt?” he asked.
I gave him the same answer he’d given me all those years ago. “As long as it has to.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, turning away from me, seemingly embarrassed. “I’m drunk.”
“You don’t have to apologize for feeling, Greyson. I would be just as lost and confused as you are, if not more so.”
He nodded once and stared at the fireplace. The fire sparked repeatedly against the logs, and the flames danced around as if they were going to burn forever.
“Why did you come back?” he asked.
“Hmm?”
“After I fired you... why would you come back here to check on me?”
“Because I owed you.”
“For what?”
“Saving me when I was younger and about to drown.”
“Thank you, Ellie.”
I smiled. “Of course. Here, let me go get us some water to sober up.” I started to stand from the couch with my glass in my hand, then paused when he spoke.
“It’s Lorelai’s birthday today,” he told me. He was opening up more and more as the whiskey settled within him.Please stay open, Grey.He thumbed the rim of his glass and his eyebrows lowered as he studied it. “She’s six today.”
I lowered myself back down to my seat and turned toward him. “Yeah, Claire told me. I had no clue. We could’ve celebrated. I could’ve made a cake or something.”
He grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t know how to face today.”
“I don’t under...” I started, but my words trailed away as the pieces clicked into place. Of course, he didn’t celebrate Lorelai’s birthday. “Because Lorelai’s birthday is the same day Nicole died.”
He nodded. “One year ago today, everything changed, and I never recovered from that. It’s bullshit, right? This person I’ve become, the person I am. I’m a monster.”
“Greyson—”
“Don’t, Eleanor. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Feel sorry for me. I know it comes easy for you to feel sorry for me, but I’m not the hero of this story. I’m the villain.”
He bit his bottom lip and wouldn’t look my way.
“You’re not a villain, Greyson.”
“Tell that to the girl who isn’t celebrating her birthday with her father—you know, the one who has more conversations with a ghost than with me, or the one whose body is battered and scarred because of my actions.”
I frowned, because I saw his struggle, but I also knew it from the other side. I was both of his girls. I was Lorelai, the girl wanting nothing more than her father’s attention, and I was Karla—the girl who acted out just so he’d notice.
The only difference was that I’d never seen the guilt from my father that Greyson was displaying. I never saw the quiet moments where the truths of my father were revealed.
“Sorry,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Again... I’m drunk,” he told me once more.
“That’s fine.”
