Page 38 of Eleanor & Grey
I went quiet. I didn’t know what they wanted me to say. I didn’t know what to even think.
Dad rolled his shoulders back and cleared his throat. “I asked Paige what she wanted, and she said the water. We found a nice place on the beach down in Florida. It’s beautiful, Ellie.”
“You want us to go to Florida? For how long?” I asked.
Mom smiled. “For however long we’re able to be down there. I know that changes things for you. You’d have to switch schools during your senior year, and things with Greyson—”
“Whatever you want,” I blurted out. Mom had worry in her eyes about hurting me, and I couldn’t let that be her fear. My biggest concern was her. “Whatever you want, Mom.”
Wherever she wanted to be, I wanted to be there too.
* * *
“A cancer vacation?” Greyson asked as we sat on the top step of his porch.
“Yeah, that’s what my dad called it. It would be a family trip to Florida for a few months because Mom’s treatment is over.”
His eyes widened with hope. “Because it worked?”
I frowned.
He lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Ellie.”
“Yeah, me too. Her dream has always been to take a trip to the ocean, and well, it looks like now is the only time that will be possible.”
He was quiet for a while.
Then he said, “That’s good for her. She deserves that.”
“Yeah.”
I was quiet next.
“I’ll probably have to finish senior year down there.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He grimaced and rubbed his hands against his legs. “Is it selfish of me to ask about us?”
No, it wasn’t. I’d been wondering the same thing. Truth was, after everything with Mom, Greyson had been the next thing to cross my mind.
“We’ve never really talked about us since my mom got sick.”
“Yeah, but it just kind of felt like we were... I don’t know, just us, you know?”
I knew exactly what he meant. It was as if we didn’t need labels to describe whatever it was we had between the two of us.
We just were.
It was that simple.
“I’ve been thinking about asking you to be my girlfriend, you know,” he told me. “And I mean, just because you live in Florida for a while doesn’t mean you can’t still be that until you get back home.”
I wanted to be selfish about it. I wanted to ask him to wait for me, wanted to do the long-distance thing for a while, but I also knew that was wrong. Greyson had just begun his senior year. He was going to play his last high school basketball season. He was going to want to go to school dances and participate in different activities and go to his last ever prom, and I couldn’t be a part of any of that with him.
I didn’t want to get in the way of any of it. I didn’t want to stop him from living his final year of high school to the fullest because he felt he couldn’t because of me.
“I really like you, Grey.”
He kept his head down. “But?”
