Page 60 of Please, Stay

“I’m not crazy.” He finished his beer, tossing it into the makeshift trash can of an empty box, the bottle clanging with another empty. “But I do have to leave.”

“You haven’t seen Eliza yet,” Cameron said.

Dewey didn’t look back at Cameron or anyone else, but his shoulders rose a little. “I’ll see y’all around. Eva is home with her new boyfriend, and we have to have a family meal.”

“He’s so strange, sometimes.” Nash drained his own beer, tossing the empty bottle with the rest before grabbing another one. “Friendly and goofy one minute and then withdrawn the next. Been like that since Jules’s mom died. It seemed to hit him pretty hard.” He crossed his arms and looked to Cameron. “Hit us all hard.”

“You’re getting sappy.”

Nash shot him a bird. “I’m not getting sappy.”

“You are. You drink, and then you start bringing up sad shit. How are you getting home?” Cameron narrowed his eyes at him. “I thought you were our designated driver.”

Nash hesitated before taking a long drink. “Weren’t you the designated driver?”

“Shit.” They both laughed.

Grayson had hung out with Trevor a few times like this, just kicking back and drinking beer, but they’d never had a large group of friends. He didn’t make connections like these guys had with one another. Like they were willing to have with him.

“We’ll get Eliza to drive us home. Serves her right for making us move all her crap. I’m sure as hell not calling Lexi. She’s scraping wallpaper off one of the bedroom walls.” He nodded at Cameron. “When do you leave for Key West?”

Cameron pulled out his phone. “Addie has me on a 7:00 pm flight out of Jacksonville Christmas Eve. I’ll stay down there for a few days and then bring us both back.”

“Have you met her parents before?” Grayson watched the uncertainty flicker in Cameron’s face.

“No. Have you?”

“Yes. It’s an interesting experience. They aren’t like normal parents.”

Cameron shrugged it off like he didn’t care. “Who really has normal parents? Were yours?”

Grayson didn’t answer but deflected back to Addie’s mom and dad. “Don’t be surprised if they make you feel a little intimidated. Or piss you off. Or both.”

“I’m not intimidated easily.”

Nash chuckled. “Oh, you’ve never met in-laws before. Lexi and I aren’t planning on getting married, but her dad scared the crap out of me.”

“Addie and Trevor’s parents are extremely narrow-minded. They think a white-collar, professional job is the only way a man should make money, and everyone else is below them.”

Cameron considered that a moment. “So, I should be a big movie star for them to accept me?”

“No. They hate the fact I’m an actor. They always wonder, loudly, how I could feel fulfilled by making money ‘pretending’ to be someone else. It doesn’t matter how much work I put into it. They especially don’t appreciate what I do since Trevor works for me. He’s continuously on a guilt trip for how much they spent on his law degree for him to dothis.Who cares if he makes over seven figures negotiating my contracts?”

“Huh.” Cameron took a drink of beer, his serious side reappearing. “Nice to know. I could always add two zeros in front of my annual salary and call it seven figures.”

“I don’t think it works like that. So, Grayson, what’s going to happen with you and Juliana?” Nash asked. After a moment of silence from Grayson, Nash continued. “I think you should take her with you. Get her out of this town. Eliza will be back and take a turn dealing with Hugh. I don’t think the old man is all that sick. It took Juliana until she was almost thirty to get the nerve to go to college and get her degree. Even then, she commuted home most weekends. Other than that, she’s never been anywhere.” Nash grew as serious as Cameron. “She has a passport.”

“Asked my mom to keep it for her,” Cameron added. “So, Uncle Hugh wouldn’t find it.”

The two men watched Grayson. He didn’t have an answer for them. He’d contemplated her leaving with him, wondered about her passport, pictured their life together, and could still rattle off a dozen reasons she needed to stay in Statem.

He didn’t have anything to offer her. He didn’t want to take her away from her sister and niece. They were permanent. They needed her. They were her family. He wasn’t.

He took another drink, the beer now tasteless. It would hurt like hell when he left.

19

Juliana blinked at her laptop. Twenty minutes and she’d written three lines. The newest article about the tradition of singing Christmas Carols at the diner on Christmas Eve wouldn’t write itself. She’d interviewed Ms. Iris that morning but getting the words into an article proved harder than she imagined.

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