Page 16 of Falling for Grace

I nod and look at Danny.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, kissing both his cheeks.

“Don’t you want to say goodbye to him?” he whispers in my ear. Sue and Ted are moving around us heading into the kitchen to start the clean-up.

“I’m shit with goodbyes. It’s better this way.”

He looks at me and nods. “You know best,” he says, but he’s lying and he disagrees. He also knows not to argue with me on this. “Get some paracetamol and water down you, girl, something tells me you may be hurting tomorrow.”

There is so much truth in that statement I don’t want to think about it just yet. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Not too early.” Danny pulls a face as if I’m mad. He doesn’t get up early unless it’s work, and even then it will be at the latest possible moment. I make my escape around the side gate, walking down the darkness of the alley, taking the short walk over the road back to my house.

I’m not ready for bed yet. My head’s a jumbled mess, as it always is after seeing Brandon. So I decide to do one of my favourite pastimes. Lie in my back garden on a sun lounger and star gaze. And what a perfect night for that, too.

The streetlamps are all turned off as it is after 1 a.m., the council’s way to save extra pennies. All the neighbours’ lights are out. The stars and full moon are the only things illuminating the street, and I can see the formations perfectly.

I position myself on the lounger and lie back, letting out a sigh.

I look up at the night sky, the stars twinkling, a plane’s red lights blinking.

I am free.

It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

I’m sad, of course I’m sad, but in a strange way I’m relieved. I can finally close that chapter.

It’s time to do it. It’s time to move on.

Brandon Holder has a new life, one that has no place for me in it anymore, and it’s time that both of us come to terms with it.

“You didn’t even have the balls to say goodbye.”

I jump at his voice. The darkness around me has allowed him to sneak up on me.

“Fucking hell, Brandon, you scared the shit out of me,” I say, launching out of the lounger, gripping at my beating chest. What is it about tonight and the Holder boys making me jump?

“You were what, expecting me to be okay with the fact that you just disappeared without so much as a ‘See ya, Brandon’?”

I sink back onto the lounger.

“You’re a coward, Gracie,” he says angrily.

“Fuck you.” I try to put some anger behind it, but my voice is small. I know he’s right.

“You wanted this, Grace. Not me. But you could at least have had the guts to say goodbye to me. I won’t see you for another year.”

“I just thought it would be better this way, Brandon.”

“Who for? You? Or Me?”

He is pissed. I can hear it in his voice. He stalks over and sits on the edge of the sun lounger, causing me to sit up and move or be squashed.

“I love you, Grace”

“Loved,” I correct. “What we do each year is lust. Well, for you, anyway.”

“Why do you say that? Can you honestly sit there and look at me, remember our past and say that I don’t love you anymore? That you don’t think I sit and count down the days until I see you again?”

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