Page 72 of The Boyfriend Boycott
That just leaves the next goodbye. The one that might just rip my heart out more than leaving Ally. City hopping makes you somewhat hardened to goodbyes, and never forming connections deep enough to make them meaningful always helps the process. But I feel different now. There’s this unfamiliar dread hanging over my head.
Leaving usually causes a flurry of excitement, the adrenaline rush of going into the unknown. Seeing somewhere new, meeting new people. The settled feeling of having secured a new contract with some other travel company or tourism board. Income for the next few weeks or months, depending.
Those things don’t excite me anymore. Not the way they once would have.
This is why. This is why I set these rules for myself. This is my job, my livelihood, the paycheck that keeps a roof over my head. I should have stayed the course, stayed in my lane, and this wouldn’t be so hard. Yet, here I am, and there’s some part of me that once felt small and has now grown bigger and stronger and wants to convince me that I can stay in Heartwood. Stay with this man who does everything right. This man who has pulled me into the fold of his life like I’ve always been here.
But that’s what my mom has always done. She’s always sacrificed for a man, and look at her now. She’s down and out, three divorces later, and staying withRoybecause she doesn’t want to lose her house. Again.
I’m well aware of what they say about stupidity. It’s doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result. Except this time, it’s my mom, and I have the privilege, the opportunity, to look at her experiences and choose something different for myself. A life for myself that isn’t held up by someone else, by a man who is inevitably going to leave me.
I can hold onto Grady, I can hold onto the feelings that he gives me, but it’s safer to keep him at arm’s length. For now.
“Are you good?” Grady gently turns me to face him as the helicopter is finally out of sight.
I nod, eyes cast down, and he brings his hands up to cup my face, making me look at him, into his green-and-brown eyes that are practically aglow in the warm evening sun.
“You’re not though. You weren’t earlier, and you aren’t now either.” Grady smiles softly before planting a gentle kiss on my forehead. I close my eyes and lean into the sensation, soaking in the solid warmth of him while I can. “It’s okay to not be okay, Spence. You don’t have to hold it together around me. This is tough. But Ally and Hazel will be okay, and we’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out together.”Grady pushes me back to look at me again.“I think we deserve a celebratory glass of wine. I know I need one,” he says.
“That sounds delightful,” I agree, and Grady pulls me under his arm again, before walking us both back through the clinic. I pick my purse up off the chair I left it on earlier and check my phone. There’s a text from Sasha confirming that she got my signed contract, and a new voicemail. I listen to it as Grady and I walk out the front door of the clinic and over to his bike.
‘Spencer, honey. It’s Mom. Listen. I’m so sorry.’
Her voice sounds pained, like her apology might actually be genuine. But I keep listening to see where the catch is going to be.
‘I shouldn’t have left like that. This is all my fault, it always has been my fault. You were right that I should have left Roy. If there’s one upside to me going home early, it’s that I found him in bed with our neighbour, and at least now I know what I’m dealing with. I kicked him out. He knew he fucked up, so he said I could have the house. I’m going to really do it this time, be by myself. Maybe you’re right. I need it. Okay, well. You don’t haveto call me back unless you want to, I just needed you to know how sorry I am.’
Okay, so, apparently there wasn’t a catch. She seems like she’s finally reflecting on her life choices. I feel sad for her, if anything, and I know we’ll be okay in the end. Marla may be flawed, and somewhat immature for a middle-aged mother, but she is my mother. I love her dearly.
I know I’m right where her relationships are concerned. She needs to take time to be single for a long while, rediscover herself. Build a life that isn’t dependent on anyone else but her. That used to be what I thought I needed too. Up until about two hours ago. Now I wonder if maybe, just maybe, that advice isn’t one size fits all. My mother’s relationship issues are not my own. You can’t necessarily inherit poor taste in men. But I made my choice. I sent the contract to Sasha, and now there’s no turning back.
“Let me cook for you,”Grady says, pouring me a glass of red wine and handing it to me with a quick kiss on my temple, his beard softly scratching my skin.
“Why don’t we cook together? I like when you teach me how.”
“No, I’m going to cook for you,” Grady says, turning his back to me as he starts pulling out pots and pans from the cabinet next to the range. “If this is your last night here for … a while, then I want to do something special for you. Besides, it’s a special night. It’s Hazel’s birthday.” Something in his voice is reserved, and he hesitated, as if not wanting to say how long I would be gone for. Like speaking it into the universe would make it true.
“That’s fine by me,” I say after swallowing a sip of wine. “I’ve gotten used to watching you in the kitchen, and I have to say I enjoy it.”
“I could do like a butler-in-the-buff situation for you if you like.” Grady throws me a coy smile over his shoulder.
“You spoil me.” I bat my eyelashes at him as he pulls out some ingredients from the fridge and places them on the cutting board on the island. He put his weight onto the counter and leans over to me.
“That’s just the Chez Landry treatment,” he says. Then the playfulness winks out of his eyes, and he adds, “You could have this every day, if you decided to stay here.”
“Grady,” I warn, looking at him from under raised eyebrows, “this is already going to be difficult for both of us.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“No, it doesn’t have to be,” I echo. “We can just behave as if this is any other normal night together. I’ll be back before you know it, and you won’t even notice that I’m gone with how much we’ll talk on the phone, and FaceTime.”
Grady nods, accepting the unspoken knowledge that it’s not going to play out exactly like that. Long distance is hard. It doesn’t matter how you slice it. No matter how much you try to make the other person feel included in your day-to-day life, they won’t be because they aren’t there.
I take a deep slug of my wine to ease the sting in my chest.
“Was it the bedroom?” Grady has his back turned to me now, refusing to look back as he asks it, a question that seemingly comes out of the blue, but that has likely been on his mind all afternoon. I realize then that, with all the chaos of going to the clinic and the worry about Ally and Hazel, I forgot to thank him for the bedroom. “Is that why you sent the contract to Sasha? Why you decided to go? Because if it was too much …”
I stand up from the barstool, round the kitchen island and meet him at the stove, using a hand to gently turn him so he’s facing me.
