Page 79 of Wandering in Darkness
Grayson is quiet as he gently sets the coin in the bottom of the hole. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“You going to listen for real this time?”
“You know I’ve begged again and again for you to tell me since then,” Grayson says. “I just… I had Lt. Allen and Devon in my head, and they were… I’d known them for nearlytwentyyears, Cal, and the stuff about Devon setting it up so you…” He takes a deep breath. “I just… I knew it couldn’t be true. And I fucked up. I fucked up so badly. But I’m going to fix this. I don’tneed anything else. I just need you to know that I’m going to fix everything I can.”
I nod slowly. “No…we’regoing to fix this. I thought it ended with Devon… but now that I know it hasn’t…we’regoing to fix this. I will put a bullet through that man’s head if it’s the last fucking thing I do… even if it destroys me.”
FIFTEEN
CAL - PAST
“You look so good and hairy!” I say as I roll around on the floor with Traveler. He’s so happy that his tail is going as fast as it possibly can go. It’s been four months since Grayson got him, and he’s bloomed into the most loveable and happy dog ever.
I use every excuse I can to see him and pretend like the excuses have nothing to do with getting to see Grayson. He’s set to head across the country and there’s talk of him going overseas after that, which means that I don’t know how long it’ll be before I get to see him again.
“Your car’s not working again?” Grayson asks. “You should probably get a new one.”
“Probably. But then it’s like… I can hop on a bus when I absolutely need to, so I keep thinking that I want to save the money for a house or something.”
“Yeah? You want to settle down in this area?” Grayson asks.
“Maybe. What about you?”
“I don’t know where life is going to take me. The moment I feel like I get to settle down, they ship me off somewhere else.”
I smile at him, but I don’t feel overly happy about it. Instead, I find myself disappointed that even after all this time… all this hope… there’s nothing there but a longing that I can’t sate.
Grayson is watching me closely, and he might be pretending to watch the dog, but I want to believe his eyes are on me.
His phone beeps and he glances down at it. “Looks like Eddie got caught up in something. He’s not coming.”
“Okay… soooo Tate backed out and now Eddie? Are we the losers no one wants to be with?”
“You might be, but everyone wants to be with me,” he teases.
“Does this mean we still have to go to Eddie’s favorite restaurant that no one else likes?”
“You know he just goes there to flirt with that waitress, right? That poor woman has no idea about the tongue that’s coming for her.”
That makes me cackle. “He claims he only rams his tongue down men’s throats.”
“Ah right, right. It’s his special ‘I’m not gay but curious’ technique. How can one man be so damn obstinate? And like… who does that shit sober? And… why does it work? Why does he have so many friends? If I did that, I’d lose all my friends.”
“It’s definitely a skill only he has,” I decide. “What about a hike? We’ll grab something to eat, hike up to the outlook, and eat there.”
“I’m game. Trav, you wanna go for a walk?” he asks, and Traveler ditches me like yesterday’s news.
“I see where I rate.”
Grayson laughs as he reaches down to me, holding a hand out. I wrap my fingers around his hand, really wishing I could hold on to it longer than the brief moment it takes him to pull me to my feet. He helps me up and gives my hand the softestsqueeze. I’m left staring at my hand like it’s turned into a strange object that I’ve never seen before, horribly confused by what that squeeze means.
Trav is busy bouncing at the door while Grayson hurries over to grab the leash, so I follow along after them as my mind runs wild.
“You sure you’re good for tomorrow?”
“I am,” I confirm. “I’m just… hoping things don’t go bad like that one time.”
“I wish I could be there. Sounds like I’m not even going to be needed at this rate,” he says. “But… just please be careful.”
