Chapter 31  

Grey

When my night started, I didn’t expect this. Skyler, curled up beside me on the couch.

I’m definitely missing something. Because didn’t she just get back from San Francisco with Brooks? Maybe what I’m missing is that she ruled me out. Brooks got the boyfriend role. I got the roommate/​friend role. I glance down at her, and my throat goes raw. But I can’t lose this moment with her just because it’s not everything I want it to be.

“Ladies first,” I say.

Her long eyelashes flutter. She looks like she’s going to fall asleep. “I’ll be brief, otherwise I might start to cry again.”

“You can cry.”

She peers up and smiles. For a second, I think she’s going to say something. Then I make the mistake of looking at her mouth, and it’s pretty obvious to both of us that I want to kiss her. She looks away quickly, taking a sip of her beer, and I want to apologize and swear, because what did I do wrong? She’s curled up so close to me. Of course I’m going to want to kiss her. And more. Doesn’t mean I will.

“Thanks,” she says, “but I’d rather not get going again. Okay, here it is. I saw my dad tonight. He’s in a band. I think I told you that before. They’re here in Los Angeles, and I had no idea. I found out by chance, and that’s kind of how it is with him. It’s like he doesn’t think about us. His family. We’re an afterthought. I am.”

Jesus. What an asshole. I’d thought so already, based on what she’s told me. But I didn’t realize it was this bad. “Is his band any good?”

Skyler gasps. “What?” She play-punches me. “That’s what you want to know?”

“It’s my trade.”

“Yes. They’re pretty good.”

She leans against my arm for a second, but I drop it on the back of the couch, removing that option. Replacing it with a better one. She scoots closer and snuggles against me. Win.

“Don’t get fresh with me, okay?”

I laugh. “I’m not getting fresh with you. Anyway, you started it. Hey, speaking of which. How was the big date with Brooks? Awesome.”

“You didn’t let me answer.”

“I actually don’t want an answer. I just figured I should ask. Back to your dad. Want me to rough him up?”

“My dad?”

“Just keep it in your back pocket. I’m good with that kind of stuff.”

“Liar. You’re just a big softy.”

“Based on the evidence I presented a few nights ago in your room, I think we both know that’s not true.”

She laughs. “Pig.”

“Definitely.” It hits me that cheering her up is cheering me up, but I don’t want to make light of what she’s going through. “Seriously, Sky. I’m sorry about your dad. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

“You’re doing a lot by listening. By being here.” Skyler reaches for her beer, then sets it back down, and stifles a yawn. “What about you? What happened tonight?”

“Tomorrow,” I say. “You need to go to bed.”

She’s leaving with the traveling production crew in a few days for their location shoot in the Virgin Islands. The next few weeks are going to be even more tiring for her. She won’t be coming home at the end of the day. And the hours are even longer on location. I’m supposed to go, too, but I’m not sure I will.

“Yeah, I do. Come with me.” She peers up, and her brown eyes are sincere, warm. “I want to keep talking. I want to know what happened.”

This idea sounds potentially risky, but I’m sure as hell not going to say no, so we go through a routine that feels new but familiar, of brushing our teeth, getting into pajamas for her, and sweatpants and a t-shirt for me. Separately, unfortunately. Skyler dead-bolts the front door. I hit the lights in the kitchen. Then we deviate from the norm and climb into her bed together.

“So you know. I’m going to burn up in about five minutes. I usually only sleep in shorts.”

“I know. Why are you in sweatpants?”

“Safety measure. I triple-knotted the drawstring. Actually I tried to do a Double Carrick Bend knot, but it’s been a long time since Boy Scouts.”

I can’t see her smiling, but I know she is. “I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I do.”

We fall quiet for a moment, and I’m trying not to be turned on, but she smells amazing and she’s snuggled up right next to me, and we’re on a bed. It’s a hell of a lot to ask, to ignore all of that.

Then Skyler says, “Is what happened tonight related to your mom?” And that completely kills the mood.

“Yeah . . . ​I learned some things today I didn’t like. You know the showcase that’s coming up? I guess she was the one who set that up. My parents are kind of . . . ​connected.”

“Okay,” Skyler says, carefully. “And you didn’t want her help?”

“No.” I want to succeed on my own merit. I feel like the success won’t be worth it if it’s just another thing lined up for me because I’m a Blackwood. I mean, how many freakin’ things are going to come to me, just because my parents made some arrangements? How fucking spoiled is that? How could I ever feel like I achieved anything if I didn’t earn it outright? I want to shape my own life. “I don’t want any charity from her.”

I’m getting angry, and Skyler must sense it. She sits up. Her expression is all concern, all worry. “Grey, it’s your family. It’s not charity. I wish my family helped me more.”

“She’s not my family. Not really. And she’s just trying to make up for always trying to make me be like her real son.” Aw, shit. My voice is starting to crack, and the world’s going a little blurry. I reach over and shut the bedside lamp off.

Skyler doesn’t move. She stays still, sitting beside me. Staring down at me like she can see in the dark.

I can’t take it. I sit up and rub my face. I hear myself swearing. I want to leave, sprint out of this room. But I can’t get past Skyler. I don’t want to get past her.

“Grey,” she asks, softly. “What’s this really about?”

“Everything.”

“Okay.” Her cool hand takes mine. “Tell me everything.”

I don’t even think about it. I just start in. But there’s so much to say, and I’ve never said any of it before, so I make a mess of it. I tell her about how Adam and I have the same dad. How Dad came and got me from my birth mom when I was five and took me home to a big house, a huge house, close to the ocean. I had a Spider-Man lunchbox. It was my proudest possession. Really. The only thing I was proud of. But then I got something a million times better. A brother. I’d never had one before. I loved him instantly. Adam looked out for me. He was . . . ​he was the best. Older. Just . . . ​like, my hero.

“I got a dad that day, too. He was busy a lot. But when he was around, he didn’t push. He let me come to him. And he was just so damn sure of himself. So cocky and funny. You gotta meet my dad someday, Sky. There’s no one like him.

“Madeleine, though. I don’t know what the hell happened. She . . . ​she came on stronger. She wanted to be my mother. Except, I had a mother. I had a mother who smoked and drank and partied. Who forgot to feed me half the time. I’m not going to get into that right now. She didn’t beat me. A few of her boyfriends did. I’m not going to get into that, either. What I’ll say is this: I had a mother. And didn’t really want another one—not like the one I had.

“That’s all I saw when I looked at Madeleine. For a long time, that’s all I saw. So we didn’t get off to a good start. But then I started to see that she was different than my birth mom. Madeleine had expectations of me. She demanded manners, respect. She had standards for everything, how to dress and keep my room. What kinds of grades I should get. She wanted top effort in all things. For a kid who’d lived in and out of cars, in and out of crowded apartments, for a kid who’d been yelled at and thrashed a few times, for a kid who’d seen his mom drunk too many times, whose mom dated a new man every other month—for that kid, Madeleine, with all her expectations, with her perfect house with its polished wood floors and high ceilings; Madeleine, with her planned-out days and gourmet meals, and her perfect son who did everything right; Madeleine, with her charity functions for kids like me, who were just like me, well . . . ​she was terrifying.”

“Terrifying how?” Skyler asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Grey . . . ​you do know. How?”

“Maybe I thought she wouldn’t care unless I measured up. Maybe . . . ​Maybe I thought she looked at me like I was just some mistake of my dad’s that she’d inherited. A piece of trash that had been dragged into her life. White trash.”

I can’t even believe what I’m saying. I haven’t even admitted this stuff to myself. Is this what I really think? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know. But it’s definitely what I thought. For a long, long time. I see that now.

“Has she ever said anything to make you believe that’s true?” Sky asks.

“She’s, um . . . ​told me I’m difficult. She’s said that a couple of times over the years. I was. And the night we fought, the night I left home, she told me I make it hard for her to love me. It’s the truth. I’ve been such a fucking nightmare. I’ve given her so much grief. I haven’t made it easy. And that night everything blew up, it was the culmination of—Jesus, where is my filter?”

“You don’t need a filter. We’re trading family misery stories.”

“Yeah, but you did a lot less talking than I’m doing.”

“I unloaded on Beth and Mia earlier tonight. Besides, who cares? Stop keeping score, Grey. Talk to me.”

“I feel like we left the living room so we could lie down, but we’re sitting again.”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“I think I’m done, Skyler.”

She reaches out, and next thing I know, her arms are wrapped around my neck. “Pretend it’s a secret,” she whispers, “and tell me.”

I take a second to absorb how she feels. So soft and good. “No, Skyler. It’s fucking embarrassing. I’m not proud of it, and you’re the last person I want to—”

“Shh,” she says into my ear. The hair on my forearms lifts. “It’s okay. I won’t think less of you. I know who you are.”

The words hit me like a brick to the chest. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve only known me a few weeks.”

“Doesn’t matter. I know you, Grey. Here. I’ll start for you. The night I left home . . . ​Now, you.”

“You’re going to pay for this, Sky. But, okay.” I make myself jump in, quickly. If I build up enough momentum in the beginning, maybe I’ll be able to get through it. “The night I left home was about nine months ago. Madeleine and I were fighting, as usual. I’d just barely graduated high school. I mean . . . ​don’t think I’m an idiot. I’m not. I just hated school and didn’t try. I knew I didn’t want to go to college, so what did it matter? But the paths available to me, as a Blackwood, were either go to an Ivy League, start a number of successful nightclubs and restaurants, or launch an online dating business and movie studio. Same as most families, right? Not knowing what you want to do—that wasn’t okay. And that’s where I was. I didn’t know I wanted to sing yet and I guess I was lost-ish. Okay, I was lost. So I started partying a lot, and getting in trouble. Madeleine was going crazy with me. The night I left, the fight was over some career counselor she had paid for me to see. I’d gone surfing instead. So she cornered me in the kitchen and made me feel like a loser piece of shit who had no ambition. Again.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. Being a disappointment.” Shit. My momentum is washing out as I remember that night. This was a bad idea. I have to force myself to keep going. “So that night, we were fighting in the kitchen. And all these things started coming out of my mouth, like how I wanted to find my real mom, who wouldn’t hassle me all the time like she did. I told Madeleine it was torture living under her roof, that I was sick of being a project. I asked for my birth mother’s address, and she gave it to me. That was new. That was something I’d asked for before during fights, but she’d never actually given me the address. And it surprised me. I felt like she was done with me. I didn’t stop to think. I took off. I took my dad’s Cobra, the one he and wonderboy Adam had built from a kit, because it was blocking my truck in our driveway.

“An hour and a half later, I pulled into a dumpy apartment complex in New Haven and went up to the second floor and knocked on the door. Lois answered.”

I stop, reliving the scene. Not wanting to talk about it.

“Keep going, Grey,” Sky tells me.

“She was frail and sick-looking, my real mom. I didn’t realize it until then, but for the past decade, I’d made up this story about her in my mind. In the story, she had cleaned herself up. She’d gotten sober and stopped dating drug dealers. This was all because she wanted to be a perfect mom for me, by the way. This makeover. That’s part of the story I told myself. She hadn’t wanted to see me yet, because she wanted everything to be perfect when she did. I imagined that she’d have a job, a nice house, and maybe even kids. Smart, funny kids who I could call my siblings. I’d actually made her into a version of Madeleine. But that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t who I saw that day.

“She looked like a woman in a cancer commercial . . . ​sunken and ashy. Bad. Just . . . ​not healthy. I wanted to die when I saw her. When I thought that was the woman who’d given birth to me, I almost left. I probably should’ve. But I stayed. And I told her I wanted to move in with her. I said this while I looked at a coffee table littered with beer bottles and cigarettes. At the stack of bills sitting under an empty bottle of Absolut on the wooden bureau next to the television, which was playing some kind of daytime game show. Which just about fucking killed me. I don’t know why. Maybe because it seemed like such a denial of real life, that you can win money by spinning a wheel. It went against what I believed. It went against the Blackwood way.

“But then it got worse. It got worse because she told me my dad only sent enough money to cover the one-bedroom she lived in, plus just enough for her to eat. ‘But maybe he’ll kick in for more, if you live here,’ she said, and went into this huge tangent about the apartment upstairs, which was a two-bedroom. And how much it cost, and how it was coming vacant in the next month and how she’d had her eye on it for a while because it had a balcony, and how perfect it was that I’d shown up, because now if my dad sent enough money, for both of us to live, she’d get to move into the apartment of her dreams.”

“Oh, God,” Skyler says. “What did you do?”

“I told her I had to think about it some more. Then I left. I got in the Cobra and drove home, but I couldn’t actually go home. It was around midnight, I think, when I pulled off the road onto a private beach a few miles from home and did some donuts in the sand. Then I realized I liked it even better when I did donuts in the shallow surf, so I did that for a while. I whipped that car in circles, trying to flip it. Trying to destroy it. I worked my way deeper and deeper until finally the sand was too soft, the waves too high, and I was stuck. I could feel the car rocking with the waves, but I just sat there. And all I could think about was that I wished I’d taken Madeleine’s car. I wished it was her car getting swallowed up by the Atlantic.”

I guess that was the smash. I was just crazy. Crazy with how much I hurt. The avoid came later.

“Eventually, I left the Cobra, walked home, got in my truck, and drove across the country to Adam’s house in Malibu. So, that’s the story of how I left home. Now you’re caught up on the saga of Grey Blackwood’s riveting family issues.”

I can feel the intensity of Skyler’s stare. I thought I’d want to disappear after I told her all of this. I only sort of do.

“Grey, I’m so sorry you went through that. But I have to say this . . . ​I think you’re worthy of being loved. I don’t think it’s hard to love you.” She laughs. “I mean, it’s not like I do. I’m just projecting . . . ​in order to shed light on the situation.”

I laugh. “You love me? Wow, Sky. I’m a little surprised, but—”

“I was trying to explain that I think Madeleine loves you and that, difficult or easy, the result is what matters.”

“I feel like I should say it back, but it might not seem genuine—”

She pushes me. I was expecting it, so I grab her wrists and pull and she lands on top of me. She laughs and digs a hand into my side. That leads to play wrestling in which I act like I’m trying to match her while being careful not to accidentally hurt her. In about ten seconds, I’m not thinking about wrestling anymore. I pull her next to me and picture dead puppies and influenza and banana slugs, trying to undo the effects of our bodies rubbing up against each other. Doesn’t work.

Skyler yawns and nestles in beside me. Her small hand rests on my chest, and I wonder if she feels how fast my heartbeat’s going. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think life’s tough,” she says. “Everyone needs help along the way. But when you let someone lift you up, it can really be a beautiful thing.”

“Are you trying to tell me I should accept Madeleine’s help and do the showcase?”

Skyler laughs. “I do think you should do both of those, but no.” She peers up at me and smiles. “I was trying to say thank you.”