Anything but Ordinary(14)

As she finished telling them about Sydney, her parents, and the weird new house, Bryce’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m not sad,” Bryce said, and it was true. “It’s just so nice you’re finally here.”

Gabby chirped, “We could say the same for you!”

Greg just looked at Bryce through his long lashes.

Bryce wiped her eyes on a paper napkin. It was a little embarrassing. She shifted. “So what’s up with you guys?”

Gabby glanced at Greg quickly, as if choosing who should go first. Seeming to make up her mind, Gabby dove in. “I’m going to be a lawyer,” she said firmly.

Gabby flowed and fluttered through what she had done, how much fun college had been, and then wove slowly into the sad parts: quitting diving to focus on academics, missing home and Nashville. She was headed to GW Law in the fall.

“And Greg,” she began. Greg had been interjecting yeses and nos, but said nothing of what he had done. He just sat leaning back, smiling or shrugging at Bryce when Gabby said ridiculous things. Like always. “Greg’s also going to be in D.C. Finding a job.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know,” Greg said, fumbling. He seemed surprised, as if he had been thinking about something else. “I like D.C. a lot. Pretty buildings.”

Bryce raised her eyebrows, trying to picture Greg in the capital, wearing a suit maybe, doing a desk job. He’d always had ideas for eclectic businesses, like selling boat radar detectors or organic horse feed, a new one every week. But maybe that was just the kind of thing you talked about in high school. “People go through phases,” her father had warned her after she’d hung up the phone last night. Bryce wouldn’t know. She hadn’t had the chance to grow out of anything.

“What about coaching, though?” she asked Greg intently. “Did you give up diving, too?”

“No, no.” Greg smiled back, his full lips breaking cheeks into dimples. “I rode it out. But not all of us have the whistleblowing skills of Mike Graham.”

Gabby smiled at him, wrinkling her nose, then turned to Bryce. “So, what’s next for you?”

“I don’t know. Want to watch a movie?” Bryce smiled hopefully. She had been looking forward to doing that, just the three of them. Just hanging out, like old times. Maybe they could come over after this. They could watch a Western, maybe some John Wayne, like The Searchers. Gabby would yield now, Bryce knew she would. Or maybe she would get her way as always and make them watch Pride and Prejudice, coma or no coma, arguing that Bryce hadn’t seen it in five years.

Gabby cracked up. “No, I mean, like, your life.”

Bryce opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. Her life had been all planned out—the Olympics, diving for Vanderbilt, another Olympics. After that, maybe she’d coach, or if she was lucky, keep training, keep diving, keep competing. Now she didn’t know. Her family, diving, and Greg were the only things she’d ever loved. The only things she’d ever really known at all.

“Not much of anything yet,” she said.

“We’ll find something,” Gabby said knowingly. “You’ve missed a lot, but there’s still time to figure it out.”

Bryce felt a strange twinge in her gut that she wasn’t used to feeling around them. Greg and Gabby knew who they were and what they wanted. Bryce should be happy for them, she knew that. But she didn’t feel happy. She felt like she needed to defend herself for being asleep for five years.

As Greg took the last chip, the hostess came by. “Are you sure y’all don’t want anything to drink?”

“Oh, I can’t—” Bryce began, then she stopped. This wouldn’t be like that time in Bryan Godard’s basement when she and Gabby were dared to drink vodka straight out of the bottle. They were adults now, right? “You know what? I’ll take one.”

“So, three margaritas?” Gabby said, raising her eyebrows at Bryce

“Yep.” Bryce nodded. She looked at the hostess. “You need ID?”

“Ha. Yeah, right,” the hostess replied shortly, and walked away.

“Oooh, Bry’s famous,” Gabby teased.

Bryce blushed and looked at Greg, wearing the same old Hanes T-shirt out of a five-pack, twisting two straws together with his long, bitten-down fingertips. He was different, but he was still the same old Greg, mostly. He used to ride home with Bryce after practice on weekends and raid the refrigerator. He talked technique with her dad, fixing an odd shelf or curtain rod for her mother while Sydney followed him around, asking unnecessary questions. She used to joke that he was better at being a Graham than she was.

“So,” Bryce said. She looked back and forth between the two of them, as if they were all lounging on the bleachers after a meet.

“So,” Gabby replied. But then her brow started to wrinkle, and her eyes squinted, holding back tears. “Oh, Bryce. We never thought we’d see you again.”

Another lump formed in Bryce’s throat. “It must have been hard.”

“It was.” Gabby nodded and let her eyes drift toward Greg. She spun her ring around her finger nervously. “The only thing that made it okay was that we had each other.”

Greg returned Gabby’s gaze, long enough for Bryce to feel like she had disappeared, just for a moment. She frowned. We had each other. It sounded odd, like something one of the characters from Gabby’s romance novels would say.