Anything but Ordinary(28)

Bryce kept scrolling. There was one final message:

for as long as it takes.

Bryce nodded to the empty room, letting a single tear slide down her cheek.



Her heart was pounding as she slid open the basement doors that night, tiptoeing around the pool, ducking through the tall grass. The route to the arboretum came to her as smoothly as a pike. That’s what this was. Nothing but muscle memory.

All the houses on River Drive shared a “backyard” with a half acre of land set aside by the state of Tennessee to house rare species of trees. About a mile beyond Bryce’s barn, off of County Road B, where dust broke through the pavement in cracks, the leaves of threatened trees shivered behind a wrought-iron fence. Plaques were driven in the dirt in front of each type—AFRICAN TEAK, RED SANDALWOOD, WEST INDIAN CEDAR. When she was five, the arboretum had just been sanctioned, and the trees were only inches taller than she was. Now people got married in the dappled light, kids played hide and seek behind the trunks, and older couples rested in the shade.

Tonight it was empty. Bryce had to suck in sideways to squeeze between the iron bars. She wandered between the rows, listening for Greg. It was ten past midnight. Maybe he had decided not to come. Bryce’s thoughts swam in the warm hush.

Here, midnight, five years ago, Bryce had watched Greg smoke a cigarette he took from his dad’s glove compartment. The ice packs strapped to their shoulders after practice had long ago melted. Greg had taken the cigarette out of his pocket on the walk from the barn, saying he had been saving it to celebrate the shittiest practice he had all year. He wanted to punish his body, he said. Bryce refused to get within ten feet of him.

That night, they walked parallel with two rows of trees between them, Bryce kicking dead dandelions, trying not to look at Greg surrounded by smoke.

“Admit it,” he called to her through the dark. “I look sexy. I look like the Marlboro Man.”

Bryce answered by grabbing her throat and gagging.

“It’s really not bad,” he said, and a fiery dot appeared briefly in the air. He exhaled and said, “Better than the stupid clove cigarettes Tommy Orr made me try that time.”

Bryce stopped, squinting at the cloudy figure she could barely make out between the skinny lines of young trees. “Better than fresh air? I doubt it.”

“Oh, Bryce,” he said, stamping out the cigarette on the sole of his Nikes. “You’re so pure.”

Then he had zigzagged his way through the trunks and kissed her gently on the mouth. It was true, what they said; he tasted like an ashtray. But surprisingly, Bryce didn’t mind it. Greg never smoked again.

“Sorry I’m late.”

Bryce glanced up. Her eyes found his form in the dark. Greg’s chiseled torso was visible under his polo shirt. He sidestepped to lean back on a tree, his hands in his pockets.

“That’s okay,” Bryce said. She lifted her chin. “So what are we doing here?”

“We need to talk.”

Bryce stepped closer to him. We did talk, she wanted to say. But she stopped herself. “Okay,” she said. “So…”

“Well,” he started, rubbing his chin. “There’s a problem when you’re supposed to get married and an ex-girlfriend is—”

“Ex-girlfriend?” The term was like a lemon in her mouth. But that’s what she was, wasn’t she?

“Not like that,” he started again slowly. “It’s just hard to explain to a girl who is looking at me like she was in my arms yesterday.”

“Oh, really? I’m the one stuck in the past? How about you just showing up in my barn?”

Greg stepped away from the tree, toward Bryce. “I’m not saying I don’t do the same thing. I look at you the same way, I know that.”

“Yeah.” Bryce nodded. “You do.”

He sighed. “How could I not? You’re even more beautiful to me now, if that’s possible.”

Bryce’s hands shot up to her face. She pressed on her cheeks, as if to push the emotions away. “What would Gabby think if she heard you say that?”

“Gabby,” he said. He looked at the ground. “It’s complicated, Bry.”

He looked up slowly, putting his hands in his pockets. He always seemed so relaxed as he stepped on the diving platform. He stepped toward her the same way now.

“It wasn’t that Gabby and I weren’t thinking of you when…” He paused, looking for words. “When we started to be together.”

Bryce couldn’t help but say tensely, “I doubt that.” If they had thought of her, she wouldn’t be standing across from Greg tonight, the distance separating them. He would have been right there with her when she woke up, holding her hand.

“Bryce, you—your accident is why we’re together.”

“Oh, great,” Bryce said, her voice shaking.

“I don’t mean it like that. I mean, it brought us together. We were the only two people who knew what it was like to really miss you.” He sighed loudly. “If you hadn’t gone out of my life, there’s no way I would be with Gabby.”

Bryce stayed silent. The trees were dark silhouettes against the moonglow of an overcast night. Crickets sang. Cicadas sang louder.

Greg took a breath. “Five years were stolen from you, Bryce. And in a way, they were stolen from me, too.” Then he finished, sounding strained for the first time. “From us.”