Anything but Ordinary(40)

“Be right back,” Bryce called, and bounced her way through the crowd.

She followed Greg’s back at a distance until they were outside the club, where he ducked into an alleyway. Bryce rounded the corner of the building.

It had rained while they were inside, and now the pavement sparkled with damp under the streetlights, and the air smelled clean. She approached his silhouette.

“Hey,” she said.

He turned around sharply.

“What’s up?”

Greg let out a bitter laugh, rubbing his forehead. “You were making me jealous in there. You can’t be dancing with my friends.”

“Yes, I can,” Bryce said quietly.

“Well, at least wait until I can’t see,” he said with a sad smile.

“I should say the same to you,” she said, her eyes drifting to a flower Gabby had put in his hair. “Why’d you even come tonight?”

To see you, she wanted him to say.

“I don’t know.” He ripped out the flower and tossed it aside.

“Pretty pointless,” Bryce said. She looked sadly at the discarded flower. Good things were gone. Forever was here, separating them.

A true look of pain marred Greg’s face. He beat his fist on a nearby Dumpster, filling the alley with a deafening thump.

He crossed to Bryce and held her tightly. She buried her face in the space between his neck and solid shoulder, smelling his alcoholic sweat, sweet even now. She could feel him breathing, as if he were a part of her.

Where Bryce lay her head, his voice hummed through his skin. “I don’t want to go through with the wedding.” Bryce looked up and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. Greg held her by the shoulders. He stared at a spot on the damp cement, then back at her. “I want to be with you.”

Her body sparked at his touch, hope welling in her. She saw them holding hands, riding in the front seat of his truck, going somewhere with nothing in particular to do, but always finding plenty to do. They would do everything together.

His face was growing joyous in front of her, so handsome in the alley light. “It’s you, Bry. It’s always been you.”

But the weight of the truth was still there, underneath it all, and Bryce recalled the bright images projected on the dark restaurant wall earlier that night—Gabby and Greg carefree with their faces pressed together at the beach, their sweetly awkward prom photo, Greg on his knees in front of Gabby with a look on his face that couldn’t have been more sure. Each photograph, each moment in time, more proof that it hadn’t always been Bryce.

She recalled the one and only time she went to Catholic church with Gabby’s family, when she was a little girl. She understood the words, but she didn’t know what they were saying. She had stared up at the stained glass, watching colored light angle through the etched people in robes. As Gabby and her family stood up and filtered out of the pews toward the front of the church, Bryce blindly followed Gabby’s back. She saw an enormous figure in white, the parish priest towering over everyone, giving out crackers and little cups of red juice to each person in turn. When her turn came, she held out her hands.

But nothing came. The priest looked around, muttering something. People in line behind her looked over shoulders, impatient.

Gabby appeared, braided head lowered with embarrassment, ushering Bryce back to her seat by her shoulders while every face in the pews turned in disapproval.

“That was Jesus’s communion,” Gabby had explained in a solemn whisper. “You aren’t ready for that.”

So that was it. Once again she was the awkward little girl, pushing into the line for crackers and juice, blindly holding her hands out for a piece of something that was completely beyond her.

But this time there was no guiding hand to bring her back to her place. Somehow she would have to usher herself out, back down the aisle, back to where she belonged.

Bryce unhooked his arms from around her. “You loved Gabby for almost five years, Greg,” she said, forcing the words out. “I think you still love her now.”

Greg put a hand up to his sweaty hair. “That was a mistake. This is all a mistake.…”

Bryce shook her head, backing away. She didn’t know how much longer she could stay out here, alone with him, saying the things that neither of them wanted to hear.

He held out his hands, searching her face. “I’m asking you, Bryce, to be with me. Are you saying no?”

Bryce closed her eyes tight against the sight of him, her first love, trying to keep back the tears. They were coming out anyway, falling from her lashes. She couldn’t bring herself to say that word, no. Because saying no meant saying yes to a whole lot of nothing.

The loneliness she’d felt the day she found out Greg and Gabby were engaged began to line her insides like steel. She wasn’t just losing Greg, she was losing Bryce and Greg. She was losing the part of herself that had belonged to him, and she had no idea what kind of person was left. She had already lost Bryce the diver. Now she was failing at Bryce the sister and daughter, Bryce the friend. She had woken up, and the time that had passed was like a wall between her now and her then, keeping her out, holding her back.

Who was Bryce when they had all left her behind? She was scared to find out. But she knew that she needed to.

“I’m saying you should marry Gabby,” she said. “And leave me out of it.”