I'd Give Anything(66)

“No, no. Tonight is fine. Wonderful, actually. I need to check in with Avery. She seemed a little quiet last night and then again this morning before school. She’ll probably be fine with my going, but I should talk to her first.”

“Why don’t you bring her?”

“Really?”

“Sure. I’d love that.”

“So I guess that means you guys aren’t planning to rake me over the coals too hard?”

“What? Like we wouldn’t do that in front of your kid?”

“Probably you wouldn’t.”

“Well, Kirsten is pretty miffed that you didn’t tell her first.”

“It took a lot of self-restraint, to be honest, but I thought you should hear it from me, and Kirsten—”

“Would’ve had a hard time keeping it to herself.”

“Yes. She wouldn’t have spilled, but it would have taken a Herculean effort,” I said.

“And why put her through that?” said Gray.

Zinny and Gray, talking about our friend Kirsten, finishing each other’s sentences. It took my breath away.

“What about CJ?”

“CJ is not quite—there,” said Gray.

“I understand. I can’t say I blame him. He’s always been so loyal to you.”

“Yeah, but mostly I think it’s that he’s gotten used to being mad at you. He never was all that great with change.”

“That’s true. But oh, how I adored that kid. When he got excited about something? He was, I don’t know, the Gulf Stream or el Ni?o. A force of nature.”

“El Ni?o,” said Gray, and I could tell he was smiling. “That fits.”

“At Kirsten’s party, he looked like an eleven-year-old wearing his dad’s suit.”

“He may actually be reverse aging. It’s eerie. You’ll come, then? Tonight? Is seven okay?”

“Yes. Thank you for inviting me. And for not never speaking to me again.”

There was a silence.

Gray cleared his throat and said, “Before we’re with the others, can I say something?”

“Sure.”

“I can’t have you thinking you’re the only one who wishes you’d handled things differently twenty years ago or that you’re the only one who needs forgiving.”

“Oh.”

Looking out my car window, I noticed for the first time knobs of leaf buds studding the branches of the trees bordering our driveway and emerald spikes bunched in the mulch in our side yard.

“I guess I have been thinking that,” I said.

“Well, can you stop? Because the way you were, after the fire, it was a pretty drastic change.”

“I know, I know, and I’m sorry.”

“No, I don’t mean that. We should’ve realized something was really wrong. Kirsten says that she sees now that you were depressed, and even though we might not have understood that completely back then, we should have reached out. Instead, we just got mad.”

“You’d just lost your dad, Gray.”

“I know. But still.”

“There’s no ‘but still.’ I know your day-to-day must have been so rough. You were just getting through. No one could’ve expected you to take care of someone else.”

“Maybe not. But before then—”

“Before when? Before the fire?”

“I don’t know quite how to say this.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

“It’s not, though. Look, I don’t want to say that I regret our being a couple because you were my best friend. Being with you made me smarter and better and happier. In so many ways, I loved you and loved being your boyfriend.”

“Thank you.”

“But I got into the relationship under false pretenses. I knew I was gay. I didn’t want to believe it, and I hoped it would change, but deep down, I knew. You were so good to me. You trusted me. And I hurt you.”

“You were in a really hard situation,” I said.

“What I did was still wrong. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I mean it.” And I found, as I said it, that I did mean it.

“Thank you. See you tonight?”

“Yes.”



Gray’s husband, Evan, answered the door. He greeted Avery, whom he’d charmed within an inch of her life at Kirsten’s engagement party, with a luminous smile and a hug, but even before he’d fully turned to face me, I could feel it: razor-edged, unyielding, protective. A fierce, fearless, gatekeeper kind of love, a variety I recognized because I loved Avery exactly that way. Once upon a time, it’s how I’d loved Gray and Trevor and Kirsten and CJ and everyone.

“Thank you for having us,” I said to Evan. “I can only imagine what you must think of me.”

If I’d hoped to disarm Evan with my directness, it hadn’t worked. Not a muscle in his smooth, high-cheekboned face moved.

“After your vanishing act, he never stopped missing you. Not for two decades. Did you know that?” he said, evenly.

“I missed him, too,” I said. “And I regretted what I did. I would have given anything to go back and undo that vanishing act.”