Eleanor & Grey(67)

He didn’t react to my voice, not even a flinch, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Greyson, are you okay?” I walked closer to him, my nerves building up with each step. He turned around slowly, and when I saw his eyes washed over with emotion, my chest tightened.

He’d been crying. He had to have been.

No one’s eyes could’ve been that red and puffy if there wasn’t some kind of emotion spilling from them.

In his hands were Lorelai’s drawings.

“I’m fine,” he replied, turning back to the fireplace.

“I… It just looks like—” I started, but he cut me off.

“I thought I made it clear that your services were no longer needed here.”

“Yes, you did. I got that message loud and clear.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“Because you need me.”

“I don’t. Please leave,” he whispered the last two words, but his voice shook as they left his mouth. The pain sliced through his irritation with me.

“I can’t.”

I had to stay because I owed him. I owed him for staying by my side during my low days all those years ago. I owed him because when I had been floating away, he’d pulled me back to the shore.

“I can’t leave you like this, Greyson, not today of all days.”

He sighed. “Claire told you.”

“Yes. I’m so, so sorry. I cannot imagine what you’re going through, but I know you shouldn’t have to go through it alone.”

He lowered his head and his shoulders slumped, but he still wouldn’t turn to look my way.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go. I’ll go and I won’t come back. By morning, I’ll be out of your hair, and you’ll never have to hear from me again, but if there’s any part of you that wants me to stay…if there’s any part of you that doesn’t want to be alone tonight, just tell me. Tell me, and I’ll stay. We don’t even have to talk. You can keep your back to me all night long, but I won’t leave you. You don’t have to be alone tonight.”

“It’s Friday night… Don’t you have some place to be?” he asked.

“Yes.” I nodded. “And I’m right there.”

He remained still for a while longer and I was certain that was my cue to go, but as I turned to leave, he took a step toward his liquor tray. He placed the drawings down, then reached below, grabbed two glasses, and set them down.

He lifted the bottle of whiskey and turned my way.

His bottom lip twitched a little, and he locked those gray eyes with mine.

Those sad, sad eyes.

He parted his lips and said, “Do you drink whiskey?”

I hadn’t expected him to ask me to stay, but when he’d reached for that bottle, a breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding had slipped through my lips.

It turned out even the loneliest souls never truly wanted to be alone.

“Sure.”

He nodded once and poured the brown liquor into the glasses.

He then picked them up and handed one my way. We moved over to the couch and sat down, him on the right, me on the left, and we didn’t speak a word. He sat beside me, our glasses in our hands and exchanging no words. It was so still, silence expanding to and from each wall of the empty house. All that was heard were our small sips, and our breaths.

When he inhaled, I released a breath. When he exhaled, I took one in.

We stayed like that for a while, both getting intoxicated and not talking about it. He poured us more drinks until the whiskey was all gone. It wasn’t until a bit of time passed, and drunkenness found him that Greyson cleared his throat.

My eyes quickly moved to him and I noticed how his upright posture had shifted. He wasn’t as tense. His body relaxed somewhat, settling in as his lips parted.

“I owe you an apology,” he confessed, his voice so low. “For the way I was treated you today.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. I was an asshole, and I’m sorry.” He glanced my way before looking back down to his now empty glass. “I don’t know how to exist around you sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“You stand for a period of time in my life when things were easier, when things were better, and that’s hard. It’s hard to look back on a time so good when things are so broken now.”

“Can I ask why you hired me, then?”

He tilted his head my way and looked at me, and I mean truly stared. Before that point, it had almost been like he was always looking past me, looking through me. This time, though, I felt our connection. I felt him lock in. “Because I think the small part of me that isn’t destroyed needed something good to hold on to.”

“I’m a good thing?”

“You’ve always been a good thing, Eleanor, since the first day I met you.”

My heart skipped a few beats, but I tried my best to ignore it. “I’m sorry you’re hurting so much,” I told him.

“How long is it going to hurt?” he asked, his voice so low.

I gave him the same answer he’d given me all those years ago. “As long as it has to.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, turning away from me, seemingly embarrassed. “I’m drunk.”