Switch (Landry Family 3)

“My freshman year of college, I met this guy. We had similar interests and started hanging out. We got an apartment together our sophomore year. It was the first time in my life I’d really kind of loosened up some, you know? It was fun,” he shrugs. “Second half of my junior year, I had a philosophy class. The first day, this woman walks in. She was a grad student filling in as a teaching assistant.”

“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” I say softly. The somberness on his face hurts my heart. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“No.” He clears his throat and looks at me, the greens of his eyes clear. “Her name was Vanessa. I fell in love with her that first day.”

His admission is a shock to my heart, my hand slipping off his knee. He continues on, despite registering my reaction.

“I made a few passes and within three weeks, we were together. We’d meet after class at her apartment across town or we’d spend the weekend at mine. We’d talk philosophy and politics, staying up all night debating free will and morality. It was the first time in my life I met someone that I thought really understood me. Appreciated my, well, my brothers would say geekiness.”

He forces a swallow, pain written all over his face. Gazing off in the distance, like he’s replaying the time in his mind, I sit back and struggle to contain my own emotions—emotions I can’t pinpoint, but am acutely aware exist close to the surface.

“We weren’t supposed to be fucking around. We knew she could lose her position and maybe even her scholarship, but she was adamant, as was I, that we wanted to be together. So we continued. The entire semester. Each day got deeper, like stepping off a ledge with every tick of a clock. She wanted all my attention, got jealous when I would go home to see my family or my mom would call or Dad would want me to help with a situation at Landry. It just became so much bigger than I could handle. I constantly felt like I had to choose between her and my other obligations. And, no matter what I chose, someone was pissed off. I didn’t want to let anyone down.”

His eyes darken, his hands locking together in front of him. “Then one night, it was late and we’d been drinking more than we should’ve. It was pouring down rain and her apartment was closer, so we decided to just head there for the night. We’d never stayed there on a weekend,” he says, his jaw pulsing. “In the morning, her husband walks in.”

“No!” I gasp, my hand finding his thigh again.

“I had no idea, Mallory. None.”

My mouth hangs open as I both try to process what he said and the look on his face. I’ve never seen Graham angry before, but this is so severe, I’m almost scared.

“Word got out,” he says, spitting the words, “and she was exposed. Apparently I wasn’t the only one she was with. Her husband who worked out of town all week, hence why we never went to her house on the weekends, hung her out to dry with the department.”

“She deserved th

at!”

“Maybe,” he says. “So all this is going down and she’s still calling me, telling me she wants to be with me. She loves me. I was her soul mate. She wants to marry me, have my babies. That shit, you know?” he hisses. “I was so messed up over this girl that I was going to give her a chance to explain. I just wanted so badly for it to be real.” His jaw clenches, the muscle in his face pulsing. “Imagine my shock when I went to her house and realized . . . she was gone.”

“Graham,” I gush, wishing he’d look at me. “I’m so sorry.” I want to pull him into my arms. I have to hold myself back from reaching for him.

“I nearly flunked out the next semester. I couldn’t find her. I thought she was dead or something. It was the worst period of my entire life. My parents thought the world had fallen apart. They were wanting me to go to therapy, threatening to pull me out of school altogether. I just couldn’t function. I was a complete puss.”

“What were you supposed to feel? Look what she did to you!” I say, hating this woman for putting this look on his face. “That shit is hard, Graham. Especially when you’re going through it the first time and it’s that dramatic.”

“She nearly ruined my life. That’s just putting it mildly. She fucked up my school situation, my relationships with my family. Everything was ripped out from under me in a few months’ time while she vanished, not bothering to give me the courtesy of letting me know she was alive until a few months later with a letter and no return address.”

He smiles sadly. “I would rather be alone than be in that situation again.” He reaches across the sofa and tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “I look at you and think what a good girl you are. When I’m with you, I just want to stay there forever. When I’m not with you, I want to be.”

Tears tickle my eyes because I know there’s more coming. The epic life-ruiner, “but,” that is on the tip of his tongue.

“But I can’t be, Mallory.” He lifts my chin so I have to look at him. His face is so handsome, so tender, that I nearly can’t breathe. “Since then, I’ve made a plan on how to deal with things before they creep up. I have contingencies for contingencies so I’m not in a place to make a decision based off emotions.” He smiles softly. “I don’t know how to manage whatever this is between us. There’s no blueprint for this, and every experience I have with it tells me to end it now. But I can’t,” he whispers.

Words are lost to me as I lose myself in his eyes. There’s so much to the depths—pain, sadness, hope. My heart is torn in my chest because I don’t know what to do.

The confusion over how to respond, what words to piece together, leaves me speechless.

He tugs at his hair, his head buried in his hands. “I hate feeling this way.”

“Don’t,” I say, grabbing his wrist. “You were honest with me. You just told me something you didn’t have to and something that was obviously not easy to say.”

“I’ve never talked about it out loud like that.” He wraps my hand in his and brings it to his lips. He doesn’t kiss it, but just holds it there. “But I wanted you to know what you were dealing with.”

“Dealing with?” I say, scooting closer to him. “You’re a man that’s had his heart broken. I’ve had mine broken too. I get it. It hurts.”

He drops my hand and smiles more beautifully than I’ve ever seen from him before. “I hope you find love someday. I hope you find some guy that thinks of you the way I do.” His grin falters. “I hope he can give you what you need back.”

I look away, unable to see the look on his face and deal with the emotions swirling on mine. Just knowing that he thinks of me the way I think of him, yet can’t, won’t, go forward, breaks my already shattered heart.