Though I can’t quite put my finger on what.IF YOU WOULD HAVE told me ten months ago that I would be sitting next to Grayson Anderson, listening to him play a new song, without wanting to strangle him and spit in his eye — I would have told you you were crazy.
Almost a year later, and I can still close my eyes and see him outside of semi-formal last year, talking to Malik, admitting that he had been screwing some girl named Alexis while we’d been dating.
While I’d been falling in love with him.
While I’d been trusting him.
While I’d been thinking about giving myself to him fully.
And once I had, he’d apparently told that girl to kick rocks — but that didn’t change the fact that all the time I was dedicating to him, he was giving to someone else.
He’d cheated on me. He’d broken my heart. And I’d sworn I’d never forgive him.
But here I am, sitting next to him on the bench outside the science building, listening to him strum on his guitar and watching strands of his long hair fall out of the bun at the nape of his neck, into his face.
For the first couple weeks of class, I dutifully ignored him. Unfortunately for me, we were assigned lab partners during week three — which made it impossible to ignore him any further, unless I wanted to fail Genetics.
And I don’t fail anything.
Still, I wasn’t keen on the idea, and only conceded after Professor Drumm said I didn’t have a prayer in changing partners, anyway.
Grayson asked me for forgiveness. He asked me for friendship.
And damn it if that doesn’t hit some super soft bruise inside me that I didn’t even realize existed.
Something I learned from my older sister is that holding onto a grudge, or something that hurt you, is useless. Giving anyone or anything that power only strips you of it and holds you back.
So, when Grayson poured his heart out, trying to get me to understand that he was in a bad place, I listened. When he told me his parents were already on his ass to change his major back then, at the same time his music career was taking off, I could see the internal struggle he must have been facing. And when he promised me he never meant to hurt me, and that if he could take it all back, he would — I believed him.
I don’t have to forgive him, and I told him that much. But he asked for a chance for a friendship, and because I don’t know how to stay mad at people who hurt me, I’m giving him one.
Or at least, I’m trying.
“That was really good,” I say when he finishes the last note of the song. “Are you going to record it?”
Grayson sweeps his hair back off his face, something of a grin on his lips. “No more recording for me. I just do it for fun.”
It’s the middle of October, which should mean boots and scarves and pumpkin-spiced lattes — but in South Florida, it just feels like Summer Part Two. It’s fifteen minutes until noon and I’m already sweating, my thighs sticking to the bench we’re sitting on.
“Why? Just because you changed your major doesn’t mean you can’t still focus on your music.”
“It does when I’m already behind in credits, and science might as well be another language to me,” he argues. Then, he nudges me where I sit beside him on the bench. “Unlike you, brainiac.”
“So that’s what happened here — you bribed the professor to be my lab partner so you could pass, huh?”
“Damn it, you caught me.”
Something in my stomach twisted at that, because the last time I caught him, it’d nearly killed me.
Grayson must have noticed the shift in me, because he set his guitar to the side, crossing his ankle over the opposite knee. “I didn’t notice when we were dating just how smart you are,” he says. “But I was so far up my own ass, I guess, that I didn’t really see much at all.”
I nod, because though it didn’t feel like it back then, I look back on the time we dated now and see just how wrapped up I was in him. It was always me going to his shows, his place, hanging with his friends. Sure, he came to sorority events after I begged him to, but for the most part, I was happy to lose myself in who he was and not talk about me at all.
With Adam, it’s the complete opposite.
He always builds me up, asks me about my classes, about my dreams. It’s not just the here and now that he’s fascinated with, but who I want to be next year, or in five years, or for the rest of my life.