Letting Go (Thatch 1)

She looked at me expectantly for a few seconds before offering me a sad smile and climbing onto her bed to lie on her stomach next to me. “I love you, Grey, and I want you to stay here as long as you want to, or need to. But I know something had to have happened, and you’ve been ignoring whatever it is since you got here.”

I looked up at the ceiling and took some calming breaths. When I’d called Janie, all I had said was that I needed to get away. I had packed a bag and was in my car within thirty minutes of getting off the phone with her, and that had been a week ago. I’d talked to my parents a couple times, and Graham once. But after the two times Jagger called me as I got on the freeway to head to Seattle, he hadn’t tried to contact me again, and I hadn’t called him. I didn’t know what to say to him. I felt like I didn’t know him, I didn’t know what in our friendship had been real, or a lie, and I hated that I was questioning him at all.

“Was going back to Thatch just too hard?” Janie asked a couple minutes later when I still hadn’t said anything.

“Yes and no. The first day was hard, but it got better. I was staying with my parents and looking into getting an apartment. Jagger . . .” I paused to clear my throat. “Jagger’s grandparents had this old warehouse-type studio that no one has used in years, and he turned it into an apartment and a studio. We hung out a lot that week . . .”

Janie turned and raised one eyebrow. “And how is Jagger?”

My eyes narrowed at the way she’d asked about him. Like she knew. Were she and Graham still talking about me? Had he told her? “Why do you ask it like that?”

“Like what?” She gave me an innocent look. “I just want to know how he is. This is the longest you two have been apart . . . pretty much ever.”

She was right; other than the time my family took a trip to Europe, I’d never been away from him for this long, and it was killing me. “Have you talked to Graham lately?”

“No, not since before graduation, why?”

I studied her for a few seconds before releasing the breath I’d been holding and looking back at the ceiling. “Jagger told me he’s in love with me,” I whispered.

“And?”

My head whipped around to face her, shock covering my face. “And? What do you mean? This is a big fucking deal!”

Her head jerked back, and she barked out a quick laugh. “Wait, seriously? Did you—had he never told you that before?”

“No, Janie, he hadn’t!”

She blinked slowly a few times, an incredulous expression covering her face. “How did you not know?”

I sat up on the bed and turned to face her. “How did you know? And why didn’t you tell me?”

“Everyone knew. I mean, Be—” She abruptly stopped talking, her eyes wide.

“What? Tell me!”

“Grey . . . Ben even knew,” she admitted, her voice so soft I thought I heard her wrong until I took in the sad look in her eyes.

“No.” I shook my head and my throat tightened. “No, he couldn’t have. He would have told me, he—he wouldn’t have been okay with that. How did you know that Ben knew?” I yelled, and she jumped from the sudden rise in my voice.

“He told me, kind of—I mean, not exactly, but he hinted at it.”

“Janie, what did he say?”

She looked away for a second before shrugging and glancing back at me. “Ben was always all over you. Do you remember how we would go cosmic bowling after all the parties our freshman and sophomore years?” When I nodded, she continued. “Well, on one of those nights during freshman year when we were at the alley, it just hit me. I realized he pretty much never touched you when we were at a party or bowling, and it was weird because it was so unlike you and Ben. So I waited until we were alone—you and Jagger were trying to mess each other up on your turns or something—and I asked if he was okay.”

I didn’t realize I was leaning toward her and holding my breath until she stopped talking, her eyes misting. “What did he say?”

“He said what he always said. ‘I have my girl and my friends, why wouldn’t I be?’ So I told him that he was acting weird, and how it seemed like he was avoiding touching you—I also might have threatened bodily harm if he was hiding something from you. Anyway, when I said that, it was like he suddenly got what I was talking about. He looked over to where you and Jagger were, and said, ‘I have the rest of my life to hold her, but I can’t do that to him.’ ”

Her words had been choked as she fought back tears, and my chest ached when I realized that the rest of his life ended up only being another year or so.

“I had already seen how Jagger looked at you, and when Ben said that, I knew he saw it too. I don’t know if they ever talked about it, but he knew.”

Long minutes passed where the only sound was our hitched breathing as Janie pulled me into her arms and held me while we cried. When we pulled away from each other, she wiped at her eyes and shrugged.

“The way he looks at you, it’s so obvious. I’ve always thought you must have known. I just thought you ignored it because the two of you were such good friends, you had Ben, and because Jagger never did anything about it. This past year, though, when you started pulling away from us and clinging to him, we all thought for sure you knew at that point. I’ve just been waiting for the day you call me to tell me you two were together.”