Her hand paused in the air above the box, and her shoulders slumped as her head dropped back, so she was looking at the ceiling. Mumbling things too low for me to hear.
I choked back another laugh and walked into the room, bending down to help her pick up everything that had fallen. “It’s okay. We’ll just fill this up and tape the top, and then we’ll very carefully tip it over. All right?”
“I swear to God, I can’t focus on anything today. Or pack, apparently.” She continued grumbling to herself, and I couldn’t help but smile.
I’d been afraid today would be too hard on her—leaving the apartment that was supposed to have been her first place with Ben, but even through her annoyance with the packing and the boxes, I could tell today was a good day for her.
“Did you know—” She’d pointed at me with a box of tampons, her eyes widening when she realized what was in her hand. Dropping the tampons into the moving box, she cleared her throat, and I pretended her face wasn’t as red as her hair. “Anyway, did you know that I packed all my clothes yesterday?”
“Yeah, Grey, I was there.”
“No. I mean, all of them. Which means I didn’t have any clothes when I got out of the shower this morning.”
My eyes flashed over to her before quickly going back to the floor, and I tried to concentrate on picking up everything so I wouldn’t sit there thinking about her in the shower.
“Thank God I didn’t let you put all those boxes in the truck. So after finally finding a box that had my clothes in it and cutting into it, I took out s
ome clothes and taped it back up, only to realize I’d taken out two shirts, nothing else. That is how my morning has been. All morning. I should not be allowed to drive today.”
A smile spread across my face as I reached behind me for the tape sitting on top of another box. “Let me guess, no coffee this morning?”
“I packed that yesterday too!” Her horrified tone let me know she’d been kicking herself all morning over that. She fell back until she was lying on the floor, and groaned. “This is why I don’t do anything until the last minute.”
“We’re going to pass a ton of coffee shops, we’ll get you something on the way out. And you don’t do anything until the last minute because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you were actually on time for something. Your world might implode or something.”
Raising one arm to flip me off, she let it flop back to the floor before sitting up. “Okay, let’s finish this.”
“How much do you have left?” I asked when I slowly tilted the box, waiting for her to put her hands on the bottom so the flaps wouldn’t open again.
“Just packing up the truck, this was the last box.”
“Truck is full, these will have to go in your car. And look at you trying to be on time,” I mumbled, and she laughed.
“You would’ve been so proud of me. I was running around here like mad packing up everything I saw left out.”
Glancing up at her, I smirked. “And you still failed.”
She made a face, but didn’t say anything else.
I taped the box shut and stood up, extending an arm to help her up as well. “All right, well, let’s get started and get on the road before you go into severe caffeine withdrawal.”
I grabbed that box and stacked it on top of another. Lifting them both up, I walked into her living room and looked at the counter. A frown tugged at my lips, and I turned in a slow circle, seeing only boxes. “Grey, where are your keys?”
“In my purse,” she called out from down the hall.
“Yeah. Where’s your purse?”
“On the counter where it always—” She cut off when she turned the corner into the living room, her eyebrows pinching together as she looked at the bare counter. I watched as her mouth slowly dropped open and her eyes widened as she looked at the boxes in the living room she’d packed this morning. “Son of a bitch.”
AFTER CUTTING OPEN two boxes to find her purse and keys, I finished loading up all the boxes while she went to turn in everything to the leasing office, and we were finally on our way back to Thatch. Well, after we stopped to fill up her car with gas since she’d forgotten to, and gotten her coffee. The drive only took a little over three hours, and then we were pulling into the town we’d grown up in. Small in size and population, but full of memories that hit me hard the second we’d rounded the massive lake that hid our town, and I wondered how Grey was doing now that we were here.
She’d only been able to handle being here for a little over a month last summer, and hadn’t come back at all during the winter break a handful of months ago. Even though she’d already been getting so much better before that, to the point where she had been the one to bring up moving back here right after the school year had started, I couldn’t help but remember how she’d said she was scared to come back here just last week. I knew if I could see her right now, she’d be gripping Ben’s ring that hung on the chain around her neck. What I didn’t know was if she was happy to be remembering times with him here, or if the memories were all too much.
And a few minutes later I had my answer.
At the last second, she took the exit toward the cemetery, and I cursed and hit the brakes so I could follow her. By the time I’d parked and gotten out of the rented truck, she’d already found his headstone. She stood there for a few minutes, her body swaying as she clutched at the necklace before she suddenly fell to her knees. I took a couple steps toward her before stopping myself, and ran my hands over my head as I forced myself back to lean up against the truck.
She hadn’t been back here since the funeral, so I knew she needed this, and she needed to do it alone. But for her, and for me, I needed to be here for when she was ready to leave.