Page 21 of Always Been His

“Then it’s a shame he’s chosen this moment to test whether that friendship is also extended to me,” I say. “It isn’t.”

Humidity clings to my skin in the warm, late-afternoon air as my sneakers pound the asphalt past Mary Rhodes’s place. Construction trucks are parked in the drive. Tarps cover the back half of the house. Scaffolding is climbing the kitchen wall. Mary has been talking about gutting that back bathroom since I was in high school, and as I round the corner of her property, my eyes drag across the upstairs window like a fucking magnet, and land on the window second from the left. The one that used to be Sienna’s room and where I used to throw rocks against until the screen lifted and a blue-tipped curly head leaned out and told me to: “Go home, Grayson, or my Grandma will kill us both.”

I don’t let myself think about that window.

I wonder if she still has the same handwriting. If she still bites the inside of her cheek when she’s thinking. If the freckles I haven’t seen in two years are still there under whatever the label has spackled across her face. Where the hell is she right now, what time zone, what bed, what bathroom mirror is she staring at her reflection in? Does that reflection even look anything like the sixteen-year-old girl who leaned out of that yellow-curtained window and watched me pull out her driveway, or hang out on her front porch with Bud.

“Grayson? Grayson, are you still there?”

Henry’s voice crackles through the AirPods, dragging me back like a hand on the back of my neck.

I shake my head and pick up my pace. The road bends west toward the river, the pines on the left side thin out, and the sky opens up over the water, gray and low and threatening. A pickup rumbles past me in the opposite direction, and the driver lifts two fingers off the steering wheel in a wave.

“I’m here,” I clip.

“Look, at least give him the courtesy of a face-to-face before you—” Henry tries.

“No. I won’t repeat myself. Get it done.” I hang up, jabbing the phone screen with a sweat-slick thumb.

Immediately, the Springsteen track I was listening to before he called bleeds out on its final note. The Spotify shuffle picks up where it left off with the opening piano of the next song and the soft tones of a voice I’d recognize in a coma.

“You and I, don’t know where I end, and you begin. You and I, feel like free-falling adrenaline.”

This is torturous. The shuffle has been serving me her songs for two years, and I’ve been hitting skip every single time. Except when I haven’t. I let it play. Her voice fills the inside of my skull, and I keep running, slower now, my breath catching on the heavy summer air sitting thick in my chest like the song is reaching down my throat to grab it. Here, she sounds like herself, like the first time I heard her sing in middle school.

It’s been two weeks since her mental breakdown and I haven’t heard anything from Iris. I want to text her. I want to just know she is okay, because the thought of her not being okay makes my chest feel like it’s caving in.

“You act like it’s so easy,” she belts into my ears. “To move on. Oh, so easy to be alone. Oh, I’m easy, so easy to forget! Don’t forget. Please forget.”

The road bends back toward my family’s estate. A large white farmhouse my father bought for my mother as a wedding present six years before she got sick, sitting on twenty acres of fresh farmland.

I slow to a walk on the gravel and pull the AirPods out of my ears, shoving them in my pocket. Sienna’s voice cuts off mid-bridge, and the restless screaming of cicadas takes her place. Iris needs to find out if Sienna is okay, or I think I’ll lose my fucking mind.

I take the porch steps two at a time, push the front door open, and the cool blast of central air hits me in the face like a reward for surviving the last six miles.

“Grayson, you know running in this heat is going to kill you one of these days,” Esme says, standing in the entryway with a basket of folded laundry braced on her hip, looking at me the way she has been looking at me since I was nine years old and tracking mud across her clean floors. She is wearing the navy polo Maggie ordered for her three Christmases ago, the one she refuses to wear unless we’re expecting company.

Which means somebody is coming, or here, and no one thought to tell me.

“If the heat was going to kill me, Esme, it would’ve done so by now.” I huff, taking my arm band off. “Who’s here?”

“One day, I’ll find you in a ditch on the side of Route 9, and then who will tell your father, huh?” She pushes up onto her tiptoes, and I bend down so she can reach me, like she has been making me do since I outgrew her at fourteen. I press a kiss into the soft graying hairs at her temple, and she pats my chest twice with the flat of her hand. “Go shower. You smell like a barn.”

“Wait, who’s here?” I chuckle as she walks past.

“You’re not seeing company smelling like that.” She’s already turning the corner into the laundry room.

I shake my head and go to the kitchen, because I’ve been running for an hour in late June Maine and I’m going to die of dehydration before I die of curiosity. The cool air feels good against the back of my neck, but my body still burns a faint pink from the sun. I swipe my tank off and use it to dab my forehead as I round the corner into the kitchen and stop dead.

The TV mounted above the breakfast nook is playing 10 Things I Hate About You at full volume. Heath Ledger is in a Padua High polo, strolling along the bleachers with a wireless mic, belting out, “I love you, baby,” to Julia Stiles. The scene was a regular occurrence throughout high school, but Iris never watched this movie alone.

“Gray!” Iris beams, spinning around in a circle with a rolling pin as a microphone.

“What’s the good news?” I chuckle, trying to get a sneak peek at the dessert she’s making.

“Gray?” a small voice squeaks, followed by a low thud. “Ow.”

My head snaps to the other side of the island, and the roaring in my ears comes back so loud I cannot hear Heath Ledger anymore.