It Could Be More | ✔

24. Your Only Friend is A Rabbit

Grayson barely said anything since last night. Since I messed up because I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I felt horrible. About Gray. About Shamika. About not telling Corey.

Yet.

I was going to tell him that weekend. He said he'd come to Vik's. It was hard not to blurt it out when he brought up running into Shamika on his way out the house. But telling him now, during the holiday, would be rude. He should be able to enjoy his turkey without knowing I might've severed his friendship with my brother for good.

After Gray and I got back from the mall, I put on some music and cleaned. Trying to block out the voice that told me I was a crappy sister. I burned through Mom's chore list in a couple hours.

Gray stayed in his room the whole time. When I put my ear to his door and didn't hear any video game noises, I knew it was bad.

He only came out to talk to Mom when she got home from work. Grayson must've really been hurting because he didn't even say anything about Hudson staying the night.

It was early when I found mom redoing the chores I did. She always stress cleaned. Hudson was in the kitchen, mumbling to himself about seasonings while digging through the cabinets. Gray was still in his room.

After pacing outside his bedroom door for a minute, trying to figure out what to say to him, I knocked.

"Come in," he said from the other side of the door.

When I opened the door, I had to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. His room was usually dark, the only light coming from tv. Not even that was on, though. I was glad it was too dark to see him. I would've spilled everything if I saw the hurt on his face.

"You plan on staying here all day?" I asked, slowly stepping into his room. It was too dark to see anything, and I didn't know if he still had laundry on his floor. "Because I think Hudson's gonna need a friend down there when family shows up, since Mom is in cleaning mode."

No reply. I found the edge of his bed and sat on it. "I'm sorry."

"For what? Unless you forced the two people I thought were my friends to get together behind my back, it isn't your fault."

Everything was so tangled and twisted up that it felt like my fault. Corey wanted to be with me. Gray said no. Corey hooked up with Shamika. If they removed me from the situation, things between the three of them would've been fine.

But I couldn't explain that to him without exposing me and Corey. That was the last thing Gray needed.

"You really didn't know?" I said more to myself, playing with the drawstring of my sweats. "I thought that's why you and Corey weren't talking."

The bed shifted as Gray sat up, pulling his knees to his chest. "I didn't know he was with Shamika. We stopped talking because I thought...It sounds dumb now."

"What?"

"Every time I come home, something is different," he said. "Mom got a boyfriend. Some of my friends moved away, or they got new friends. It's been six months since graduation and I can barely recognize this place where I spent all of my life.

"It's stupid. I thought everyone would be on pause until I got back. But it's like they're living in fast-forward. The only thing I could count on staying the same was you hating me and Corey being my friend."

My pulse jumped at being mentioned in the same breath as Corey. I physically had to bite my tongue to keep myself from telling him everything.

"That party you were at, after you almost killed yourself, I told Corey to take you home. He said he wouldn't, started saying all this stuff about you being your own person and how you could make your own choices. I stopped talking to him because I thought he was with you."