The Rules Regarding Gray (20 page)

He laughed. “Uh… He’s… Well, he’s Ian.”

She laughed loudly then. “Huh…” she remarked. “Bad apple, that one. Don’t know why you and he are still friends. You know, I know he helped you out a lot when you first moved to Austin—fronting the money for the bar and letting you live with him for a while, but … that doesn’t mean you owe him anything.”

“Yeah, I know.” Did he?

“Well, I just don’t like that man one bit.” She’d never been a fan of Ian’s, not since they were children. “And, honey, if this woman can’t see that you are twice the man as Ian, then she’s lost her marbles.”

He laughed. “Well, there are times I think she has.”

“Tell me more about her—like why in the hell is she with a loser like Ian?”

“She’s going through a lot right now. She injured herself. It severely impacts her career, if not ends it. And … in truth, she has no reason to think I want more from her than what we are. She knows I tend to date a lot and nothing more.” That was grandma appropriate talk for fucking meaningless women to get off. “I’m supposed to have lunch with Ian, her, and her parents in a while, but … I really don’t want to go.” He sighed in exasperation. “I met her parents once, and I can’t say they seemed too thrilled to see their daughter hanging out with someone like me.”

“Someone like you? What the hell does that mean? Someone kind and thoughtful? Someone who’s made a lot of himself from very little? Someone who’s had to work hard to overcome a difficult start? What?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I do. You mean you don’t think you’re good enough for her. You mean that whatever reservations her parents might have about you, you’d rather believe them and accept their judgments than prove them wrong. I know exactly what you mean.”

He definitely got his bluntness from this woman.

He sighed. He didn’t know what to say to that.

“You go to that lunch, and you hold your head up, and you be proud of who you are, regardless of whether a single one of them sees it. Stop letting Ian or anyone else decide your worth. That man is a lost cause that has weighted you down while shining like he’s got a firecracker stickin’ out his ass.”

He chuckled.

“He may well be good at impressing the world, but the world doesn’t know him.”

“Yeah. Okay. If I’m going to this lunch, then I better get to it.”

“You keep me posted. This is entirely too much excitement for this old woman to handle, but I’ll be damned if it ain’t like my stories on the television.”

He laughed. “I’ll call you soon. I love you, G.”

“I love you too, Jas.”

* * * *

They sat on the patio at Ian’s house for lunch, and Jasper sat directly across from Gray. Her parents watched him like a hawk, but there was something rather curious about the way they studied him. The first time he met them, it was all suspicion until Ian arrived and assured them he was nothing more than their daughter’s friend. Now, they watched him closely, but when he’d look up at them and catch them watching, they’d smile awkwardly as though they found him more intriguing than suspicious.

He passed Gray food when she needed it, refilled her water glass when she ran out, and when she dropped her fork on the ground, he stood before he realized what he was doing and turned toward the house. Her mother stood at the same time, and then their eyes met for a moment.

“I’ve got it,” he said quietly, and Viv’s focus shifted to Ian who was sitting at the head of the table oblivious to what was happening as he ate his food and talked to Ron.

Her parents had to be at the airport that afternoon to catch an early evening flight home to Boise. Ian had picked them all up from Gray’s loft, and now, as they finished dinner, he started glancing to his cell phone regularly.

“Anything the matter,” Viv asked him. But her expression was cool, nearly icy.

Ian glanced at her. “Nah. Just work stuff.” He smiled broadly. “We’re dealing with our annual record keeping audits. We have to survey…”

He droned on for a while, and when Jas glanced at Gray across the table, her lips pursed sweetly in a small smile. He couldn’t help but smile back at that. When he caught Viv watching them, he cleared his throat, suddenly nervous. Her parents scared the shit out of him, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. He supposed it was because he really wanted them to like him, and he wasn’t at all sure he had much control over that.

“Jas, I don’t suppose you’d have time to run us to the airport in a while?” Viv asked him.

“Sure,” he responded. It might have been a casual response, but he was panicking. When he glanced to Gray, she looked about as panicked as he felt.

“I could go,” Gray offered.

“Nonsense, dear. You stay and rest.” Her mom smiled sweetly.

Gray’s face scrunched up. “Well, I don’t need to rest. I’m fine.”

Viv laughed loudly. “Are you worried about us spending time with your friend Jasper?”

“No.” Gray started shaking her head, but then it turned to nodding, and then her face twisted up as her mom laughed at her.

“I’ll be fine, Gray.” He had absolutely no knowledge of whether or not that would prove to be true.

Gray scoffed, and he smiled at her.

Ian turned his attention to her parents then. “Don’t you worry. I’m taking good care of your girl. She has my undivided attention.”

Jasper wanted to vomit a little, and as he glanced at Viv, she leveled a cool smile in Ian’s direction. Of course Ian was oblivious. Within thirty minutes they were headed toward Austin-Bergstrom in Jasper’s car. Gray’s eyes had teared as she’d hugged them goodbye, and he’d watched her.

Now though, he was trapped, with her father beside him in the passenger seat and her mother in the back seat. He glanced in the rearview mirror, catching sight of Viv who happened to be watching him.

“She’s a special girl,” Viv commented with a curious smile on her face.

Ron glanced over at him, and he chuckled. “Buckle in, son. Viv’s on a roll.”

He returned his attention to Viv in the mirror. “Yes, she’s very special,” he agreed.

“Are you a
good
friend to her?” Well, that was pointed if nothing else.

“I’d like to think so. She’s a good friend to
me
.”

“How so?”

He contemplated just how open he wanted to be with two people who’d made him feel like a piece of shit the first time he’d met them. “She makes me feel good about myself. She’s never judged me for my past, how I grew up, where I came from.”

Her mother’s lips pursed. It was guilt.

“She’s never seen me as anything other than … just … me. And she likes me regardless of everything else.”

Viv nodded.

“We owe you an apology, Jasper,” Ron said from beside him.

“We didn’t know what to make of you the first time we met you, and it must have made you feel pretty awful being scrutinized by us, when all you were doing was being a friend to her.” Viv had picked up where Ron had left off. “And don’t think for a second that our daughter let us off lightly for our behavior,” she commented sarcastically.

“You were just worried,” Jasper offered, but his blood was tingling warmly through his veins at the idea that Gray had defended him against them. It ought to be the other way around in his mind, but he still appreciated it.

“Sure,” Viv chimed in. “It’s what we do. But we also want our daughter to be happy.”

He took a deep breath. He had no idea where this was going.

“But we’ve come to realize that how she finds that happiness or who she finds that happiness with isn’t really a matter for us to decide. Perhaps her happiness is packaged in someone a little less conventional than we would have expected.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he swallowed harshly before he nodded his head tensely.

“As her friend, please look after her for us. She’s scared right now. Her career is in jeopardy, and she doesn’t know what that’s ultimately going to mean for her.” Viv watched him for a moment. “She can be very open, can’t she?” Given the look on Viv’s face, that wasn’t really a question.

He couldn’t stop the small smirk. “Yes, she can.”

Viv smiled warmly at him. “I like to think of that as a gift of hers. But sometimes I think it makes her seem like she’s doing okay, when in fact, she’s not. She’s going through a lot right now. I’d like to think she has someone here who genuinely cares about what’s in her best interest.”

“I do.”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we didn’t believe that.”

Chapter Eighteen

Gray sat on the side of the pool with both legs dangling into the cool water. Her surgery only required three small holes in the back of her ankle, and they were all but healed at this point. She’d removed her splint and wrap, and as she let her legs relax in the water, she slumped her shoulders and gripped the side of the pool. Ian was pacing around the patio, chatting on his phone. It was work related. She could tell by the drivel of boringness he was spewing out, but at the same time … she knew he was speaking to a woman.

There was something too flirtatious, though not overt, about the way he addressed this particular co-worker, and she wasn’t sure she could even put her thumb on it—hell, if she was even right. She listened, cocking her head over her shoulder and trying to pinpoint exactly what it was.

He laughed quietly.

He hummed.

He joked.

He walked inside then, closing the door behind him, and as Gray looked down into the water, she figured it out. Ian had done everything with the unknown person on the phone that she and Jas did nearly every time they saw one another. Their voices were always quieter when they were together. He hummed warmly at nothing more than the sound of her voice. They knew how to have fun. They were just … close.

She had no right to be offended by what she’d heard of Ian’s phone call. But the odd thing was, even if she did have the right, she simply didn’t care, and that was exceptionally frightening, because her life was attached to it. She felt as though she were suffocating, and as she stared into the water, her body tremored and her insides tightened into knots.

She wrapped her leg quickly, and she pushed up from the ground. She found him in his bedroom, setting clothes out on the bedspread. She stared at the head of the bed for a moment, remembering the first night she’d been with Jasper. He’d watched her so intently as she was having sex with Ian. His eyes had penetrated her and set her blood on fire, and when he’d finally put her body under his, that intensity hadn’t faded. It hadn’t faded, in fact, since that day, and given they’d only been intimate twice, there was no question that intensity between them wasn’t really related to sex at all. How was that even possible?

Ian walked out of the closet, moving to his dresser and pulling the top drawer out. “What’s up, Gray?” he asked without looking at her.

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

He glanced at her for a half a second, but then he turned toward the bed, setting a few T-shirts out.

“I’m really having a hard time with…”

He didn’t bother looking at her as he counted his way through a stack of underwear, and when he was finished, he set the stack down. “Mm-hmm.”

“I’m not happy, and—”

“That’s great, babe,” he said mindlessly. He’d moved on to socks, and as she watched him, he picked through a pile. He’d clearly heard nothing of what she was saying.

“Ian. Are you listening to me? I’m—”

“Gray, listen. I just got called out of town, and I have to be in Dallas by seven tomorrow morning. So…” He shooed her away. “If you don’t mind, whatever this is, I’m sure it can wait. I’ve got a car coming to pick me up and take me to the airport, and I don’t have time to deal with this.”

He looked at her in exasperation, but then his face softened. It was false. It was such a contrived bullshit look, and as she gaped at him, he approached, cupping her cheeks sweetly. He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back in a few days. We’ll do something fun then. I know you’ve been cooped up. But I’ll make it up to you.” He smiled. “Now, scoot, and let me finish packing.” He pecked her one more time.

“Ian,” she pleaded, but his phone was ringing, and he snatched it up, holding his finger out to her.

“Hi. Yeah, almost ready to go. No, no, I know. We will
definitely
be going back to that restaurant while we’re there.” He laughed, and that’s when she gave up on perpetuating the conversation.

She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to bop him on top of the head with her crutch and make him talk to her. She also just wanted to run away. She wanted to march her ass right out his front door and high tail it the hell out of there. But instead, she slowly made her way back out to the patio, shoving the door open with her crutch and leaving it standing wide open behind her. She paced as well as she could on crutches for nearly five minutes, but then when her armpits started hurting, she flopped down in one of the lounge chairs.

She grumbled and growled as she sat there, her fists in tight balls, and then she heard his voice again, still yacking away on the phone. The front door opened and closed moments later, and she thought perhaps he’d left, but then it was another voice she heard.