🥊 Hate or Fate 💕 {Enemies to Lovers}

.32.

We did a lot of crying after that but much less drinking. At some point in the evening, Gray started texting me too.

'Hey', his first message was pretty generic, 'You awake?'

Of course, I was awake. I'd been bearing my soul to Rebecca, recounting the day my life was flipped upside down.

'I'm thinking about you', the next was much more suggestive, and dare I say, sweet. 'Do you need anything?'

My dad was a workaholic. I didn't think to question his absence from my Girl Scout meetings or softball games until I was old enough to realize that most of the kids in my class got to have two parents, not one that was part-time (at best).

'I know you probably don't want to talk to me', Gray's texts kept coming. 'But I can't stop thinking about you. About that kiss.'

My dad was a good man. No, he was an excellent man.

My grandparents told me stories about my dad before he moved to the East Coast for college. Peter Brodeur was a sweet boy who had lots of friends, but none so close they kept in touch after school. He went to church, he loved camping, he got excellent grades, and he always paid his taxes. He also married his first love after college and built himself a solid career as a corporate accountant. Oh, and he loved the Beatles so much he fell for a girl named Nancy and they nicknamed their only daughter, me, Rocky Raccoon. He was only thirty-nine the day his heart stopped forever.

As far as I could tell, my dad played by all the rules, and still, life cheated him. 

'I'm probably not coming back into the office until the next round of reviews in a week', one of Gray's last texts read.

It took Rebecca a while to do the math, but she eventually figured out that the anniversary of my dad's death was the week before Thanksgiving. His favorite dessert in the whole world was leftover (and cold) pumpkin pie made from scratch. Just the sight of a slow-roasted turkey with all the fixings makes me cry like a Kardashian sister.

It was the only holiday I didn't spend with Elijah's family. When I told his mother why I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, she wrapped me up in a ferocious mom-hug and told me everything was going to be alright. It wasn't, of course, but her empathy helped a little.

Rebecca listened dutifully, bawling alongside me as we wallowed in the catharsis of sharing our past. She held my hand when I started shaking and fetched boxes of tissues whenever we were running low. She even crushed me into a protective hug that soothed the edges of my pain to a dull ache.

Gray's last text finally got my attention: 'Call me if you need anything.'

I pulled my phone out from under my butt cheek to see his messages. Thankfully, my face was already red and splotchy, so it was a lot harder for Rebecca to see my cheeks go up in flames.

She fell asleep first, awkwardly draped in my lap where she'd been relaxing while I sat up straight to try and drain my clogged sinuses.

Too much crying had somehow swamped my skull in snot, and no matter how much I blew my nose, it still seemed plugged shut with impacted mucus.

My thigh had fallen asleep under the weight of her head, but I was wide awake and scrolling through Gray's texts.

I could barely believe it was the same man I'd known for the past five years. His sullen and oftentimes hostile attitude was gone, stripped away like a thin veneer to reveal the depth of his compassion.

Occasionally I saw signs of his bad attitude return, like when I'd pushed him away after our amazing kiss, but something had changed. We were different. Whether that was good or bad, I couldn't say.