Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT THREE - PART ONE

Cheers to a new Act!

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Grace Kazansky had wondered about heartbreak and love most of her teenager years. Watching movies with her parents, who both preferred action movies but did reluctantly agree to one or two romantic movies a month to make their daughter happy. Bradley had only ever huffed when it was one of these movies' nights, rather busying himself with his phone. And yes, Grace knew that these movies were stupid and not realistic at all, but it was also kind of her only source of being able to watch how a woman acted when in love or when in a romantic relationship.

She couldn't remember Carole well enough and even if, she had been too young to ask about such things back then. She was seven as Carole Bradshaw died, too young to learn much at all from her even though she was sure the woman would have had many things to tell her, especially should she have ever figured out that it was all about Bradley sooner or later in Grace's life. The only woman in her life she would have been sure she could have asked anything. Her aunt Sarah would be the other option, but she saw her so sparsely, it would have been strange to ask anything at all.

With Carole it would have been alright, Grace was sure of it. Even though embarrassing as hell, should the older woman ever decided to tease Grace about anything, she had trusted her with. Grace would have changed colour, something like deep red before dying of embarrassment.

Sometimes, Grace guessed it showed that she was raised by men. Three men actually. A high decorated senior Navy officer, an unhinged hot shot Navy aviator and a boy, who tried to figure out how to go on about life himself, while showing Grace proudly the things he had learned in school or was shown by his friends.

A womanly touch was what she was missing, Grace always knew that. The moment it started to really matter, the moment it would have done her good to have a female role model in her life, she knew no woman she could have looked up to on a personal level and it showed in the way she spoke to boys. In the way she went about dating and in the way she went about emotional connections with others.

Unhinged and Unbothered, might have described her best, which many boys and later on men found enchanting. A woman that never cried, that didn't want to talk about feelings and that could hold her alcohol. Well, at least in their imagination, that had been what they wanted, until they got it.

A woman that never cried was bothered by a guy that showed weakness, God forbid dared to weep. A woman that didn't want to talk about her own feelings couldn't be asked to listen to a guy talking about his feelings either without feeling annoyed by his whining. A woman that could hold her alcohol, rolled her eyes at a guy that was tipsy and embarrassing after a beer.

Grace was something of a wet dream for most men. Pretty as a woman but easy to handle like a guy, until they realised that she was more man than they were. Mocking them, when they showed emotions, or when they were complaining too much, not even to mention what she had to say to vain men, who took longer in the bathroom than she did.

She might have accidentally nearly made Jake cry once with that, before he brushed her off, ignored their friends' laughter and decided not to talk to her for three days. In the beginning, before Nat told her, she didn't even know what she had done wrong.

After all, there was about no man, who actually would like to be with his wet dream officially. And Grace was alright with that, always had been.

She was just the odd one out. A woman that didn't seek comfort in a man's touch. A woman that bluntly refused to wait at home for her significant other when she wanted to go out. A woman that didn't cook for her man, a woman that didn't do the laundry for him and couldn't be bothered to iron any of his clothes. Grace wasn't a housewife. She was a navy aviator.