meet me in the woods ☾grayson dolan au

t w o

[ 02 ]

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The sun shone through the cracks in the blinds and the dust in the air was visible in the strings of light. The sheets were wrinkled and crisp around her waist and she hugged the pillow closer to her body. A pillow? She slowly opened her eyes, the light causing a slight pain as they adjusted. Sure enough, a pillow replaced the space where she thought Grayson should be. "Gray?" She lifted her head to find the bed was empty in the space where he laid the last time she saw him.

The last thing she wished for was that he had gotten up because he was scared and didn't want to disturb her. She wanted to help him always; it was how they met.

The bed creaked as she rolled over to look at the time; 10:12. Her eyes then scanned the room that seemed dirtier in the light. Her bare legs swung over the edge of the bed and she then stood, turning around to strip the bed of the dirty sheets.

• • •

The smell of sizzling bacon and eggs wafted throughout the hallway that led to the kitchen.

The beige walls were bare; once filled with pictures of memories and family members long gone. It was the same house that Grayson grew up in. The same sophisticated furniture designed by his mother and painted walls by his father.  It wasn't hard to see the bent nails and scratches in the paint where Grayson had rather aggressively torn the pictures from the walls. He'd swept his arm across table tops without a glance at the people posed in the frames. He'd tried to get rid of them forever and thrown them into the garbage can, but Ryder had taken them back out and hidden them in the attic where he couldn't find them. She knew the extent to how unfortunate his past family life was, but not everybody in the photos hurt him. He only left one. A picture of him and his brother posed in similar outfits, laughing at something beyond the memory. So similar, so happy, so close they were. I thought maybe he left it up because he missed his own twin brother, but when I asked him he only told me that he told him to leave it up. I never asked more questions.

The house was altered to fit Grayson's taste the second he walked into his childhood home. It was his now; he had inherited his father's wealth and claimed the house as his own.

Ryder's mouth watered with every step she took. Rarely did Grayson ever cook breakfast, or get up before Ryder. He usually was a cereal-at-eleven kind of person.

"Gray?" She asked as she turned the corner into the kitchen.

Grayson's back was to her as he moved a spatula around the egg-filled pan. "Yeah, Ry?"

On the counter next to him sat two plates with identical contents. Three pieces of bacon and a small portion of scrambled eggs.