Drown

Chapter 8

Three months passed. I was walking around the city by myself.  Greyson had gone to work, and I had nothing to keep me entertained.  So I was just walking, thinking, and waiting for Aaron to call.  It would be the first time I'd talked to him besides over email sinced he'd left.  I'd yet to tell him anything about Greyson and me.  It didn't seem right to do it over email.

I was standing at a crosswalk, waiting for the red hand to turn into a green person, when my phone started ringing.  I answered it as the light changed, and walked across the street.

"Hey, man! How've you been? How're things going?"  I asked.

"I'm good.  Things are good. I mean,  as good as they can be in a war.  But you know what I mean."  he said,  sounding relieved to hear a familiar voice.  "So how are you?  How's Greyson? Did everything work out?"

"Yeah," I smiled, "Everything worked out.  Aaron, I've never been happier."

We talked for about ten minutes.  Aaron told me about war stuff and I told him about everything that had happened.  He was angry that I didn't tell him I got stabbed.  But he laughed when I told him about how obsessed our Writing professor was with us; particularly Greyson.

"Hey, is Greyson around?" Aaron asked. "I want to talk to him."

I looked up at the street sign in front of me.  I'd managed to walk in a giant circle and was right down the street from the coffee shop.

"Well, he's being all pissy with me because I made him kill a bug by himself this morning.  But I'm right down the street from him.  I'll see if he can talk."

I jogged down the street and looked in the window of the coffee shop.  There weren't many people inside so I decided it would be okay.  I walked in; seeing Greyson messing with some machine behind the counter. 

"Hey, babe." I said, causing him to jump and squirt chocolate syrup into his eye.

"Really? First you make me face a bug, and now I'm blind."

"Let it go, Grey."

He shot me a 'fake angry' look while he wiped the chocolate from his eye.

"Can you talk? Aaron's on the phone."

"Yeah, my boss loves me." he said, grabbing the phone from my hand. "While I talk, can you try to fix this?"

I nodded and swapped places with him.  I scraped some dry chocolate out of somewhere it didn't belong and the machine started working just fine.  Then I just sat there watching Greyson smiling and laughing at whatever Aaron was saying.  

Greyson finished with Aaron, then gave me my phone back. 

"I'll let you get back to work."  I said, kissing him quickly so he couldn't fight me.

I still had two hours until Greyson would be home, so I continued to roam the city.  At around seven oclock, I walked by a cute little jewelry store.  It was small, but looked very 'engagement ring' based.   I stopped and looked at the things they had sitting in the window.   At first, I was just looking.  But then I got this feeling.  My heart rate picked up, and I was smiling way too big to be standing alone.  I heard the door open up beside me, and a little old woman came out.

She was actually quite adorable.  Short, curly, grey hair, a tiny, frail looking body, and big brown eyes that were surrounded by thin ovular glasses.  She walked over shakily and stood next to me, looking down at the display.

"Just looking?" she asked. "Or are you thinking about someone special?"

I laughed quietly and looked over at her.  "The second one."