Love Song (LGBTQ+) (COMPLETED)

46. Closer

Yawning as a towel clung to my damp hair, I was met with Jay and Lucas playing some first person shooter, Call of Duty or something of the sort. I was honestly too tired to care about what they were doing or playing. After Grace left, I wasn't exactly given the easiest night of sleep I ever had. All night, I found myself falling asleep and then waking up, and the process only kept repeating through the hours of darkness.

I kind of figured that I would have been drained after all the crying I had done that previous day's afternoon. As I emptied my eyes that afternoon, Grace never moved. It felt like I sat there for the longest time, doing nothing but crying. There wasn't words or movement, it was just the liquid falling from my eyes and the overwhelmed senses that caused them. All she did the whole time was sit across from me and watch, without looking away.

"Yo." Jay's eyes stayed glued to the screen as I quietly approached them from behind. "Not running today?"

"I might once my hair dries." I quickly passed by the front of the television, careful not to get in their way as I headed towards the opposite couch. "I'm not really feeling motivated to do anything right now."

Jay smirked as his eyes stayed focused on the screen in front of him. Lucas, who had almost mirrored him in that way, was being his typical quiet self. Aside from that incident, he remained distant from me and seemingly everyone else. I hadn't really blamed him for being distant towards me, and I realize that it was probably his personality, but shouldn't he have been talking more to the people around him?

I had done what I did to him, and it was possible that he still held some level of anger towards me for it. Forcing a kiss had been wrong, sure, but the fact that I just didn't just push him away was the part that earned that anger and resentment towards me. Even if my head just turned off on me, I shouldn't have even been in the same room with him alone to begin with and I shouldn't have allowed it to get as far as it did. Even so, the punishment I doled out didn't fit the crime.

Even if he didn't want to talk to me, there was still Jay and Joanna to talk with, but he still remained distant from them. What his past consisted of and what he grew up with were all a mystery to me, and while it was easy enough to assume bad things, was that really the case? I, myself, was likely considered privileged and yet I had still become the prime candidate for drug usage. Maybe his past consisted of being hurt by the people he trusted and decided to distance himself so it wouldn't happen again.

"Grace, was it?" Jay combed his fingers through his hair, looking at me as the loading screen came up. "She's good, really good. Who was she signed to?"

"She isn't signed." I began to towel dry my own hair. "She's only ever played in front of her church, which probably isn't going to happen anymore, and together with me in one of our rooms. That's all, as far as I know."

"Bullshit. You don't sing like that on the spot and not be signed." Jay eyed me with a lifted brow and set the controller down. "What's scary was that she didn't know any of the chords to the song, so she improvised it to sound good with what I was playing while singing herself. You are kidding, right?"

I sighed, lifting the towel from my head. "Does it look like I'm kidding?"

Jay stared at me for a moment, as though I was a bad enough liar to crack under the pressure of his deadpan expression. All of his suspicions aside, I was telling the truth. Grace wasn't on any label, and no labels seemed to show any interest. That much was understandable, as she only ever really played in front of people once a month in front of a small church and in front of me. Even then, I had to question her desire on being signed.

"Then, I'll be talking to one of the execs." Jay stood up stretching, and then looked at me.

As long as I was around Grace, she never once said that she wanted to be signed. She never expressed that yearning of being famous or making money. In some sense, it was never about selling out stadiums or going platinum in record sales for her. Grace never cared about the audience or the amount of people listening, and she never gave a second listen to what those people thought.