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Lots of people seemed to have this idea that the Ideals lead exciting, glamorous lives behind the scenes. The tabloids certainly liked to make it seem that way, reusing blurry photos of him and Nick bar-hopping from three or four years ago and hoping no one would notice.
But being Fortitude provided Grayson’s life with enough excitement. At the end of a work week, the last thing he wanted to do was go out looking for more. All he really wanted, if he was being completely honest, was to sit on the couch and watch Jeopardy reruns.
That was what he was doing tonight. The TV remote in one hand, a lukewarm can of Arizona sweet tea in the other.
I’ll take Literary Narrators for $100, please, said one of the contestants.
Great choice! Here’s your clue: Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, who narrates the Great Gatsby.
“Nick Carroway,” Grayson answered immediately.
He hadn’t read the novel himself, but two years ago, back when Winnie was still in high school, Grayson and Nick helped her make posters for her Great Gatsby themed senior prom, complete with glitter glue and gold tinsel.
She only joined the prom-planning committee because she loved the novel desperately. While Nick added the finishing touches, Grayson stood by the fridge with his hands in his pockets and listened to her talk about the best parts. He told her she should try reading Letters to Milena because he thought she would like it and offered to write down the title for her so she wouldn’t forget.
I think I can remember Letters to Milena, she told him gently. I mean, it’s only three words. Then she laughed, and he laughed because she did.
Too bad she wasn’t here to see this. She was the only other person he knew who actually liked watching Jeopardy, and he knew she would have gotten a kick out of this question.
On the TV, the contestant answered, What is Jay Gatsby?
The incorrect buzzer rang. Grayson sighed and shook his head, drinking deeply from his can of sweet tea. “Poor sod.”
♡ ♡ ♡
Jeopardy wasn’t the only mind-numbing show Gray and Winnie watched together.
They killed many evenings watching American Idol together, a singing competition show that was only relevant ten, maybe twenty years ago. He and Winnie called it ‘the Trauma Olympics’, as every contestant seemed to have endured a life of terrible hardship, which they took turns recounting to the audience in front of a wall advertising different products and companies.
These tragedies ranged from very bad (a dead parent) to the pitiable (a dead grandparent) to really stretching it (a dead dog).
What song would you sing? Winnie asked one night.
Something by ABBA, he told her. Lay All Your Love On Me, maybe. But I don’t think I have the prerequisite tragedy.
She was laying down on her stomach on the other side of the massive sectional in Nick’s den, her chin tucked into her hands and ankles kicked up behind her. Her socks were pink with yellow polka dots, which Grayson thought was cute. He’d never thought of someone’s socks as cute before.
Oh, I don’t know, she said, peering at him from the corner of her eye. I think, between the two of us, we could scrape enough tragedy together to get you to the semifinals.
♡ ♡ ♡
Two episodes of Jeopardy later, Grayson’s phone screen lit up twice in quick succession.
WINNIE (2)
A smile crept across his face as he thumbed open his phone. Her texts had this effect on him.
They read:
ᴀᴛ 7-ᴇʟᴇᴠᴇɴ
ʟɪɴᴄᴏʟɴ ᴘᴀʀᴋ
Huh. A 7-Eleven could be found on practically every corner in Chicago, and Lincoln Park was Sally’s neighborhood, just north of the Gold Coast where Nick and Winnie lived. Neither held any particular meaning to him. What was she on about?
A third text came through, and his heart dropped like the first dip on a roller coaster, a gravitational slam to the ground.
ʜᴇʟᴘ
Grayson moved without thinking, standing so quickly he nearly lost his balance. He shoved his feet into the first pair of shoes he could find, typing out a reply with one hand as he grabbed the keys to his bike. He repeatedly hit the wrong buttons, deleting and retyping before he finally sent:
ᴏɴ ᴍʏ ᴡᴀʏ
♡ ♡ ♡
Growing up, Grayson’s father had moods. It was hard for Grayson to be specific about what these moods actually were, what they entailed, how he learned to predict them like the weather based on the way the front door closed or the amount of force used when he set his keys on the counter.
Sometimes they lasted days, other times only moments. One that stuck out to Grayson in particular was when he came home for the holidays during his final year at Eton. His father tripped on one of his school shoes and got so angry that he picked it up and hurled it right at Grayson’s face.
It didn’t hit him, of course. Grayson deflected it with his telekinesis before it could, sending it flying into a vase.
Go on, he told his father in the ensuing silence. Throw the other one at me. You might as well.
He didn’t. He left the room without saying another word to Grayson. Afterwards, as his mother swept up the glass, she asked him why he did that.
Do what? was his natural response.
Send your shoe into the vase. Couldn’t you have at least made an effort to aim it somewhere else?
Sure, said Grayson. My fault. I’ll just let it hit me next time. And then I’ll let him wrap his hands around my throat while I apologize for breathing.
Lately, he’d been toying with the idea of describing his father as abusive when the subject came up, which was more often than one would think. Chicagoans were, in the most polite way he could possibly put it, generally very rude and blunt people. Most of them, after hearing his accent, wanted to know why he put four thousand miles between him and everything he’d ever known.
He felt some guilt about that now, wanting to call his father abusive. His father was unpredictable, yes, but Grayson didn’t cower in terror of him. In fact, he was immune. Deflect, Fortitude—these were both things Grayson had mastered because of his father.
During a phone call, Winnie suggested that this ‘emotional deflection’ was a coping strategy he’d developed to deal with his father. Useful in his line of work, yes, but not necessarily good.
It was eleven at night when he called, but she always picked up. His timing was very deliberate. He knew that Nick knew about the calls—there was nothing Winnie could keep from him, even if she wanted to—but he always waited until Nick was asleep to make them.
Does it ever feel like I deflect you? he asked.
Well, you have to keep a distance from me, she avoided answering. I’m a Zero.
Emotionally, I mean. Do I deflect you?
Grayson felt a sense of deep familiarity and profound comfort around her. He wanted to know she felt the same way around him, but the idea of just asking her that outright was both unbearable and impossible.
She told him, I’m not really a projectile. I don’t think I exert enough force to be deflected. I’m less of a bullet and more of a…
Feather? he suggested.
I was going to say doormat.
Grayson didn’t know what had happened with her parents, only that they moved to Milwaukee a few years ago and left her in Nick’s custody. When he went to visit them, she didn’t go with.
At the end of the day, he didn’t need to know the details to recognize the wounded look in her eyes. Grayson used to see it every time he looked in the mirror after one of his father’s moods.
They understood each other.
♡ ♡ ♡
Grayson broke the law four different ways on the road to 7-Eleven. He wove through traffic on his motorcycle, collecting a smattering of honks in his wake.
He pulled into the tiny parking lot with a screech, kicking out the side stand of his bike and yanking off his helmet. The store was still open, the lights still on, illuminating the checkered vinyl floor and rows of silver shelves.
There was only one worker inside. A cashier. She was looking down, obviously on her phone under the counter.
“Have you seen a girl in here?” Grayson asked, trying not to sound panicked.
The cashier didn’t look up. “Yeah, sure. All the time.”
“She’s nineteen. Brown hair. Brown eyes.” Even though the cashier wasn’t looking at him, he held his hand up to his shoulder and added, “This tall, and, uh—she’s very pretty.”
The cashier pointed to the women’s restroom.
The women’s restroom was a very alien space, like the inside of a hostile spaceship. The lack of urinals disoriented him.
He knocked on the first stall. “Winnie?”
“In here!”
Two doors down, one of the stalls cracked open. Grayson slipped inside. As naturally as breathing, they maneuvered around the cramped space, pressing themselves against opposite walls. If someone were to look under the door, they would have seen two pairs of feet standing six inches apart.
“You came,” she said.
His eyes scanned her face. Her brown skin and round cheeks, her thick eyebrows and restless, dark eyes. She was dressed in an oversized knit sweater and faded boyfriend jeans. He noticed butterfly earrings, a touch of lipgloss. Her hair was down, glossy and dark and curling past her shoulders. She looked fine. Better than fine, actually, but Grayson wasn’t going to dwell on that for long.
Some of the tension in his shoulders uncoiled knowing that she wasn’t in any immediate danger. That she hadn’t been hurt. “Of course I came,” he told her. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” she replied automatically. “Nothing happened. I’m sorry.”
“Winnie,” Grayson said, gentle but firm. “Tell me what happened.” He knew Winnie well enough to know this wasn’t a joke or cry for attention. She wouldn’t text SOS unless it was something serious.
“Nothing, Gray. I swear,” she insisted. “I hope I didn’t freak you out. It’s just—there was a Ment here.”
She audibly swallowed, rubbing a ring on her pointer finger around and around. The habit was nervous, compulsive, and Grayson had to fight the urge to reach out and soothe her by shoving both of his hands into his pockets.
“You know how sometimes telepaths can get really irritated around me?” she went on. “Yeah. This guy, he got in my face about it, and—I don’t know, I panicked? Nick’s in Milwaukee for the weekend, so—”
“So you texted me,” Grayson finished for her.
Winnie nodded without meeting his eyes. She was chewing her bottom lip so hard that some of her glittery lip gloss had smeared on her teeth. “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice so soft it was almost lost under the buzzing fluorescence of the bathroom lights. “I feel stupid for texting you.”
“You’re not stupid,” he told her. “I’m glad you texted me.”
Winnie’s dark eyes flickered up to meet his. “You are?”
He nodded. “You did the right thing. That could have been much worse. I think Nick would agree.”
At the mention of Nick, they both fell silent. He could the pitter-patter of a dripping faucet outside. The mention of him sometimes had this effect on their conversations. It created a degree of distance between them, the reminder of what actually connected them. The only reason they were involved in each other’s lives at all was Nick.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked eventually.
“I was on my way somewhere, actually.”
“A date?” It came out before he could stop himself.
She laughed a little, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “No, I thought I’d spare myself that indignity tonight.”
♡ ♡ ♡
After graduating high school, Winnie decided to take a gap year. Two gap years, actually. She was at the start of her second. She had no idea what she wanted to do, and was as indecisive about her future as she was about what pizza toppings she wanted.
During that time, she’d gone on three dates with three different boys. One of them had been a prank. The other two went so bad they made the prank look merciful by comparison.
It was really only a matter of time, Grayson thought, before a decent one asked her out. She really was very pretty, way too pretty to go unnoticed for much longer. He shouldn’t have noticed that. He also shouldn’t have noticed how sometimes she smiled with all her teeth when he complimented her, and other times, she bit her lip and looked down.
I heard some great dating advice today, Sally told the kitchen one evening while Nick seared them all steaks. She was helping out by mashing the potatoes, her curly hair tied in a knot on top of her head. It bounced with the force of her mashing.
These were Grayson’s favorite nights, when it was the four of them at the townhouse. He and Winnie sat on opposite ends of the counter, forbidden from touching the food lest they ruin it, forbidden from touching each other.
He remembered this night her hand was resting on the barstool between them, just out of the view of the other two.
Sometimes he thought about it. Touching her. The one thing he wasn’t supposed to think about, ever. If he could, he would reach out and cover her hand with his, letting his fingers linger on top of hers. Like two tectonic plates shifting, finally, into position beneath the earth’s surface.
Winnie noticed him staring and looked at him curiously. He shook his head and pretended like it was nothing.
Don’t you want to know what it was? Sally asked the room.
At the time, they were all single. Nick and Sohvi’s situationship had predictably and amicably fallen apart, which was the current topic of conversation.
Nick reached onto the fridge and grabbed a carton of whole cream. Just say it, Salomé. Unless you need an engraved invitation?
Bite me, Nicholas, she snapped at him without any real venom. Then she looked at Winnie. Anyway, it was on one of those daytime talk shows the salon was subjecting me to Clockwork Orange style while I got my hair done. A matchmaker came on, and do you know what she said?
I’m not a mind reader, Winnie joked weakly. You’ll have to tell me.
She said, you probably already know the person you’re going to fall in love with. They’re a few cubicles down from you at the office, or maybe they’re the other regular at the coffee shop you go to. You just need the courage to ask them. Isn’t that so cute? Sally beat the words out with her potato masher. You. Al. Ready. Know. Them.
♡ ♡ ♡
The cashier gave them a judgemental look when they emerged from the women’s restroom then turned back to her phone.
Winnie was going to need a ride home. He couldn’t take her on his bike since she’d have to hold on to him.
“I’ll call you a cab,” Grayson said, following her through the chip aisle.
“I was on my way to Sally’s, actually. I stopped here to get snacks. That’s how everything happened.” She rubbed her forehead. “I should have known better. Small stores are always a recipe for disaster.”
Then she looked at him, her big brown eyes beseeching. God, those eyes. They undid him. “Could you, um—could you just walk me the rest of the way? If it’s not too much trouble?”
“You’re never too much trouble.”
Her expression faltered. “I wish that were true.”
♡ ♡ ♡
The walk to Sally’s was mostly silent. Winnie was careful to avoid the cracks on the sidewalk and Grayson was careful to avoid her, keeping a safe six inches between them.
If he could, he’d ask her if their calls were the highlight of her day, too. He’d ask what happened between her and her parents. If that was why she was always a little sad, even when she said she wasn’t. He’d ask her if she thought it was possible to be in love with someone you’d never even touched. If she knew what it felt like to love someone you shouldn’t.
When they reached Sally’s house, the glow of her porch lights welcomed them. They made Winnie’s round face look even softer, her skin warm and gold in a way that reminded him of the sun.
“I’m sorry again for tonight,” she told the sidewalk.
“Stop apologizing.”
“Sorry,” she replied automatically, then winced. “I mean, okay.”
“Tonight wasn’t your fault,” he told her vehemently. “That Ment— he was the one who threw the shoe at you.”
Winnie’s brow furrowed confusedly. “He what?”
Grayson realized what he said. His face got red and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “It’s a British saying,” he lied.
“Oh.”
They fell back into silence. He stared at her unabashedly, watching as she suddenly seemed to recede from him. He couldn't quite explain it. Her body was there, but he could feel her presence withdraw. It felt like stepping from the sunlight into shadows.
“You know those tar pits in California?” Winnie asked suddenly. “The ones that animals would wander into for thousands of years, get trapped in, then die.”
“Sure,” said Grayson. “La Brea. I’ve heard of them.” It was on his list of places to visit in the United States, somewhere after the Grand Canyon and Mars Cheese Castle (whatever that was).
“Being a Zero,” she told him, “it’s like being a pit of tar that everyone sinks into. They just get sucked in and held down there until they suffocate and disappear.”
“You aren’t—”
“I’m not like you, Grayson. I know you think I am, but I’m not.” She was talking very slowly, in the same way that Nick did when he was trying not to let his emotions trip up his words. “Bad things don’t happen to me. They happen because of me. I can’t control it. I don’t know how to be anything else. All my life has ever been is the pit and the tar and the sinking.”
Grayson’s gut twisted. “Winnie—”
He took a step toward her, and at the same time, she moved back. They were like two magnets repelling. He didn’t know what to do.
Winnie seemed to square herself. A breath in, then out. She didn’t look at him as she said, “I’m fine.”
“Winnie,” he said again, only this time it was pleading. She wouldn’t look at him.
“Thank you for walking me here. I appreciate it. I really do. You’re a really good friend to Nick,” she told him, still not meeting his eyes, “to go out of your way for his sister.”
Now it was Grayson’s turn to take a step back, his breath kicked out of him. Oh. So that was. Huh.
“You’re welcome,” he managed to reply.
Grayson bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying anything else as she turned and walked up the porch steps. When she went inside, it was like all the light left with her, leaving him out in the dark with his own thoughts.