Finding Beauty (Rewrite)

Chapter 44

~Beauty~

Bethany nudged the cardboard box across the room with her foot. The process wasn't effective in the least seeing as it took her a full minute to get it to where it belonged. When she felt a muscle in her thigh pull from the effort she stopped, clutching her leg in dramatized agnony.

"This is too much physical exertion!"

Grayson looked up from the box he was cutting open. He was sweating through his t-shirt but that was because he had carried the majority of the boxes up the steps. Beth had purposefully taken her time with each one so she would have less to do.

"You've gone lazy on me, Rodriguez."

She wished she could sink back into a couch but the apartment was far from furnished. All she could do was sit criss-cross on the hardwood floor, surrounded by boxes filled with the two's belongings.

"I need nourishment. This is the perfect opportunity to try out some of the local takeout spots. I say we order a little bit from everywhere."

He put down the box cutters and wiped his forehead. "I'm with you on that one. My stomach feels like an empty chasm." Her friend playfully nudged her as he passed her, walking into their kitchen to look at the menus their new neighbors had shared with them earlier that day.

The apartment wasn't big at all. It almost felt like a room divided by thin slabs of concrete. There were no hallways and the rooms were so close together that if you opened the door to one bedroom you couldn't come out of the other. The bathroom was so tiny that you could almost take a shower while on the toilet and the living room was nothing more than a piece of empty space before you reached the front door. Even so, the very fact that they were able to afford such a place in New York City was a miracle. All the credit went to Grayson's grandmother who had set aside a fund for him to use when he got older.

It would be strange no longer living with her mother but she knew that it was a necessary change. Despite her mother being clean for months, she had to break out of the parent-child dynamic she had settled into. She could love her mother and have her be an important part of her life without letting her close enough to hurt her in the ways that she used to.

Bethany thought that she would have to make the move all on her own and that it would only be possible after months or even years of working to get enough money to do so. However, a few days after being back Grayson had heard of her plans and asked her if she would want to get an apartment with him and split the rent. The 2 had been friends for years so there was no one else to trust more to have as a roommate. In all honesty, she was blown away by how everything seemed to be working out.

Her mother hadn't worked for years because of her addiction so her resume wasn't exactly stunning. Still, she had found a job in retail that paid fine for the time being. Beth had spent a lot of time with her upon her return. They often stood up late talking to each other - not about what happened when Bethany was gone, her mother had put her through too much for her to feel comfortable enough to share all that happened - but about simpler things like her mother's job or registering for new classes at the college. Their dynamic had shifted into a friendship and as much as Beth would have preferred for it to be restored to a healthy mother-daughter relationship, she understood that these things took time.

Bethany did not have to deal with much questioning of her story. Detective Brandon, for whatever reason, had taken what she said as the truth. When news outlets reached out to him asking about what Bethany had gone through, if she was an accomplice or victim, he gave them one answer: Bethany was suffering from trauma and was unable to recall the majority of what occurred. He was only able to say that because Beth had gotten a psychiatric evaluation that conformed to this theory. She didn't know how she had managed to fool a psychiatric professional. Sometimes she wondered if she was experiencing some trauma but in a different sense than everyone else thought. Either way, her story didn't give the news much to work with and soon she was no longer in the headlines.

Grayson, however, wasn't as keen to accept her story.

"You can tell me what really happened, you know. You know you can trust me," he'd say in the lulls of their conversations.

"You have to remember why you were in the forest with Ryan Daniel's. Don't you have the slightest idea what happened to him? Do you remember seeing me at the masquerade? What happened after you ran away?"

One time, he had even asked her about roses. He asked her if she believed in magic right afterwards and he almost got her to spill everything to him. It seemed like he somehow knew way more than he was letting on but was reluctant to tell her what he knew until she told him what she knew. It was an awkward dance they were doing, circling around each other waiting for the other person to give first. The idea of telling him had been quickly shot down once she caught him in a fit of anger after a news report came on stating that the Beast had gone unspotted for months, taking him off of the NYPD's most wanted list.

"That is nonsense!" he yelled at the TV screen. "Just because he hasn't been seen doesn't mean everything he did just disappears! He still kidnapped you! The police should be ordered to shoot him on sight. If anyone deserves the death penalty it's him."

Bethany had shrunk back into the couch cushions, covering her face with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She knew Grayson didn't have the full story but couldn't see him coming to love Teagan like she did when he had harbored such a festering hate for him all this time. It deeply hurt her to hear him say such harsh things and it made her question if her best friend was the same guy he was when she left.

She had seen the remnant of his injuries from when he had gone searching for her. Her friends from school had texted her numerous different versions of the same tale on how he had taken down a whole gang thinking that she was in their possession. She also knew that these injuries, mental and physical, had kept him from playing football and thus caused him to lose his scholarship. His parents didn't say it but the relief in their eyes when they saw Beth again was not entirely for her but for Grayson.

"We have Italian, Chinese, Mexican, and a burger place. What are we feeling?" Grayson held out the menu to her. She didn't even need to look at them.

"Mexican, por favor!"

He scratched his chin. "Let me guess. You want some chicken fajitas?"

"And you want steak quesadillas."

He clutched his heart with an animated expression. "You really know me."

After dialing the number of the take out place, Grayson left the menu on one of the boxes next to Bethany. The front of the menu had a large red rose printed on top of it. She hated how a simple flower could make her insides turn and her hand shake. Suddenly, the empty apartment was his empty house. Suddenly, she was back there dancing with him. She was back to feeling the lump in her throat knowing that their minutes together were ticking away. She was back to wishing she could walk into the next room and ask him to play Jenga or Game of Life. She was back to hoping she would hear rock music blaring through his speakers from the floor above her. She was back to wishing someone could compete with her sarcastic remarks, hoping someone would let her ramble for hours at a time without saying a word but still managing to make her feel listened to.

She was back to wanting to break the curse, to see Teigan get his mother back and get a do-over. She wanted them to have a do-over.

She had made him promise that he would break the curse and come find her but she knew that she had really made him lie.