This story is my happy place; I do not plan on ever finishing it. It will go on and on like a soapie. Might break it up into volumes later.
"Grab a bunch of broken misfits, chuck them in a tribe, add some glitter and loads of weird-as garbage, voila...
My eyes trace the contours of Grayson's face in the photograph I keep on my cranky old phone with all the other images I managed to transfer there before selling my good phone.
It's one of the last pictures I took of him, about a week before his death, and in it, he had just woken up, his hair not yet styled in the neat way he favoured. He had a beard that year, a very short, well-maintained one, framing his jaw. In the image, his grey eyes are clear and bright, and he's on the verge of smiling; if I'd waited a second longer, I would've captured his smile.
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I know because just after I took this picture, he'd plucked the phone from my hands, dumped it on the nightstand and started tickling me, and he was grinning that adorable, mischievous grin of his the entire time.
Gazing at his face, I'm once again fighting the rising guilt coiling through my gut. I've just spent a few minutes exchanging text messages with another man. It started out innocently with me asking Devan how Tanner was doing and if everything was alright. I know how worried he is about the boy, and I was wondering if there was some way that I could help.
And then the flirting started.
If it can be called flirting. The man is insufferable! He told me that he needed someone to cuddle while he slept since Tanner had taken over all his animals, and he didn't want to be in his huge bed all by himself and wanted to know if that was the kind of task I was volunteering for.
It wasn't!
I told him to go brush his teeth, put on his big boy pyjamas and go to sleep; in response to this, he wanted to know if I'd like a pic of him in his 'big boy pyjamas' because I seemed to appreciate it the last couple of times I saw him in it.
Honestly!
I'm grinning now, and the realisation jolts my heart with another guilty stab. I am looking at a picture of Grayson while smiling about another man. That is horrible!
"I'm so sorry," I whisper to the image, nearly losing my grip on the phone and falling off my bed when Beth speaks from the door.
"No need to apologise," she says and invites herself in to sit beside me on the bed, her back against the headboard and her legs stretched out in front of her, completely at home. She is wearing her ridiculously cute ice cream cone pyjamas. The pink pants are covered in green, blue and purple cones dancing all over it, and each cone has a swirl of bright yellow ice cream in it. The T-shirt top is the same green as the cones on the pants, and on its front is a large grinning yellow cone with a funky wave of bright pink ice cream twirling out of it. This is Beth's idea of big girl pyjamas. "I love you just the way you are."
"Shut up," I scoff, flinching when she pinches my thigh.
"I saw your light is still on, and I'm dying to hear about your date, so here I am; entertain me," she grins, settling in, making herself comfortable and watching me eagerly with her bright green eyes.
