Page 121 of Seeing Grayscale

I wait three seconds, then stand up.

The decent thing would be to return the tote where I found it.

Is that what I do, though? Nope.

I carry it downstairs, stage it on the coffee table, and sketch while waiting. It starts as a depiction of Hunter, but quickly turns into a phallic-shaped body with his head attached to the top. I snort, adding some pubes in place of his beard.

Ten minutes pass before I start to question my actions.

Am I really going to harass him over this? What does showing him this even prove? That he’s had a sex life before me? That I’m jealous of it?

I chew on the pencil's eraser, reconsidering, and tell myself that it’s not important. Because itisn’t.

Nothing good can come from this.

It’s not like he will walk through that door and demand I use them on him. And it won’t validate me in the way I want.

Hunter has sex. He has a lot of it. Us having sex won’t prove to me that he won’t throw me away after. With a resigned sigh, I put my sketchbook down, heave the tote off the coffee table, and take it back upstairs.

It’s just as I’m shutting the bedroom door when I hear the front one open. Hurrying down the stairs, I skid to a stop when I see his face. He’s got a few bags of groceries, but it’s obvious he’s been crying.

Fuck.Why is he crying?

I go over to him, gently ease the bags from his grip and set them on the floor.

“Hey.” I place a hand on his waist, cupping his cheek with the other. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

He searches my face, fresh tears welling. “I met with my mom.” That can’t be good. “I met with her, hoping that if she could fix what she broke, I wouldn’t need my dad anymore. But she didn’t fix it. I think she broke it more.”

I brush a stray tear off his cheek and wrap my arm around him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. There’s no point. It’s…” Our foreheads connect as he sniffles. “I just wanted a different answer than the one she gave me. I wanted a way out.”

I kiss him quickly, then lead him over to the couch. We sit down, and I urge him to lay his head on my lap. Whenever I was upset about something, my mom would make me lie in her lap and run her fingers through my hair. The second I start to do that with Hunter, he melts into the cushions, holding my thigh.

“I love my dad,” he whispers. I keep quiet, soothing him with my hands while he musters up the courage to say what he needs to. “I love him, but I know he’s not a good person. I know that his opinion of me shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Why do I care so much?"

“Only you know that answer.”

I scratch his scalp, then drag my fingers through the hair at his nape.

“It used to be her. I used to love her more. She was my world. But when she started drinking and pulling away, he was there. He was always hard on me and wanted me to be my best, but he didn’t leave me. Whenever she was too drunk to help me with my homework, my dad was there. When she left, and I knew I didn’t matter, my dad would take me to work. He’d show me how to manage my sadness with other things. He never let me cry. ‘Don’t waste them,’ he’d say.‘Save them for deaths and divorce.’”

“What did you want her to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

He’s quiet for a while, so I work on massaging his shoulder and upper back. It's so soft when he finally tells me that I almost miss it. “I wanted her to be sorry, and she wasn’t.”

The rest of the day went by slowly.

Hunter moped around for a while, and I busied myself with a new recipe I found—hence the shopping trip. We ate our pesto while he told me what happened when he talked to his mom. As much as I wanted to have something to tell him, I didn’t. I don’t know what that’s like, and I can’t put myself in his shoes either.

If my mom left me, and that was her reason, I’m pretty sure I’d never speak to her again. And by extension, my dad as well for having given her an ultimatum that resulted in me being a fucking pawn.

But I let him vent.

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