Page 126 of All I Have Left

“I totally get it. I just don’t know how to make it better.”

“There’s always giving a helping hand.” She gestures, peeling a banana.

I laugh. “Oh my God, you’re too much.”

“Hey, if it helps him out, you never know.”

Now there’s an idea. I could do that for him. That wouldn’t hurt him too much, would it?

I take Grayson to physical therapy later that morning after he refuses to eat, but he manages coffee. He’s… unresponsive for the most part, barely holding conversation and frustrated they told him it’ll be a year before he can drive again.

On the drive back to the house, I make conversation, but he offers very little besides a nod or a grunt.

“Did I do something to upset you this morning?”

That gets a response. “No.” Just one word. Nothing more.

I switch lanes on the highway, chewing on my bottom lip and trying to find something else to say. “If it’s sex, I mean, I could like, take care of you. I know they said we can’t have sex but there’s other things we could do.”

He rolls his head to the side, staring at me. His brow creases momentarily. “You don’t need to.”

Why not? Has he already done it himself? Does he not wantit? I’m dying to know, yet I’m plagued with insecurities. Heat engulfs me and I turn the air-conditioning up a notch. He looks over at me, probably noticing the flush of my cheeks. Sighing, he grunts out another breath. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”

“Then what is it?”

No answer.

So, I blurt, “Frankie’s pregnant,” to see what his response might be.

Nothing.

I look over at him, angry that he’s ignoring me. “Did you hear me?”

He runs his hand over his head, staring out the window. “Yes.”

“That’s exciting for them, huh?”

“Sure.”

“Grayson,” I sigh. “C’mon. I’m trying here. I feel like you don’t seem to care about anything these days.”

“Yet you keep trying to fix me,” he mumbles, still looking out the window.

“Because that’s what people in love do,” I snap. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”

His jaw clenches, his body tense next to mine, but he says nothing else to me the rest of the drive home. I don’t either.

Humiliation works through me and I begin to wonder why I’m putting in so much effort. I know loving someone through a traumatic event takes time. This is not going to happen overnight and we’re going to have days like this. It’s not like in the movies when they wake up from a coma and everything is fine.

Trauma doesn’t work like that. It’s months, hell, maybe even years before you heal.

When we get back to the house, I’m in the bedroom going through his laundry when I hear his truck start up in the driveway and the roar it makes when he takes off in it.

Alone.

I see two problems with this.

He’s not allowed to drive.

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