Page 69 of The Boyfriend Boycott
“Is everything okay?” Spencer asks, nodding her head towards my shaking leg. “You’re very jittery all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I say, more to convince myself than her as I forcibly stop the shaking of my leg and choose to bite my lip instead. Something more subtle that she won’t notice but will be an outlet for my nervous energy.
I can’t say why I’m so nervous about this. At the very least it will show her that this place will always be hers to come back to, but at most … I can’t start to hope for the most. Because the mostis that this will be what convinces Spencer to stay. Forever. For good.
“Thanks for doing this, Grady,” Spencer says as we pull into the driveway, and I put the van in park. “I really needed it to ground me before I leave. To bring me back to myself and remind me what’s really important.”
“When do you have to go?” I ask. My words feel stilted, it’s a question that is demanding to be asked but I don’t want the answer to.
“Soon. Maybe tomorrow morning,” she says, her eyes cast down into her lap. “My manager just sent over the contract. I just have to sign it. The offer is better than I expected. But they want me at the office by the end of the week, so they can prep me for the first trip.”
My stomach lurches. I knew the day was close, but I was deluding myself into thinking that I had more time with her, before the chemistry that Spencer and I share will somehow have to translate through telephone calls and video chats. It won’t be the same. I’ll have to remind myself that it’s still her. That we’re stillus.Because through a screen, I know I won’t feel her the same way as when she’s here, breathing the same air.
I think deep down I’m afraid that the shift between us, the bits and pieces that we get from each other, won’t be enough to sustain us. The relationship will be experienced in bite-sized pieces, just a taste here and there until we forget how rich the flavour once was. Until the phone calls and video chats become fewer and further between, and one of them ends with a final goodbye.
I won’t let it. I don’t care what I have to do. I have resolved at this moment that whenever we hang up the phone, it will never be our final goodbye. If there is ever a time where it feels like it, I will fly to her to prove to her that it’s not. Because a year and a half without each other didn’t do anything to the sparkbetween us, so I know that no matter how much time passes, that connection will keep us together.
Spencer opens the passenger side door and is the first to get out of the van when we get home, leaving her answer hanging in the air between us like it isn’t supposed to affect us. Like it didn’t just punch me in the gut and suck the air right out of my lungs.
I follow her, grabbing our duffel bags from behind the seat and slinging them over my shoulders as I meet her by the front door.
God, I hope it’s ready,I think to myself as I fumble with the set of keys in my hand to find the one that will open the door and show her my heart, the very thing that beats for her and only her. Maybe it’ll be too much too soon.Oh god, what have I done?Spencer specifically said no boyfriend-y things, and this isn’t even boyfriend territory anymore; this is like, I’m so obsessed with you and not in a cute way. She only just agreed to see where our relationship goes, and if there’s anything that might make her feel trapped, this would be it.
“Before we go in there,” I say, my hand still on the key that’s stuck in the doorknob, “I just need to say one thing.”
Spencer looks at me, a concerned line forming between her brows.
“I haven’t wanted to do or say anything to push you away, to make you feel trapped, so I’ve been trying to show you all the reasons you should choose to stay. There’s one last thing I need to show you, but please, if it’s too much, just say so. Don’t feel obligated in any way to?—”
Spencer cuts me off by placing a hand gently against my mouth.
“Stop second guessing yourself,” she says, as if I’m made of glass and she can see right through it to my quivering mess of a heart. “Own your feelings, Grady.”
I nod, but I don’t open the door because as soon as Spencer stopped me, I knew the words that I really wanted to say, and I need to say them before I lose the chance. Before she decides that this all is too much.
“You showed me what it means to fight for something you love when you helped me with the council meeting. I can show you all the reasons you should stay, but I know that I also need to fight for you. I love you, Spencer. I have been hopelessly, desperately in love with you since the day you walked into my life. It seemed crazy, to have my thoughts so consumed by you, this amazing woman I’d met and gotten to know just for one night. I’ve spent the last year thinking of nothing but you, hoping that one day you’d decide to come back. Then you did, and I got a second chance. I’m not going to fuck it up now.” Speaking the words out loud somehow makes whatever nervousness I felt disappear and my shoulders drop, my posture straightens, and I stand by my truth. I’m in love with Spencer, and I’m fighting for her.
Her throat bobs and I swing the front door open before she can respond, gesturing for her to go inside. She goes up the stairs as if she knows. As if she knows exactly what’s waiting for her. But it’s not intuition, just the small trail of construction supplies and paint cans that lead her right to the master bedroom.
I take a moment to collect myself and take a calming breath before I follow her into the house. I make my way upstairs to find her standing in the middle of the room, hands slack at her sides, mouth agape as she takes in the space.
Hudson fucking nailed it. But he clearly enlisted some help.
The previously navy blue walls have been repainted in a rosemary shade of green. My old cane headboard goes with the room perfectly, and the bedding fits the description I gave him to a tee. Ally or Winnie must have helped him pick it out because it reeks of femininity. The duvet is light pink with small rosebudsall over it, and the olive-coloured gingham sheet is folded back neatly to give an eclectic mix of patterns.
But that’s not what Spencer is looking at. Spencer’s eyes are fixed overhead on the ceiling, where light gauzy fabric is draped, forming a billowy canopy over the bed. Soft, white fairy lights twinkle behind it.
She turns and looks at me with red-rimmed, watery eyes, but the expression on her face is a new one, and I can’t read the emotion behind it.
“Grady, I—” she starts, but she’s interrupted by her phone pinging in her pocket as multiple texts come streaming in at once. Perhaps messages that she missed while we were out of service the last few days. She pulls it out of her pocket and her eyes go wide as she reads the texts on her screen.
I haven’t breathed in what feels like five minutes. My chest is tight, waiting for her response to the room, waiting to find out if this is it, if Spencer is going to bolt. But the look on her face when she finally looks up from the screen tells me that I’m not going to get one right now. I’ll have to wait.
“It’s Mason. Ally’s in labour.” Shit. Ally isn’t due for another month yet, meaning the baby is early and she’s probably terrified.
“When? When did those come in? Did you miss it?” I ask, my tone panicked.
“No, they just came in now. We still have time, but we need to get to the clinic. Ally is asking for me.”
