I pinched my eyes shut. I was going to lose it. The tears weren’t going to stay back forever. I had minutes, maybe seconds, left before I fell apart.
“It’s fine,” I insisted again as I pulled out of Aiden’s embrace. “You know I could never hate you.”
Aiden sent me a megawatt smile. “Thanks, Aves.” He kissed my cheek and whispered, “You’re the best.”
I couldn’t speak now without giving myself away, so I just nodded.
Cheryl must have recognized the truth of my emotional state, because she cleared her throat and asked Aiden if he wouldn’t mind taking the garbage bag with all the broken glass out to the dumpster.
Cheryl threw her arms around me the second he was gone. “Avery, I am so sorry! So, so sorry! I don’t understand . . .” She let her voice trail off. She was every bit as bewildered as I was.
“It’s okay, Cheryl. It’s fine. Really.” I pushed away from her and practically ran out of the room. I only made it to the upstairs hallway before I collapsed to the floor and cried.
A few minutes later the door downstairs slammed. I sucked in a deep breath, knowing I needed to at least make it to my room before Aiden rounded the corner and saw me, but it was my mother’s voice I heard, not Aiden’s.
Her jovial “Grayson! Avery! Go help Aiden bring up the groceries!” was not repeated like it normally would have been when neither of us responded. Instead, I could hear a few hushed whispers and then one very loud, startled gasp. Cheryl had just spilled the beans to my mother, and they were no doubt discussing how destroyed I was.
I scrambled to my feet when I heard my mom say “I’ll go talk to her. Maybe I’ll take her out just the two of us for New Year’s Eve tonight.”
No way did I want to do that. I loved my mom and all, but I wasn’t ready to face the truth yet. I was in way too much shock. Stage one of the grieving process? Currently underway.
I also didn’t need a special pity party tonight while the Kennedy family pretended like they didn’t know why mom and I ditched them.
In a panic I burst through the first door I could find and backed up against it. I’d been known to have an anxiety attack or two in my time, but I’d never experienced one quite as bad as this. My head was swimming, every part of my body hurt, I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t think straight.
I was so out of it that I’d slipped into the bathroom while Grayson was in the shower, and I didn’t even notice until he poked his head out from behind the curtain with a surprised look on his face. “Aves, babe, I’m a little busy here.” He cocked an eyebrow and gave me a crooked smile. “Unless you’re planning to join me . . . ?”
Just then there was a loud knock on the door, and my mother’s worried voice called out to me. I looked up at Grayson and in a moment of sheer panic didn’t think twice before jumping behind the curtain with him.
“Whoa! Avery! I was only teasing!”
I could hear Grayson, but I couldn’t really respond. I leaned my back against the cold tile wall and closed my eyes, letting the hot water rain down on me.
There was another knock, louder this time, and then the door opened. “Avery? That you in here, sweetie?”
I frantically shook my head, praying that Grayson would do the right thing.
“Sorry, Kaitlin. It’s just me.”
“Oh. Sorry, Grayson. I thought maybe you were Avery.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he teased.
My mom laughed and then sighed heavily. “If you see her after you’re done, tell her I’m looking for her.”
“Will do.”
The door clicked shut and things got quiet. I stood there for so long that my head started to hurt and I got really dizzy. My knees buckled.
Grayson quickly caught me under the arms. “Avery, breathe,” he commanded.
I took a breath. As oxygen flooded my lungs, I realized it was probably the first breath I’d taken in minutes. Literally.
“Aves,” a low steady voice said. I felt hands on either side of my face.
I opened my eyes, and Grayson’s beautiful piercing blue ones were staring down at me from just inches away, taking up my entire field of vision. “You good now?” he asked.
I may have been breathing, but I would never be “good” again. I flung my arms around him and began to release gut-wrenching sobs into his chest.
I have no idea how long I stayed like that, holding onto Grayson for dear life while I shattered from the inside out. However long it was, Grayson never tried to stop me. He held me close and rocked me beneath the spray of the hot water, all the while whispering encouraging sentiments to me and stroking my hair.
Eventually the anxiety attack faded, and I regained control of myself. Of course, that’s when I realized I was standing in the shower clinging to a very naked Grayson Kennedy and that certain parts of him were not objecting to the situation.
I gasped and tried to wrench myself away from him, but he held me tight and chuckled. “It is what it is, Aves. I’m a warm-blooded guy standing naked in a shower, holding a girl whose t-shirt is drenched and clinging rather poetically to her surprisingly impressive figure.”
This time when I gasped, Grayson let me go. He was still laughing long after I scrambled out of the tub. I didn’t feel bad when I stole his towel and left him to fend for himself when he was ready to get out.
(Yeah, you read that right. If Avery gets one of these nifty prologue thingies to explain herself, then so do I. She’s not the only one with a story to tell here!)
Grayson
First of all, let the record show that journals are completely lame. I’ll probably get gyneco-whatever-it-was just for owning the stupid thing.
Secondly—and this is the more important point I need to make in my one-of-a-kind-totally-brilliant extra prologue—Avery’s experiment is a load of crap.
Avery Shaw is not really suffering from an actual broken heart. Oh, she’s hurt for true. No doubt my idiot little brother messed her up good, for which he will receive a proper beating someday, I promise you that. But Avery was not really in love with Aiden and, therefore, is not suffering from a true broken heart.
What Avery is really suffering from is a heaping load of rejection and a detrimental dose of codependence.
Avery and Aiden are a truly whacked-out case. Our moms screwed them both out of any chance at normalcy long before they were ever born. Of course Avery loves Aiden, but she has no freaking clue what it means to be in love with someone. She only thinks she does. Her perspective is unbelievably skewed in the direction of Crazytown.
To Avery, Aiden is familiar and safe. She translates those feelings of security into being in love with him because it’s easier than seeing them for what they really are—a crutch she uses to cope with her shyness and social anxiety issues.
So, you see, her theory that she is going to magically cure herself by experiencing the seven stages of grief is total bull. Luckily, she has a partner on this project that is not as dumb as everyone thinks he is. I am going to fix her with an experiment of my own.
While Avery is going through her deluded journey of getting over my brother—which, again, I am fully supportive of and will do whatever work she needs me to—I will be doing all the real work behind the Avery Shaw Experiment.
When I’m through with her, Avery Shaw will be a fully-functional, beautiful, self-confident, emotionally-stable young woman who is ready to experience actual real love, with or without her precious seven stages of grief.
Also, my baby brother will forever regret the day he made the stupidest mistake of his life.
Grayson
Where does one even begin when talking about Avery Shaw? I’ve known her, her whole life, and yet I’ve never really gotten to know her.