Inside Out by Grayson Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

mutual affinity just confounded her enough for her to continue to be interested in it.
    â€œTracey, you don’t seem like you care that much about what other people think.”
    â€œGood, aren’t I?” she mumbled, grabbing another pillow and holding it over her face. He took that one away from her, too, then came to sit beside her on the couch, forcing her to crowd herself into the corner at the other end.
    â€œListen, this is stupid,” Garrett grated.
    She turned her head into the sofa, hiding her hot face. “Maybe, but that’s my reality.”
    â€œSo that’s it?” he asked and then was quiet. Tracey heard him swallow deep. She felt his hand reach for her left, which twisted in the folds of her shirt. He untangled it and held it. “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”
    Tracey nodded and sighed heavily, pained by this conversation, pained by how much it felt right to have her hand in his… They had actually agreed to deny each other. He got glasses and ice and poured more brandy.
    â€œYou need to eat something. I know you haven’t eaten,” he told her in the voice her mother used when Tracey was sick. He headed into her kitchen, taking her bottle of brandy with him. Tracey heard him put something into the microwave. He came back and sat upside down in her favorite chair. Blood rushed to his head. He didn’t bring her bottle back. “You should stop trying to please everybody. You should stop trying to be someone you’re not.”
    â€œThanks, Dr. Atkins, but I think you should try that yourself,” she returned sarcastically.
    â€œOh, you’d be surprised how well I’m overcoming it.” He stood after hearing the microwave ping, and then he brought her a bowl of chili.
    So they ended up telling each other their life stories of infatuation with social comfort and attempts to please everyone they knew. They ended up more than mildly disoriented. They ended up asleep together on her couch.
    All Tracey could remember was drifting off murmuring something about pretty arms and soft hair. She awakened to a feeling she hadn’t had since she was small when her father had let her fall asleep in his arms every night. Without opening her eyes, just from the sheer warmth and weight, she knew Rett was on her. She felt the arms wrapped beneath her waist and the head resting on her chest. She felt the chest spanning across her abdomen and the hips pressed against her thighs. Tracey opened her eyes—careful not to move—and could’ve sworn that she saw his close. She closed hers again. Nearly an hour later, he got up. She still pretended to sleep.
    * * *
    Garrett kept flashing back to what it was like having Tracey under him all that next day. Clay had asked him thirty times when he got home that morning where he’d been and why he was smiling so much. Rett had answered thirty times that it was none of his damned business. Rett took a shower, got dressed and went to class, all with Tracey in his head. Even during lunch with Kim, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
    Kim noticed and did the same thing she always did when she felt that he wasn’t giving her enough attention. She told him she thought she was pregnant. Rett answered the same way he did every time she said it, and told her that she was not. But his heart wasn’t in this monthly fight with his girlfriend of eighteen months. The phrase “bigger fish to fry” kept playing in the background.
    * * *
    That night at Tracey’s they didn’t drink. They agreed that they didn’t want to turn into alcoholics. Or rather Tracey suggested it, and Garrett went along with it. That was as good a reason as any.
    When he walked in, Tracey was sitting on the floor working on her laptop at the coffee table, and John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” was playing. Tracey never left her music on when he was there. She started to turn it off but