Anything but Ordinary (5 page)

Ten minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of Los Pollitos. “Is the food here good?” Carter asked, peering through the windshield.

“I don’t know,” Bryce said, opening the car door. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll call you when I’m done.” But before she could climb out, he was on the passenger side, offering her a hand.

He walked her to the entrance and pulled open the doors with their chili-pepper handles.

“Wait, you’re coming in?” She turned to face him.

He stood, hands in his pockets, looking at her. He pursed his lips and shrugged.

Bryce took her hand off the door. “You don’t need to come in.”

Carter scratched his chin. “First of all, you can barely walk. Second of all, I am a free citizen and can go wherever I want.”

She looked around. No sign of Gabby’s or Greg’s cars, or at least the cars they used to have. She
did
need help walking.

Then she heard Carter mutter behind her, “Third, I want nachos.”

She laughed as he helped her through the open door.

he dimly lit restaurant smelled like spice and meat cooking. Laughter floated from the scattered tables. A mousy-haired hostess approached, smiling nervously. “Are you Bryce Graham?”

“Yeah,” Bryce said, trying to smile back. “I’m looking for my friends? They’re, um—”

“They’re here. Come with me.”

Bryce was almost putting her whole weight on Carter’s forearm, but there was nothing much she could do about it. They followed the hostess through rows of booths, hearing Bryce’s name murmured in low voices.

Bryce licked her dry lips. This was it.

Gabby and Greg sat shoulder to shoulder at an elevated table near the bar. Their heads were close together, as if they were whispering. They didn’t see her at first.

Gabby was beautiful. Her black hair was out of its usual braid, flowing, and her features had become more refined, high cheekbones and large eyes, lips tinted with a darker color than her favorite bubblegum gloss. She wore a turquoise wrap dress and ballet flats. She was describing something to Greg with hand gestures, her face lit up.

Bryce let go and approached them in small, shaky steps. She waved to Carter slightly as he backed away somewhere. She was in another world now.

Greg had filled out, and his hair was longer. He nodded at what Gabby was saying, but didn’t look at her. He stretched his arms behind his head and put them back down, rubbing his eyes with his palms. Gabby laughed, trying to pull his hands away from his face, shaking him to “Wake up!” Greg laughed with her, still rubbing his eyes.

Suddenly Bryce was standing right in front of their table. She tried to pull down her T-shirt over her shorts, but Gabby spotted her and screamed.

She leaped off her chair and wrapped her long arms around Bryce’s neck.

“Hi, Gabby,” was all Bryce could say.

She smelled the same, like shampoo and lavender, and Bryce wanted to go back to her room and lie on the floor while Gabby lay on her bed, talking up to the ceiling.
Why
don’t we talk like they did in the olden days?
Gabby used to sigh.
Like, then, instead of “please,” they said “prithee.”
Prithee
, she would repeat, and laugh.
Prithee, prithee, prithee
…

Greg beamed at Bryce. She didn’t have to think about whether or not she would kiss him, because he began his tight hug with his mouth on her cheek, and ended it with a kiss on the other. She felt his stubble between her jaw and her neck, his back muscles against her palm. He stepped away, putting his hand through his blond hair the way he always did when he was nervous.

“Oh my god,” the three of them kept saying. “Wow.”

When they finally sat at the small table, they had to laugh. The world had become their own for a few minutes, and now they were back in a restaurant, and people were staring. Carter sat by himself a few tables away. He lifted his soda in Bryce’s direction and gave a small smile.

“So, you can walk, first of all,” Gabby said, gesturing to Bryce’s legs. “How is that possible?”

“Gab, let her off the hook for a second.” Greg addressed Gabby, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Bryce. She bit her lip, looking down when she met his intense, deep-blue gaze. “She just sat down.”

“No, it’s all right,” Bryce said. “I’ve had to work my ass off,” she began, and at the sight of them sitting there, waiting, everything poured out of her. She told them about waking up, about the hospital, about Carter and Dr. Warren. They listened, commenting and laughing at all the right moments. They waved away the waitress. They asked questions.

As she finished telling them about Sydney, her parents, and the weird new house, Bryce’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m not sad,” Bryce said, and it was true. “It’s just so nice you’re finally here.”

Gabby chirped, “We could say the same for you!”

Greg just looked at Bryce through his long lashes.

Bryce wiped her eyes on a paper napkin. It was a little embarrassing. She shifted. “So what’s up with you guys?”

Gabby glanced at Greg quickly, as if choosing who should go first. Seeming to make up her mind, Gabby dove in. “I’m going to be a lawyer,” she said firmly.

Gabby flowed and fluttered through what she had done, how much fun college had been, and then wove slowly into the sad parts: quitting diving to focus on academics, missing home and Nashville. She was headed to GW Law in the fall.

“And Greg,” she began. Greg had been interjecting
yes
es and
no
s, but said nothing of what he had done. He just sat leaning back, smiling or shrugging at Bryce when Gabby said ridiculous things. Like always. “Greg’s also going to be in D.C. Finding a job.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know,” Greg said, fumbling. He seemed surprised, as if he had been thinking about something else. “I like D.C. a lot. Pretty buildings.”

Bryce raised her eyebrows, trying to picture Greg in the capital, wearing a suit maybe, doing a desk job. He’d always had ideas for eclectic businesses, like selling boat radar detectors or organic horse feed, a new one every week. But maybe that was just the kind of thing you talked about in high school. “People go through phases,” her father had warned her after she’d hung up the phone last night. Bryce wouldn’t know. She hadn’t had the chance to grow out of anything.

“What about coaching, though?” she asked Greg intently. “Did you give up diving, too?”

“No, no.” Greg smiled back, his full lips breaking cheeks into dimples. “I rode it out. But not all of us have the whistleblowing skills of Mike Graham.”

Gabby smiled at him, wrinkling her nose, then turned to Bryce. “So, what’s next for you?”

“I don’t know. Want to watch a movie?” Bryce smiled hopefully. She had been looking forward to doing that, just the three of them. Just hanging out, like old times. Maybe they could come over after this. They could watch a Western, maybe some John Wayne, like
The Searchers.
Gabby would yield now, Bryce knew she would. Or maybe she would get her way as always and make them watch
Pride and Prejudice
, coma or no coma, arguing that Bryce hadn’t seen it in five years.

Gabby cracked up. “No, I mean, like, your life.”

Bryce opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. Her life had been all planned out—the Olympics, diving for Vanderbilt, another Olympics. After that, maybe she’d coach, or if she was lucky, keep training, keep diving, keep competing. Now she didn’t know. Her family, diving, and Greg were the only things she’d ever loved. The only things she’d ever really known at all.

“Not much of anything yet,” she said.

“We’ll find something,” Gabby said knowingly. “You’ve missed a lot, but there’s still time to figure it out.”

Bryce felt a strange twinge in her gut that she wasn’t used to feeling around them. Greg and Gabby knew who they were and what they wanted. Bryce should be happy for them, she knew that. But she didn’t feel happy. She felt like she needed to defend herself for being asleep for five years.

As Greg took the last chip, the hostess came by. “Are you sure y’all don’t want anything to drink?”

“Oh, I can’t—” Bryce began, then she stopped. This wouldn’t be like that time in Bryan Godard’s basement when she and Gabby were dared to drink vodka straight out of the bottle. They were adults now, right? “You know what? I’ll take one.”

“So, three margaritas?” Gabby said, raising her eyebrows at Bryce

“Yep.” Bryce nodded. She looked at the hostess. “You need ID?”

“Ha. Yeah, right,” the hostess replied shortly, and walked away.

“Oooh, Bry’s famous,” Gabby teased.

Bryce blushed and looked at Greg, wearing the same old Hanes T-shirt out of a five-pack, twisting two straws together with his long, bitten-down fingertips. He was different, but he was still the same old Greg, mostly. He used to ride home with Bryce after practice on weekends and raid the refrigerator. He talked technique with her dad, fixing an odd shelf or curtain rod for her mother while Sydney followed him around, asking unnecessary questions. She used to joke that he was better at being a Graham than she was.

“So,” Bryce said. She looked back and forth between the two of them, as if they were all lounging on the bleachers after a meet.

“So,” Gabby replied. But then her brow started to wrinkle, and her eyes squinted, holding back tears. “Oh, Bryce. We never thought we’d see you again.”

Another lump formed in Bryce’s throat. “It must have been hard.”

“It was.” Gabby nodded and let her eyes drift toward Greg. She spun her ring around her finger nervously. “The only thing that made it okay was that we had each other.”

Greg returned Gabby’s gaze, long enough for Bryce to feel like she had disappeared, just for a moment. She frowned.
We had each other.
It sounded odd, like something one of the characters from Gabby’s romance novels would say.

Gabby continued quietly. “The reason why I asked you what was next for you is because we want to share something that’s next for us.”

Gabby kept looking at Greg. Why was she looking at Greg so much? Greg looked back at Gabby, and then at the floor. He looked sad. Tense. Nervous.

“What?” Bryce asked. What did she mean,
us
?

“Do you remember how you thought Redding Greenberg had cooties when you were in third grade?”

Bryce laughed. “Yeah, of course.”

“And then, one day, you woke up and you felt so differently. You wrote his name in little hearts, and chased him on the playground.” Bryce felt herself turning red, but Gabby pressed on. “You did. You know you did.”

“I did,” Bryce admitted, smiling. “And?” she said, sipping water.

“Try to imagine that happening…but, like, now.”

Greg finally looked up. “Really, Gab? That’s how you’re going to do this?”

Bryce looked back and forth between them, trying and failing to meet their eyes. Her mind was blank, but her muscles began to tighten with fear.

Gabby continued, her voice trembling. “Like all of a sudden, you wake up, and things are different. You love someone who’s been there all along. And it’s so random, but that’s just the way you feel.” Gabby looked vulnerable now, like she was about to shatter.

“Greg and I,” Gabby went on, her voice getting smaller. “I…we’ve been together, Bryce. We’re actually, um. We’re engaged,” she said, and then she said some more, but Bryce didn’t hear the rest. After the word
engaged
, the dinner rush at Los Pollitos filled her ears. The hum of the lights, the clanking of silverware, the conversation next to them.

The noise rose to a deafening roar, but no one else seemed to hear it. Hot pain crept from her neck, pricking her forehead, her eyes.

“I just need to—” Bryce began, snapping her eyes shut to the hurt that was beginning to shoot from her spine. She couldn’t finish. She fell backward, or forward, she couldn’t tell, and opened her eyes to a strange sight.

The barn
.

Nighttime had fallen, making the walls and ceiling almost disappear. But this was a special place. Bryce knew exactly where the beams stood, where the stalls were, where the floor creaked. She didn’t need to see. And suddenly, a light came on, forming a small circle near the hayloft.

Bryce looked up. A halo of blond hair, the angles of a muscled shoulder. Greg.

Greg set the electric lantern on the floor of the barn, the light illuminating his face in sharp shadows. His lips pressed together, shaking. He looked like he had hurt himself. He was crying. Then he said her name.

Bryce took a step toward him, only to trip on nothing through nothingness, landing back on a chair, blinking rapidly, out of breath.

Gabby was looking at her with the same wincing expression. Bryce clutched the table, suddenly afraid it was going to tip from under her.

“Engaged to be married?” Bryce finally asked. She tried to swallow. There was a hot rock wedged in her throat.

The waitress brought their margaritas, and Gabby took a small, tentative sip. Greg gulped his down. Bryce watched the lime-green liquid of the drink get lower and lower until it was gone.

“Greg asked me when we were in Italy. I know that’s not—I can’t even imagine…I wish there was some other…I know this must be weird,” Gabby finally finished. She absently spun her ring around her finger again, and for the first time, Bryce really looked at it. It was a gold ring with a small yellow diamond, and it sat on the ring finger of her left hand. An engagement ring. Of course it was an engagement ring. Bryce hadn’t given it a second thought. People wore class rings, rings given to them from their grandparents. Nobody got
married
. Not
them
.