The Bad Jokes #2: The Blonde

Chapter 14 (Wyatt): What's In My Heart

Only seconds after the elevator began moving, it jerked to another halt with a loud metal screech.

"Dammit!" Gracie cried in frustration when it was obvious we had completely stopped moving again.

"That's progress, though," I said calmly because I also knew Gracie was afraid, more afraid than she wanted to admit, but it was right there if anyone was listening, and I was. "They're working on it. I'm surprised they got us moving so soon."

As for me, I was grateful for any amount of time I got to spend with her, whatever the circumstances. I wasn't doing well without her, feeling lost and so filled with remorse there was room for nothing else. From the minute I'd fucked up until now, I'd been feeling desperate to talk with her. She wouldn't text or call me, and she'd made it clear when she called Alex in that she didn't want me around. I refused to force her to talk when I'd been protecting her, and after Your Fan made it into her house, I wanted to give her time to work through that terrifying experience. It'd been one thing after another until today, and today felt serendipitous. I hadn't been kidding when I told Gracie that I'd felt it was a sign from the universe that it was time for us to talk, and I was not a person who believed in shit like that.

"What do you want, Wyatt?" she demanded, her voice sounding exhausted. "Do you think anything you've told me changes anything? Am I supposed to be grateful that after a night of comparing me to Sheena, I came out the winner so you picked me?"

"That's not how my night was spent, Gracie." 

"You just told me that it was."

"No, I said I spent that night thinking. And I did. It was in no way a comparison between the two of you to see who came out on top. It wasn't like that. I spent some time thinking about the baby I'd fathered who I lost without even knowing he existed. That was a lot to wrap my head around, and sorting my emotions out about the baby was disturbing; I felt horrible that I didn't feel more than I did. I felt disconnected, like the baby wasn't real. Who knows? Maybe that was because the baby didn't end up being mine. It was a pretty lame fucking reason for her to leave me, but it didn't really matter this much after the fact. But other than the baby, my time was spent thinking about you. It was you, Gracie, not Sheena, that I was thinking about."

"I find that really hard to believe. Your former fiancée shows up and you aren't thinking about her?"

"I know it sounds unbelievable. And I don't blame you for not believing me. I'd find it hard to believe, too. But it's the truth, Gracie. I tried to think about things objectively, and she wasn't a thought or a consideration. When she showed up, I felt nothing except curiosity about why she'd shown up and then I felt sorry for her losing the baby. Other than that, I thought of you. I thought of you and the eight months we'd been together and how your smile makes me feel, the way you always smell so sweet, how pretty your eyes look when they light up because you're happy and the way you tug on a curl of your hair when you're writing. I just saw those pictures of you and things like that."

"That could all just be pretty words to cover the fact that she actually dumped you again, and I became your backup plan. Second place. The girl you're going to settle for because you can't have the girl you want."

You couldn't be more wrong. You're everything I want and more. I fucked up showing you that.

"Nothing could be further from the truth, Gracie. Not at all. Things happen to us that we think will destroy us when in fact they're clearing the way for something that was intended for us all along. I know Sheena leaving me opened the path to you, and I also know you were the woman intended for me, the woman I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with."