Grace [SEBASTIAN STAN]

XXI: real life

XXI. GRACE—CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

          Grace sighed when she pulled the car up to the lot and put it in park, Skylar cheering in the passenger seat beside her as she stepped out, pulled the seat ahead, and let out Danny and Wren. Grace slowly followed suit, locking the car as she trailed behind her friends.

          Twice a year her father held a team meal to honor how hard his team worked every day and invited all of their families to join in on the fun. To Grace, though, the entire team was basically her family. She could go to them with all of her problems, whether it be boy problems or girl problems (they may or may not have even showed up at her apartment one time with ice cream and tampons when she missed a game because of her cramps).

It was supposed to be a fun day at the beach — with her family.

          But then she learned her mother was going to be there. And she hasn't seen her mom in nearly a year. She didn't want to.

          Skylar grabbed Grace's hand, breaking her out of her thoughts as she dragged her across the warm sand beneath her feet. Momentarily, Grace forgot about her mother, but then she saw her; she was laughing at something her step-mother had said, and Grace immediately inhaled a shaky breath. "Hold on," Grace said. "I'm gonna go say hi to my dad."

          Skylar frowned when she saw who Grace was really looking at, but nodded nonetheless. "We'll be by the rope swing when you're done."

          Once Skylar left Grace's side, she made her way over to her family. She smiled when her father turned around, giving him a hug before moving onto her step-mother. The smile left her face, however, once she laid eyes on her mother. "Hi, mom."

           "Hi, baby." Her mother smiled.

          She could feel her mother's eyes look her up and down, and she immediately grew uneasy with the clothes she had on. She was wearing her swimsuit, of course, but over that was a navy blue dress — something that usually made her feel comfortable, but right now, she felt the complete opposite.

          She felt like everything was completely wrong in that moment, like she shouldn't have even come.

          She watched as her mother pursed her lips, tilted her head, and asked, "Have you lost weight?"

          Grace frowned, tilting her head to look to the area her mother's eyes were gazing at. She didn't remember losing any weight; it wasn't like her diet had changed since the last time she had seen her, either. But was she really losing weight? "N—no. I don't think so."

          "Hm," her mother hummed, her eyes rolling over Grace's body once again. And then, just like that, her mind was somewhere else. "Hey, how come you didn't tell me you had a boyfriend? What's his name again? Samuel? No, that wasn't it. S—"

          "Sebastian," Grace cut in. She didn't know how her mother knew she had a boyfriend, and she didn't even really feel like talking to her mother about him either, so she didn't question it.

          "Sounds fancy. I heard he was an actor," she said, and Grace nodded, shifting her weight from one leg to the other as she rubbed her arm nervously. "How'd you manage to do that?"

          Grace scrunched her eyebrows. "I—I don't know." Because she suddenly didn't know why Sebastian even liked her all over again. It was like being around her mother scrambled her mind, making her overthink things that she already knew and shouldn't be overthinking.

          "Aw, baby." And then she wrapped her arms around her in a tight hug. Grace stiffened beneath the touch of the woman, she didn't know what to do. The obvious choice would be to hug back, but that's the thing, she didn't want to hug her back; hell, she didn't even want to see her in the first place.

Once she pulled away, Grace felt a tug on her arm, and she turned around to see a frantic-looking Danny behind her. "Gracie, big, big problem — hi, Janice." Grace's mother nodded in reply, sending a smile to Danny.

Grace scrunched her eyebrows together in question. "What do you mean? What's wrong?"

And then he froze, like he didn't expect her to actually ask him. "Um — uh — Wren, uh, said code red. Whatever that means. She's probably on her period or something like that. How am I supposed to know? Do I look like I know what code red means —"

"Okay!" Grace exclaimed, cutting him off before the wheels in his head could muster up anything further to embarrass himself. Grace grabbed his wrist and wandered away without so much as a goodbye to her mother. Once the two reached the rope swing, she smiled to Skylar and Wren before saying, "You're a terrible liar, Danny."

His mouth fell agape. "Am not! I wouldn't have been in that position if you didn't have to question me. You know, most people would thank someone for getting them out of that situation."

"Well, thank you." And she meant that, because she was so, so grateful that he had noticed her uneasiness with the entire ordeal. "Really."

"You're welcome," he replied, smiling so hard his dimples poked out. "Last one to the rope swing is a rotten egg." And then he was off.

"That doesn't even make sense!" Grace shouted before dropping her belongings and taking off after him.

"Yes it does!"

AUTHOR'S NOTE: welp, i don't know what I just did, but I don't like hurting Gracie. but, as you can tell, grace's mom is the one who started her problems with her insecurities. it's not like her mom really knows she's doing this to her daughter, but either way, gracie is extremely uncomfortable with it, and danny knows that, which is why he got her out of the situation entirely.