Grayson Reid Jansen

    It was the day before my sister's wedding. The whole family was ripping and running trying to make sure everything went smoothly for tomorrow. More than ever, the pressure was on me. My mother had been on my ass even harder than before about making sure I took Brea and showed her a good time. To be fair, I was ready to take her because I didn't think much of it, it was just a wedding. However, I knew how women got at weddings. They start getting ideas about their own wedding and then they'll start dropping hints. Brea wasn't like that, though. Erm, I sure hoped not.

"Babe! Come on, we're gonna be late. You're taking for-" I rushed Brea downstairs but stopped myself when I saw her emerge from the bedroom. I finished my sentence,"-ever," and then dropped my jaw. She left me speechless. That body. Those eyes. Those lips!

Eventually I closed my mouth. "You know you're not supposed to look better than the bride, right?" I complimented her as she descended the staircase in her father's house.

He turned the corner so he was no longer standing behind her. "Take a picture, son, it'll last last longer." Chandler said, earning a weird look from Brea.

I snapped out of the trance she put me in and greeted her at the end of the stairs.

"It's not too much, you think?" Asked Brea, looking down at her outfit.

"Are you kidding? You're beautiful." I told her. She started to blush and gave me a kiss.

"Alright, alright. Get outta here before I have to kick your ass." Chandler joked with us, not wanting to witness our PDA. Brea and I laughed at him.
She then gave her dad a hug before grabbing her purse and wishing him a goodnight.

"You got your key," he asked her to which she answered with a nod.

Once we all said our good byes and good nights, I led Brea out of the house and into my Grand Cherokee.

...

"'Son', huh?" Brea cut her eyes at me as she applied lipgloss in the car sun visor.

"You caught that? Yeah, he says it a lot. You think it's weird?"

She hunched her shoulders, putting the visor away. "He really likes you. I think he's just excited to see me with someone other than Kaign." What she said make sense but I couldn't concentrate on anything other than the ring she still wore on her finger. The ring that he gave her around this time last year.

Let's try to have a drama free night. It's for your sister.

I remembered my mom's words. Swallowing my pride, I fought the urge to address the situation but I definitely wouldn't forget it.

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Mark had just finished saying some words while Holland watched him. He had everyone, except myself, Colson, and Brea, tearing up.

Brea was doing her job; snapping photos of any and everything from the food to the soon-to-be married couple and the beach we were located on.

During my dad's speech, my mom began coughing something serious. Everyone stopped and made sure she was alright before continuing. Too concerned about her health, my father took her away from the table and Holland went with, putting everything on hold.

"She's fine." I assured everyone but no one listened.

I downed the rest of the champagne in my glass and got up from the table without finishing my entree.

...

After looking for five to ten minutes, I found Brea by the water. She had her feet in a few inches deep and was taking pictures of the moon's reflection on the ocean.

"Hey." She said to me without even turning around to see who it was.

I walked up behind and pulled her body close, my hands gripping her hips.

"You wanna get outta here?"

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"YES CHANDLER! GIVE IT TO ME!" A woman's moans were loud enough to be heard from outside of the house, all the way downstairs. Brea and I sat on the step, cringing. She was covering her ears while I was traumatized, my eyes wide. There was no living that down.

Oof. It kept replaying in my head.

"This isn't exactly what I had in mind." I said to Brea awkwardly.

"No." She said back in a harsh tone.

I hesitated before speaking again but the screams were too prominent to shut out.

"Man, he's really giving it to her, huh?" I tried breaking the ice but Brea wasn't amused. She looked at me with a straight face and stood up only to walk down the stairs and leave me behind.

"AGGHHmandbdksshshshs." Chandler's screams were incoherent but it was pretty obvious that he just finished because after that, it got quiet and the light in his bedroom upstairs went out.

"Oh, God." I mumbled to myself in disgust as I was still sitting there on the stoop.

Growing impatient, Brea yelled from inside the car,"Come on!"

I shot up to my feet in a hurry. "Coming!"

======

"Is this better, Michelle?" I called Brea by her middle name. I liked her full name, it was pretty: Breanna Michelle Santana. Her last name derivative of her father's Argentinian roots.

I parked the car at the lot after we left her dad's place.

Brea looked above the dashboard and squinted her eyes over the high beams to see that we were at the site where I was building the house.

"Anything's better than listening to my father have sex." Brea complained, letting herself out of the passenger side.

We sat where the door would be if there was one, drinking from a half-full bottle of white wine I took from the engagement party earlier.

Brea was finished drinking soon after starting as she wasn't much of a drinker. Another thing I liked about her.

I finished it and threw the bottle out into the dewy grass.

"Can I ask you something?" Brea questioned me.

"Anything."

"What's wrong with your mom?" I knew it was coming eventually.

"How much do you know?" I improperly answered a question with a question.

"Not much, but she did tell me at dinner that night that she 'didn't know how much longer she had left'. Is she dying, Gray?"

"Slowly. She has breast cancer. And before you ask, yes, we already tried everything. She doesn't wanna take anymore medicine, says it's not the way to live."

"I don't blame her-"

"What?" I didn't see how she could say something like that. I didn't see how anyone could think that way? Medicine was there to help you, it could make you live longer, why refuse it?

"My father always told me when his time comes, not to send him to any homes or put him on life support. I feel the same way. Why struggle or depend on machines?" I never saw it like that before.

I exhaled deeply and put my head on Brea's shoulder. She started doing that thing she did on my back, tracing the balls of her fingers along it and making me guess what she drew or spell out.

As corny as it sounds, I felt ten times better when she started to touch me. It's like all my bad energy transferred onto her and she could take all my pain away. Stupid, I know. 

It was a full moon, the light shone directly down on us as if purposefully giving us a spotlight.

"What would we be doing right now if we stayed?" Asked Brea.

"At your dad's? We'd be getting ready to listen to round two." I joked, getting a playful slap from Brea. We laughed until she got serious again.

"No, silly. I mean, if we stayed at the engagement party? Would we be toasting, stuffing our faces, crying at your dad's speech?"

I looked up the midnight blue-black starry night sky and inhaled. "Dancing. We'd probably be forced to all dance."
It's like as soon as I said that, Brea got an idea. She hopped up and told me to stay put while she ran to the car and started it.

"Hey!" I shouted once the high beams blinded my vision.

A minute later, Brea climbed back up and pulled me further inside the building.

" Same lips red, same eyes blue
Same white shirt, couple more tattoos
But it's not you and it's not me
Tastes so sweet, looks so real
Sounds like something that I used to feel
But I can't touch what I see "

Some song started to play from the Bluetooth radio in my car.

"No. No, no, no, no. Dancing isn't our thing." I tried backing out but there was no way she'd let me.

"Oh come on, it can be." She smiled widely at me and threw her arms around my neck as she began to sway and twirl in circles. It was nice seeing her let go and be so carefree. She danced like she had no worries in the world. That good energy must've transferred onto me because I actually started to dance.

"Ahh, there you go!" Brea giggled and pecked my lips one time.

" We're not who we used to be
We're not who we used to be
We're just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me "

Brea sang along lowly, not sounding half bad either. Not bad at all.

"Are you sure this is a romantic song? Sounds pretty fucking depressing."

Brea put her head on my chest but kept dancing gently. "It's whatever you want it to be," she spoke softly and looked up at me with twinkling eyes,"it's our song."

I don't know about you, but I think that was the cutest fucking thing ever.
Not many things in life made me literally go "aw", because I'm not a total fucking pussy, but THAT definitely did (in my head, though).
The other things included: seeing Holland's first ultrasound, my first ever puppy, when Colson was born, and freshman year in college when Brea lost her contacts and had to wear these bifocals for a whole week.

"Brea," I spoke up,"I gotta tell you something. Don't be mad, I found out a while ago and I should've told you sooner but I was waiting to see if he'd tell you first."

"I don't care." Brea dryly commented, her head still buried in my chest.

I hesitated to talk again.

No. I wasn't about to not tell her and have her find out a while from now and then come at me like they do in the movies on some "you should've told me" bullshit to which I'd be all "I tried to but you didn't let me." So, I just blurted it out.

"Your dad's been seeing this Angie woman for a year now." The truth was out and no longer weighing on me. It was out of my hands now, I just hoped Chandler wouldn't be mad at me.

"I don't care." Breanna let out again. This came as a shock when normally she was so dramatic and took everything to heart. I waited a second to make sure it registered with her. After a minute, I figured she seriously just didn't care.

Huh. Would ya look at that?

Growth, I figured.

"I like you, Gray. I'm not going to push it and take it a step further, but I like you. Just thought you should know."

I didn't say anything back, only kissed her head and held her body tight as if we could get any closer.

"We'll never be this young again." She uttered, looking up to the waxing gibbous moon.

"I like you, too." I affirmed.

Brea created space between us before spinning gracefully in circles until she hit my body and left her back pressed against me.

" Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat
I'm just trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat "

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A/N:

Song: "Two Ghosts" by Harry Styles

(If you're wondering why I didn't include a video/the audio to the song in the text, it's because I have to use that song again in a later chapter and don't want it to be overkill lol...)

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Thank you, love you.

~Natasha Carmen