I knew I was the idiot who initiated this conversation.

I was actually doing okay in the beginning. When we were talking about Matty's death. About heaven and hell. About the fate of Lydia's soul. I had wanted to listen to his side of the story because I hoped that, by confronting the past, it might help us heal in the present.

I thought I felt ready to hear the truth, but, damn, thinking it was one thing. Hearing it in real time was another beast altogether. This shit was hurting me more than I ever imagined, and Gray and I weren't even close to being done.

Tears pricked my eyes at the thought of Gray touching Lydia. It made me sick, it made me angry, even though he hadn't been my boyfriend for more than a decade, our history together should've been enough to keep him away from my sister. He should've known better. He should've respected our love even when that love didn't last.

A wave of fury, unlike anything I had ever experienced, unleashed inside me. The force of it caught me by surprise. It felt as though everything that had been simmering, brewing, festering in me over the past few months had, suddenly, come to a boiling point.

My voice trembled with rage when I fired at him, "Why did you kiss her, Gray? Why? She's my fucking sister! My fucking twin! Why did it have to be her?"

Gray gave me a look of utter helplessness as he stammered like a broken record, "I know, I know, I know. I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, Gracie. I fucked up. I know I fucked up."

"Just answer the question," I snapped harshly, "you don't have to apologize anymore. You guys already fucked. Lydia is dead. There's nothing you can say, now, to fix what has already been done."

His face crumbled before me. I felt bad for yelling at him, but I couldn't seem to hold my anger in check.

Gray gave a long, somber pause before answering in a whisper, "I-I think I kissed her because she was your twin. I was pretending she was... you."

It took a second for his admission to sink in.

My head turned towards Gray slowly. "What... the fuck? What kind of fucked up excuse is that?"

I didn't know if this new turn made things better. Or worse.

If Gray had slept with Lydia for Lydia, I could cut him from my heart without reservation. I could move on from all of my previous hang-ups about him without a backwards glance and just focus on our co-parenting relationship for Stevie. It would be a straightforward, black-and-white decision.

If he had slept with Lydia for me, though, the situation became all the more painful and complicated and hard to understand. My decision going forward on how to forgive him, how to handle our relationship as friends and co-parents, would become far more gray and muddled.

It would mean, in a toxic, terrible way, Gray had very well been missing me, loving me, in the same way I had been missing him and loving him. My mind reeled and my heart dropped as though my body was physically unable to accept the enormity of this realization.

"I'm not trying to make excuses," he sighed, "it's the goddamn truth. If I wanted to make myself look better, I wouldn't be honest right now. I would just lie and say that I had been too drunk to realize who I was kissing. But you deserve the truth, and I deserve your anger. That's why I'm telling you all of this shit, even though it's gutting you. And gutting me, too."

Wetness streamed down my face. "Fuck, Gray..."

"I told you, once I found out that Craig was out of your life, I started missing you like crazy. I started hating myself for ever letting you go. And Lydia was... there... and she looked just like you. So, my drunk ass kissed her... wishing... that I could kiss you instead."

"Is that really what you were thinking when you kissed her?"

"Yes."

His 'yes' shredded my heart some more.

"Is that what you were thinking when you fucked her?"

"Yes."

Another dagger to the chest.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed, despite my blurry, tear-stained vision, that Gray tried to reach for me before letting his hand drop back in his lap. I assumed he had wanted to comfort me but, then, second-guessed his welcome.

He made the right call.

I didn't want to be touched right now.

Time seemed to slip by me like a breeze passing over a small, insignificant pebble. The world was still spinning, but I was frozen. My thoughts and feelings grew so potent and chaotic that I couldn't seem to contain them. My grief over Lydia, my resentments towards her, bled into the hurt and anger and sadness from Gray's betrayal. These were the two people who, at one point in my life, I loved more than anyone else.

I became so worked up that I couldn't let myself feel anymore. I had to shut down. Step away. Distance myself from the pain. It was almost like an out of body experience.

In brittle tones, I ground out, "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

Gray's expression tightened with a myriad of emotions.

I watched him closely.

"No," he murmured, "that about covers it."

I cursed under my breath, "Thank fuck."

Just like that, the nightmare was over. Our conversation was no more. I didn't think either of us had the bandwidth to continue trudging through this emotional minefield. Not tonight, anyway.

Silent and still, we sat beside each other, Gray and I, on the couch for a while longer. It appeared as though we were both too stricken and scarred from our talk to move from our spots. Everything was too fragile in its current state. One more wrong move, one more harsh truth, and this truce, this tentative relationship, we had built for Stevie would come crashing down like a house of cards.

Yet, in my mentally shut down, emotionally distant state of mind, I began to wonder, like a bystander witnessing a train wreck rather than a passenger on board—

What was going through Gray's mind at the moment?

A flicker of strength rose from the rubble of my turmoil. Even during the most hard-to-hear, painful parts of our exchange, I could tell that he was remorseful. I could tell that he was trying to take full responsibility for his actions. I could tell that he wanted to make up for his mistake, but—

Would these intentions be enough for me to forgive him?

Would his actions speak loud enough for my heart to hear him?

Could our friendship heal from such a blow?

I didn't know.

Only time would tell.

I now saw Gray in all his beautiful yet broken glory and how his brokenness had ended up hurting me. It was almost too much to take in. He was definitely at fault in many ways, but he was also suffering in a very deep and dark way. Maybe even deeper and darker than my pain when you took Afghanistan and his abusive childhood home into consideration.

I couldn't forget about Stevie, either. She needed her father to be at his best. Mentally and emotionally.

All of these factors combined left me feeling bereft. I felt at a loss on whether to hate Gray or to help him. Forgiveness never felt further out of reach, but, God, how I wanted us to get there, even if I had to claw and crawl my way to that elusive finish line.

An unexpected burst of strength shot through my veins.

I didn't know where it had risen from, but the adrenaline propelled me to climb back into the passenger seat, to stop being a bystander in my own life. My courage floored me. The old Gracie would've never made such a quick recovery. The old Gracie would've brushed aside the pieces of her broken heart and soldiered on, giving away nothing except the miserable smile on her face.

Clearly, something inside me had shifted in the last few moments.

I wanted to reach a heavenly state of mind. I no longer wished to stay in this hellish cycle of resentment and anger and hurt. It was simply too much to bear, too much fuckery to hold onto before it ate away my heart like a cancer. For once, my motivation to change had nothing to do with Gray or Lydia. It had everything to do with maintaining my own sanity. I already suspected that it wouldn't be easy, but I intended to unpack the treacherous emotions from my conversation with Gray, one by one, in my own time, maybe even with a therapist, and, eventually, hopefully, let the hardness and brittleness of my pain soften and melt away.

Like ice melting into water.

Water could flow around any obstacle. It was soft. Yet, it was strong. It could adapt to almost anything.

I had always been soft, too soft, but, now, I wanted to turn my softness into a kind of strength as well.

I needed to do this for myself—

A series of muffled coughs echoed in the air, drawing my attention away from my epiphany.

It was the sound of Gray clearing his throat.

I glanced over to him. "Yes?"

Tentatively, he broke the lull between us, asking, "Do you think we'll ever be... okay?"

His question was vague, but I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I answered honestly, "I don't know, but I want to try."

Setting his jaw, he vowed, "I'll do everything I can to make things right."

"I believe you."

And I did.

Foolishly, I believed in him.

Foolishly, I believed in myself as well.

I cast a long, lingering look in Gray's direction, whispering, "Come on, it's getting late. We should go to bed before Stevie wakes up again in a few hours."

"That's probably a good idea," he whispered back, rising from the couch at last, "I'll help you get settled in..."