3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 01-03

After high school Zach had gone to university in Boulder for a year before he decided that he would prefer to go to culinary school. He moved to Berkeley and lived with Grandma Judy and Granddad John while he went to some fancy culinary school in San Francisco, where he'd met his fiancée Beth.

"Will you help me buy a dress for Zach's wedding?" She asked.

Nicholas had impeccable fashion sense, it was one of the things that allowed her to accept that he was gay. He didn't dress up or anything, he just chose clothes that suited him, and he always had cool shoes. All of her brothers combined didn't have as many shoes as Nicholas had split between the rooms in their apartment.

That wasn't really why she wanted Nicholas to help her buy a dress though. It had been six months since she looked at herself in the mirror and she didn't want to have to start now. Of course she had glanced at herself, you kind of have to use a mirror every now and then when you had hair as uncontrollable as Grace's, but she hadn't really looked at herself. She couldn't. She was afraid of what she would see.

He agreed to help and that weekend they went downtown and she let Nicholas shop for her. She didn't have the energy to have any input of her own. He only made her try on four dresses and then told her to buy number two. It wasn't anything she would have chosen for herself but it was an easy way out so she bought it. The whole ordeal lasted less than thirty minutes, and she was thankful for that.

When they traveled to California for the wedding a few weeks later she felt nervous. She didn't want to see her family again. It was too stressful. Their lives had gone on uninterrupted. they were still the same shining happy people that they had always been. To pretend that she was the same Grace that they had always known was incredibly tiring.

Once she was there it wasn't nearly as bad as she had expected. San Francisco was a fun town and Grace was happy to find that she was able to enjoy herself for some of the time. What had happened was still in the back of her mind, she still hadn't made it through a full day without thinking about it, but there were pockets of relief. There were periods where she felt like herself again.

Her family were staying at the same hotel as Nicholas and his family. Grace got a room to herself because she was the only girl, but Nicholas was sharing with his brother Lucas so she couldn't ask to sleep in his bed.

On the day of the wedding she was met with a challenge. She had to do her hair and put makeup on, which required looking at herself in the mirror. She hated every second of it, but she did it. It was Zach's wedding, she wasn't about to show up without her hair and makeup done.

It was a beautiful ceremony. Zach looked so handsome and Beth was stunning. There was real emotion when they exchanged vows. You could tell they were in love. She was happy for Zach, but it made her sad for herself. She didn't feel as hopeless as she had in the fall, but she still worried about her ability to have a normal relationship. She still worried that nobody worth having would want to be with her. Have her used goods.

Nicholas looked ridiculously good in his penguin suit. Beth had chosen a deep plumb color scheme that really worked with his dark complexion. He looked happy and she was glad. She knew that she asked a lot of him, and he always delivered without complaint, he deserved to have a fun day.

She tried to thank him for the things he did for her in little ways. She cooked his favorite foods regularly. She even made him foods that he liked but she couldn't eat because of the nuts in them. On his birthday she had gone down to New York City with him to visit his grandparents, which had been an odd adventure. He had complained about not wanting to go, but of course he did. He was a diligent grandson.

His biological father's parents were weird. They came from India and they still wore those strange decorative Indian clothes. They called him Amir, not Nicholas. Amir was his middle name so it wasn't that unusual, she just never knew anyone else that called him that.

They were strange, but they were nice. His grandmother made tea and served them sweet little pastries that dripped with honey. His grandfather spoke slowly and softly about how important it was for Nicholas to stay in school. When they said goodbye they stood on the stoop of their apartment building and waved as they held hands.

After their driver dropped them back at the train station he apologized for them.

"Don't be ridiculous, I thought they were cute," she had replied.

Zach and Beth had their first dance and cut the cake and then the floor was opened to the rest of the guests. Aunt Maya waited a respectable amount of time before asking Nicholas to dance.

It was impossible not to watch them. The dance floor cleared quickly and every eye was glued to Nicholas and Maya. They were the best looking people in the room and they moved like they were a part of the song. They were extra instruments, a visual expression of the music.

Nicholas was an amazing dancer. His feet moved with speed and precision and he manipulated his mother with a confidence that seemed at odds with his personality. He turned her and directed her, dipped her and lifted her. He didn't just lift her off the ground a little, he lifted her above his head and continued moving while she was up there. He didn't just dip her, he dipped her between his legs and then somehow flipped her and twisted her back into a standing position, moving seamlessly into the next series of steps.

When they passed Grace she could hear him issuing the next move, the next series of steps. Grace could see his hands controlling her, dictating what she would do next. Maya had asked him to dance but it was clear who was leading. Nicholas was in complete control.

It was... erotic. Watching Nicholas dance with his mother was incredibly erotic. It wasn't meant to be, she was sure of that. She looked around the room to gauge the response of others. Everyone was watching, but they were smiling and laughing and clapping. She was pretty sure nobody else's lips were tingling. She couldn't be sure, but it didn't look like anybody else's nipples were erect and sensitive and wanting attention.

Man she was fucked up. Watching her gay best friend dance with his mother in public was turning her on. Seriously fucked up. But no matter how weird it was she couldn't stop watching. She couldn't tear her eyes away from them. Nicholas didn't look gay on the dance floor. He looked decidedly masculine and very heterosexual.

The song was coming to an end and Nicholas lifted his mother by the thigh and rib cage and threw her into the air, into a horizontal spin. He caught her and somehow twisted her back into a standing position, took two more steps and handed her to his dad.

Everyone applauded, Maya curtseyed and Nicholas nodded shyly. Now that the song was over he had lost his confidence and was back to his docile self. The act was over, or was the act back on? She guessed that both the dancer and the shy guy were Nicholas, no matter the cavernous difference between them.

She went to replenish her drink and was intercepted by Jeff, one of Zach's groomsmen. Jeff made her feel uncomfortable. He was drunk and clearly trying to hit on her, trying to get closer to her. They were near the edge of the room and she felt vulnerable, she could go missing from here and nobody would notice.

She tried to keep control. She breathed deeply, separated her feet into one of the stances that Nicholas had shown her and slid back to what she thought was a good striking distance. She practiced taekwondo with Nicholas three times a week and now she tried to pretend that she was at the gym, and waited to see if she would need to strike. He kept on inching towards her and she kept on sliding away. She needed to stay at a good striking distance but him moving towards her was causing her to move further and further away from the rest of the party.

"Hey, what's up?" Nicholas appeared beside her.

Grace was enormously relieved. "Hey, nice dancing. Will you show me some moves?"

"Sure." Nicholas smiled at Jeff and guided Grace to the dance floor with his hand in the small of her back.

"Thanks," she said.

"Do you really want to dance?"

"No, I just wanted to get away from him."

"I thought so. I need a break, want to go outside?"

"There's an outside?"

"Not really, but there's something cool across the street I can show you."

Nicholas took her to a landscaped garden on the roof of a towering building. It was beautiful. There were old-fashioned lanterns hanging at different heights among potted dwarf weeping willows, their light escaping like the flashes of fireflies when the cascading leaves moved in the breeze. There was a small pond filled with round fleshy green leaves and pink lilies, and the large yellow bell-shaped flowers of the datura shifted softly like the trunks of sleeping elephants.

"How did you know about this?" She asked.

"I took an architectural tour of San Francisco with Uncle Josh and Aunty Anna that turned out to be a tour of privately owned public open spaces. There is a public ordinance here that says that all new construction needs to have some publicly accessible outdoor space."

She went to the railing and looked out at the view of the city around them. There was jasmine growing along the railings and she tried not to crush it as she leaned out to the city around her. Lights twinkled, horns honked, sirens blared and there was the sound of laughter on the street below them, but it all seemed oddly removed in the haven of the landscaped rooftop garden. It was hard to believe the world out there actually existed.

The air was cold and damp and Grace hugged her arms around herself. She should have brought her pashmina. She felt Nicholas' coat around her shoulders and looked up at him.

"You don't need it?"

He shook his head. "The cold air feels good after dancing, it was really hot in there."

She put her arms into the sleeves and enjoyed the remnants of his warmth. It was big and heavy on her shoulders, the cuffs extending past her fingertips.

They enjoyed the view in silence for a while. She wanted to talk to him but she didn't know how to start. There were a lot of things she wanted to talk to Nicholas about. She wanted to thank him, to make sure that he knew that she appreciated him and all the things he did for her.

"Are you having fun with your family?" He asked.

"Yeah, it's going better than I had thought. Ollie is growing up so fast, I can't believe how big he is. I'm tempted to go home for the summer, I feel like I'm missing out on his life. Micah and Matt too, but Ollie in particular."

"I thought you wanted to stay in Boston?"

"Mm, I think I probably should. If you are going to, that is." There's no way she would stay in Boston on her own.

"I was planning on it."

She nodded. She would stay with Nicholas, at least through this summer. She was getting a bit better. Her nightmares weren't as frequent now, they were still bad but they didn't come every night. All of the taekwondo was helping her with her self-confidence. She was still nervous and she wouldn't go out in the late afternoon or night on her own but she was pretty good during the day now. Maybe by the end of the summer she would feel comfortable on her own.

She had surprised herself by how well she had slept on her own in the hotel room. She had gotten a few hours in each night. It wasn't stellar, but it was a huge improvement from the last time she tried to sleep on her own.

"Your dad made a good speech," he said. "I guess I knew he must be a pretty good public speaker, but I didn't realize he was that good."

"Yeah, I don't think there is anything that he's not good at." Her dad was a physics professor, he was used to talking in front of lecture halls full of students, and it probably wasn't that different for him to speak at a wedding. "My brothers are the same. There's nothing they're not good at."

Nicholas was looking at her carefully, studying her face. "Do you ever feel like you don't belong?" He asked.

"Are you kidding? I feel like I don't belong more often than I feel I do."

"Me too."

She looked at him, his dark eyes steady. He was serious. She had never considered that Nicholas might feel like he didn't fit in, after all, he was genetically related to his mother, surely that should have given him some sense of place.

"Have you ever heard anything about my biological father?" He asked.

"Not really, only that he died before you were born, and then the photos I saw at your grandparents' place."

He nodded, he had returned to looking out over the city. "I don't think my mom loved him."

"What! They were married. You don't marry someone unless you love them."

"Unless you feel like you have no other choice. Remember freshman year of high school, when we had to make those family trees?"

She nodded. She remembered that stupid assignment.

"I got copies of all of the documents. She was five months pregnant when they got married. She was twenty-two and he was thirty-eight."

"So. That doesn't prove anything." It was pretty good circumstantial evidence, but saying that his mom hadn't loved his dad was a big jump.

He turned back to her, his dark eyes stunning her with their sadness. "Once I overheard my dad talking to your dad. He didn't know I was there. He called Hamid, my biological father, an asshole. He said he only did two things right in his life; He convinced mom not to have an abortion and took out a big life insurance policy."

Grace was lost for words. She couldn't imagine Uncle Tyler saying something like that. It had obviously deeply wounded Nicholas.

"Nicholas," she said gently. "Think about it, of course Tyler doesn't think much of his wife's ex-husband. It's just because of his relationship with your mom, it has nothing to do with your biological father."

"She never talks about him." Nicholas' voice was steady but she could see the pain written all over his face. "Even when I used to ask about him, she never wanted to talk about him, he's like an episode of her life that she would prefer to forget. Why would she need to be convinced not to abort me if she loved him?"

Grace put her arms around him. She didn't have an answer to that question. She suspected that he was probably right. Life was fucked up, but that's just the way it was, nothing can change the past.

"I was born with the name Chandrasekhar, she changed it to Galloway when I was three, and then to Gray when she married Tyler, as if changing my name would make me somebody different. Sometimes I think that when she looks at me she sees Hamid. She sees a man that she never loved."

"No! Nicholas, no, that's absurd."

"Why? I look just like him."

It was true, Nicholas looked strikingly similar to the photographs of Hamid that adorned the walls of his grandparents' apartment.

Grace held him tightly, she let her hand run up his back and into his short thick hair. "Kolya, you're not your father. No matter whether your mom loved him or not she does love you. I know that. You know that."

It took him a moment to confirm. "Yeah, I know."

She held him like that for a long time. There was more that he wasn't saying. She knew there was more and she was waiting to see if he would say it. When he didn't she decided to say it herself.

"Lucas isn't perfect, you know." She felt him melt into her. His arms, which had been resting across her shoulder blades, closed around her and squeezed her into a tight hug. He felt so good in the cold air. It felt so good to be the one leaned on for a change.

"Nicholas, your parents love you just as much as they love Lucas. My parents love you as much as they love Lucas." She pulled away from him and looked up into his dark brown eyes. "I know I'm not supposed to play favorites but I have to admit that I love you more than I love Lucas." She smiled at him.

Nicholas smiled back at her. "I love you more than I love your brothers too."

It was an odd declaration, but it fit. It worked for them, the family misfits.

"Kolya, I don't care if you are gay. I wouldn't care if you had a boyfriend or if you wanted to dress like a woman. So long as you are still Nicholas I don't care about any of that stuff."

For a split second he looked like he was going to say something, but then he shut his mouth and nodded.

"You getting cold?" She asked. Her arms were still around him and she could feel him shivering.

"Yeah."

"Come on, let's go back. You can teach me some of your fancy dance moves."



When Nicholas woke the next morning there was something very different about the way that Grace was laying against him. He was used to her legs against his back, and more recently he had become accustomed to the feeling of her back pressed up against his, but this didn't feel like her back. Her back was bony, this was soft and warm and luxurious.

Those were breasts that he felt against his back, pressing and receding in time with her breath that was a warm tickle on the back of his neck. That was her arm that was draped over his ribcage. Those were her fingers resting up against his chest. He realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt, her skin was pressed up against his. The whole effect was nothing short of spectacular.

He was hard as a rock. His cock was straining against his boxer shorts, looking for a way out. Looking for a way to get closer to Grace.

Shit. He had to get up. He had to get out of here without waking her up. She would be seriously freaked out if she knew that she turned him on like this. But he didn't want to move, he had never felt anything so beautiful in his life and he was having difficulties pulling away from her.

His boxer shorts were twisted a little, pinning his cock onto his inner thigh. He felt the wetness as his precum dribbled onto his inner thigh. Shit, he really needed to get up. He made a deal with himself; he could take care of himself in the bathroom if he got up now. He counted to three in his head and moved away from her. Away from the best thing he had felt in his life.

She stirred and he looked down to see if she had awoken. Bad idea. Grace looked even better than she had felt. Her dark curly hair was wildly tousled and it fanned out around her head like a halo. Her features dominated her small face, large round eyes blinked up at him, still half asleep, honey brown irises stunning against her light olive skin. Her plump curvaceous lips separated to say his name.

"Kolya," she sighed.

God, she was so beautiful.

"Hush milaya, go back to sleep." He wanted to touch her face so badly. He wanted to run his fingers over her delicate cheek and down her neck, but he stopped himself. He couldn't touch Grace. She was completely off limits.

Thankfully she closed her eyes and appeared to fall back to sleep. Her breathing was deep and even.

He got up and went straight to the bathroom without looking back. Shit. His cock was throbbing, it had never done this for Grace before. Not wanting to stink up the room he decided the shower was the best place for him. He didn't want Grace to know that he had jerked off in her bathroom.

He started the shower and stripped off the boxers that he had slept in. They were both drunk when they'd gotten back from the wedding last night, not so drunk that he didn't remember what had happened and when, but drunk enough that he had slept only in his underwear when usually he made a point to keep some form of pants and shirt on when he shared a bed with her.

He stepped under the shower, unwrapped one of the hotel soap bars and lathered up. Normally when he jerked off he didn't think about anyone in particular, usually he just thought about pretty girls and their breasts, but right now there was nothing he could do to get Grace out of his head.