3. The Grace I've Known Ch. 07-09

Adrian smiled and shook his head. "Dude, just say it. The bitch was fucked up."

Nicholas laughed, as much as Adrian was a bit of a simpleton, this time he had really distilled the essence of an argument into one phrase that said it all. "The bitch was fucked up," Nicholas repeated.

"Grace wants me to go to the police."

Nicholas wasn't surprised. "Are you going to?"

"I dunno, I'd feel like a dick, I think they'd laugh at me."

Nicholas shrugged. "I don't know. I can see it both ways. On the one hand it should be illegal to perform sex acts on someone who is sleeping and so you have every right to file a complaint. On the other hand I don't think she realized that she was doing anything wrong. Morally wrong perhaps, but not physically wrong. I think she just assumed that is what all guys want."

Adrian appeared to be deep in thought, he was staring out the door of the tent at nothing in particular. Finally he shook his head. "Fuck," he said. "Thank god you walked in. I couldn't imagine the extra level of shitty I would be feeling right now if she had have... well, you know."

Either Adrian was an excellent actor or Grace was right, he'd been sexually assaulted. Nicholas thought it was the latter.

A few weeks later they traveled back to Denver for thanksgiving. Nicholas was both looking forward to seeing his family and dreading it at the same time. He was going to tell his mom that he wasn't gay. He didn't know how she would take it. It had been almost a year and they had never had a conversation about his sexuality, so he had no idea how she felt about it.

Grace seemed on edge too. She had told her mom that she could tell her dad about the rape and she was nervous to see him.

His dad picked them up from the airport. He looked different, there was something wrong with his face. His nose was swollen. Nicholas waited until they had dropped Grace off before asking what had happened.

His dad grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat. "Nothing, I just walked into a door."

"What? I don't believe that for a second. Someone hit you. Did Lucas hit you?" Lucas was a nice kid but he was fourteen years old, if there was an age for striking out, it was probably pretty close to fourteen. Nicholas didn't want his kid brother turning into a thug or a bully, if he'd hit their dad he was going to give him an earful about it.

"Huh? No, it wasn't Lucas... Sam hit me. He lost it when Emma told him about Grace, he was looking for someone to blame. Don't say anything. He feels really bad about it, and the boys don't know. We're not going to tell the boys about Grace's... ordeal. Emma says it would be too challenging for them."

"But Mom must know?"

"Yeah, she pieced it together that something had happened to Grace and I confirmed it. She was pretty upset on a number of different levels."

"Mm, yeah well it was always going to be upsetting. Not much can be done about that."

Nicholas couldn't believe that Sam had hit his dad. He must have really flown off the handle. It was totally out of character for Sam, he was usually a very calm and collected person. Now Nicholas understood why Emma thought that it was for the best that Grace hadn't told him right away.

He wasn't sure if Sam was stable or not. When he saw him that night he seemed calm enough but there was something in his demeanor that belied his unease. His smile was just a split-second too slow. It made Nicholas nervous. He didn't want Grace around someone who was not stable.

He was both cautious and relieved when Sam asked him to go to the store with him to pick up some last minute items that he needed for the thanksgiving dinner.

Once they were in the car he dropped the façade.

"Fuck," Sam said, shaking his head.

That one word was warning enough for Nicholas. He had only ever heard Sam say fuck once before, when Grace had accidentally eaten a granola bar that had pecans in it and Sam had to use an epipen on her to prevent her from going into anaphylactic shock.

Nicholas wasn't afraid of Sam physically, he was just afraid of what he was going to say to him about keeping Grace's secret. Sam was his Uncle. He had taken care of Nicholas every Thursday and Friday when he was a kid, and had been loving and supportive to a fault. He had driven him from school to ballet on Thursdays and taekwondo on Fridays. He had been the one who taught him how to drive because Nicholas' dad got motion sickness too badly to be able to do it.

Nicholas had betrayed him, but then he had betrayed them all.

"I don't know what I want to say to you," Sam admitted. "I've been feeling this way a lot since Emma told me. I feel angry and powerless and nauseated but there is nobody to blame. I wish there was somebody that I could focus all of my hate on, but there isn't. So what do I do with it? How do I make it go away?"

Nicholas didn't know what to say. He rarely thought about Grace's attackers. At first there hadn't been enough time, he was running around trying to medicate her and keep her life in motion and live his all at the same time. Once things settled down he had thought about them every now and then but when he felt the anger he would just go to the gym and work out, which turned the anger into sadness. Sadness was easier for Nicholas to handle.

Sam sighed and was silent for a time.

"Thank you for looking after Grace," he said quietly. "I don't like the fact that she couldn't come to us when it happened, but I'm glad she went to you. Emma says you dealt with this better than we would have and I guess I should trust her on that."

"You don't need to thank me Sam. This is Grace that we're talking about, how could I not look after Grace?"

Although Nicholas had meant to reassure him, he watched Sam's hands grip the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. He looked at his face and saw that his jaw was clenched and his eyes were staring straight ahead. Why had that pissed him off?

Nicholas thought it best to keep his mouth shut, so he sat still and waited to see if Sam had anything else to say.

"I don't like it that I was the only man around here who wasn't allowed to know, who wasn't allowed to help. She is my daughter. I should have been allowed to help, not Tyler."

Sam didn't get it. He didn't understand why Grace couldn't tell him. "Sam, this is going to sound really fucked up, but just listen... For a long time Grace blamed herself for what happened. I know it sounds stupid, but she really honestly believed that it was her fault. She couldn't tell you because she was ashamed. You and Emma taught her that sex was special, and then some men raped her and she thought she had let you down by not being able to prevent it. The only reason she let me tell my dad was because she cared less about his perception of her. That and we needed him financially."

Sam was crying. Tears rolled down his cheeks and stuttered over the stubble on his jaw. Nicholas had never seen Sam cry before. His dad cried at the drop of a hat, but not Sam.

"I want to pay your dad back but he says he doesn't have the records."

Poor Sam. This was really crushing him. His dad probably hadn't kept any records, he was stupid when it came to money.

"I have them. I can tell you how much it all cost."

"You kept records?" Sam seemed surprised.

"Of course... health expenditures are tax deductible."

Sam took his eyes off the road and looked at Nicholas for a moment and then he burst out laughing.

Nicholas didn't understand. Was Sam hysterical? He didn't appear to be out of control, he seemed to be genuinely amused.

"What?" Nicholas asked.

Sam shook his head. He was smiling when he said, "Kolya, you are one in a million."

Nicholas waited until after thanksgiving to show Sam the spreadsheet of all of Grace's medical expenses. He had a separate one that had all of the other things that his dad had paid for; the deposit and rent for the apartment and all of the furniture in it.

He walked Sam through it line by line.

"This is where she reached the maximum benefit for mental health care," he explained when he got to the point where her psychologist's bill went from the co-pay of thirteen dollars to the full price of ninety dollars. "She was going to stop seeing her shrink when that happened but I encouraged her to keep going so we compromised and from here on she only went every other week."

The bills after August first were tabulated separately, and he explained, "This is when I started paying for everything."

"What?" Sam asked.

"I started paying here, on August first, after I got paid for the movie."

"Why?"

Nicholas wasn't about to tell him the truth. He wasn't going to tell Sam that he paid for Grace because he wanted to. "It was just easier. I got her a credit card linked to my account so she could pay for stuff on her own. That way I didn't need to be physically there when she saw her psychologist or needed to pay for a test."

"Oh... Okay." Sam was staring at him, watching him carefully.

Nicholas tried not to let it bother him, he continued explaining the expenditures. "You'll notice that she's been having a lot of pathology tests recently, most of which are not covered by her insurance policy. She always asks me if she should get these weird tests done and she looks so worried that I say yes. It's an indulgence. There's nothing wrong with her. If you don't want to pay for them I understand."

Sam shook his head. "No, no, I'll pay for them. Whatever you think she needs."

Nicholas nodded and showed him how he had calculated the totals for both his dad and himself.

Sam thanked him. He couldn't help but feel that this money held some special significance for Sam. When they had gone to the grocery store he had seemed so broken, so conflicted. Now he seemed a little more at ease, not recovered but a little more comfortable with the situation.

It turned out that his dad had already told his mom that he wasn't gay and she treated it like a non-issue. Nicholas was glad, he felt a lot better this year. He was aware that all of the adults around him were feeling a lot worse, but it was better for him and he was pretty sure it was better for Grace. Last year she had been like a zombie, this year she seemed to be in the holiday spirit. They went ice-skating with their brothers one day and they went with their dads and brothers to choose Christmas trees on another.

Nicholas found himself riding alone with his dad on the long drive back to the house. He asked him if he was dating anyone.

"Not right now. I had a girlfriend for a few months, a girl I met at the taekwondo gym, but she turned out to be... well she was totally deranged, so that didn't work out."

His dad laughed. "There are a lot of them out there. You need to be careful. Especially now that you're a movie star and all."

Nicholas rolled his eyes. It had suddenly become everyone's favorite joke to tease him about being in a movie.

Nicholas didn't really know why he said it, but he blurted out, "I think I want an arranged marriage."

"What!?" His dad almost drove off the side of the road in shock. After he had recovered himself he asked, "You're not really serious are you?"

Nicholas' silence was all the answer he needed.

"Nicholas, I don't understand... why would you want that? Don't you want to fall in love?"

"I already am in love dad, but she doesn't love me back, not in the same way."

There was a pause while his dad absorbed this piece of information. "Are you... are you talking about Grace?" He asked tentatively.

"Yeah, I'm in love with Grace and I think it's because our relationship is like a well arranged marriage, just without the physical part."

His dad shook his head, clearly confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, think about it dad, before we left for college Grace and I weren't even friends, I had no desire to even be her friend. I thought that apart from our family we had nothing in common. Of course I loved her, like a cousin would, but I thought we were so different that the only times we would ever see each other again was at family functions, and I was fine with that.

"But then we started living together and everything changed for me. We started sharing things, we got into little routines and our lives became intertwined. I always wanted to make sure she was safe, but now it is more. Now I want to make sure she is happy, now I want to do things that will make her happy, to make her feel special.

"It's not just that though. I want to have a future with her. When we graduate I want us to decide together where we're going to live and work. I want to save up my money so we can buy a house. I want to go house hunting with her and make sure we choose a place that is big enough for a family. I want to hold our children and protect them and make sure they grow up into good, respectable people."

Nicholas had been thinking these things for a long time but he had never voiced them. It was actually pretty heartbreaking to hear them out loud. He was in love with Grace and she didn't love him back.

His dad took his eyes off the road and glanced at Nicholas for a second. "Sounds like you're in love with her."

Yeah, no shit Einstein, Nicholas thought. "Yes, and I think it is because we're like a well arranged marriage. We have all of the right attributes that are matched when a marriage is arranged."

"Like what?"

"We are from reputable families of the same social status, we have the same education level, our professional lives will be compatible, we've had similar family lives, neither of us are religious, I'm taller than her and I'm older than her. Those are the main factors that are matched."

"Jesus Nicholas." His dad shook his head. "You are so like Sam. If it weren't his daughter we're talking about I'd have you talk to him about this."

"What do you mean I'm like Sam? Sam and I are nothing alike."

"You're so analytical. You use your brain too much."

"But dad all of the facts point to the same conclusion. I fell in love with Grace because we are well matched and we have been living together for the past year."

"No. I don't buy it. Living with a woman doesn't make you fall in love with her. Before I met your mother I had a girlfriend that I lived with for two years and I never fell in love with her."

Nicholas thought back to the photos of the blonde woman, Emma had said she was a nightmare.

"Yeah, but were you well matched?"

"What are the attributes that you match again?"

Nicholas listed them off and each time his dad said yes. It seemed like he had been compatible with first girlfriend but for some reason it didn't work. For the first time Nicholas considered what it would be like to be married to someone you didn't love, or who didn't love you. What would that do to your children?

"Nicholas, if you're in love with Grace it's not because you've been living with her, it's because your heart has recognized her intrinsic beauty."

Well fuck. His dad was saying that the special feelings he had for Grace were indeed special. He could accept them and deal with them when he had viewed them as a normal response to the situation, but how could he deal with them if they were actually unique? What if Grace was the only woman he could ever love? He had been encouraging her to try and make things work with Adrian, maybe he should have been concentrating his efforts on trying to make her fall in love with him.