Rebecca

When Gray and I first got together we’d play a game before we went to bed.

We’d lay there in a tangle of limbs, giddy with the newness of being with each other, and ask questions until we fell asleep.

Big and small. What’s your favorite color?

Do you like mushrooms? What sport are you best at?

What does forgiveness mean to you? Do you believe in God? Do you think God believes in you?

Grayson was a true believer in God. That was clear from the very beginning.

His relationship with Jesus and the church was intense, but for some reason it didn’t freak me out.

He was introspective when it came to religion and spirituality.

He questioned things and was genuinely curious.

He talked about Jesus as a friend, a confidant.

It felt so intimate and loving. I wanted some of what he had—the conviction, a place to turn when I needed hope—and wanted it to be contagious.

His childhood running around the ranch with his seven siblings sounded so idyllic and he positively worshipped his mother.

When we talked about my childhood, I inevitably clammed up.

Our lives were hard, but Mom and I tried to make the best of it.

I didn’t want to just come out and tell him that she worked until she died, literally dropped dead of a heart attack right in the feminine products section of Walmart.

For my entire life we shared a variety of one-bedroom apartments, always with twin beds in the bedroom.

I barely saw her except for the one day she had off a week.

You’d think I would have had a lot of freedom with that kind of upbringing, but my mom kept me in line with terrible stories about how I’d go to hell if I ever smoked or drank or, god forbid, let a boy kiss me.

It was the Catholic guilt in her. Even though we never attended church she still had the fire and brimstone in her blood from her own strict upbringing, where she was told in no uncertain terms that she would absolutely burn in hell after she got pregnant with me.

She was never sweet or affectionate, never praised me when I did well in school.

I was always the thing that held her back, the thing that ruined her life, and she usually just looked at me with disdain.

Grayson once asked me what I thought happened when we died. I wanted to give him the kind of answer he needed. Angels and wings and limitless love from Jesus Christ, but it was the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I just couldn’t do it.

“Nothing,” I’d said.

His body stiffened and he stopped tracing small circles on my back. “Nothing?” I’d alarmed him.

“Nothing.” I held my ground. “I just think the lights go out and we die. So we need to enjoy the time we have here while we have it.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

My answer pained him so much that I laid my head down on his strong bare chest and sighed. “No. I don’t. I’m feeling off today.”

But I did believe it and I still do now. When you’re dead you’re dead. It’s over. I would take pleasure from Grayson Sommers burning in hell right now, but I just don’t think any of it is true. Because if you believe in hell you have to believe in heaven and that is simply too good to be true.

Gray had been with other women before me, but he told me he’d never been in a serious relationship.

I was different. I was special. He wanted to be with me all the time.

Spent nearly every night in my tiny apartment because he thought it was cozier than his spacious place that overlooked the Bay.

Or at least he did until the night someone broke into my place on a rare evening I was there alone.

I never even woke up and they didn’t come into my bedroom, but they took everything that wasn’t nailed to the walls.

I was shaken, but Grayson was enraged and never let me sleep there again.

I’d move in with him. There was no question about it.

His control of the situation, the way he organized the movers and demanded the landlord break my lease, because why didn’t they have bars on the first-floor windows to begin with, all of it made me feel safe, protected, and loved.

Gray was the one who eventually encouraged me to quit my job at BlueNet so he could help me get my bakery business off the ground.

He was so supportive of my business aspirations.

I rented a little storefront on Divisadero, just down the street from Alamo Square Park, where we would spend Sundays picnicking on a blanket beneath the eucalyptus trees and talking about all the places we wanted to travel together.

I tested all of my recipes on him, and he told me I was going to ruin his girlish figure.

That was impossible. No one was stricter about their fitness regimen than Grayson.

He ran fifty miles a week. On the other days he would bike and swim.

I couldn’t wait for Lizzie to meet him. While I was tight-lipped about my own family, I raved about her to him.

She felt closer to me then than any of my blood relatives.

Grayson said over and over again that he was excited to meet her, even said he would pay for her plane ticket out, but I knew Lizzie would never accept it.

She was much too proud to take anything from anyone.

I certainly wasn’t proud. Less than a year into our relationship Gray was paying for everything in my life.

He bought all the fancy commercial restaurant equipment and the adorable shabby chic furniture for the bakery.

He even came up with the name I adored, “Whisked Away.”

“I’m gonna whisk you away,” he whispered in my ear the night before I opened the shop, running his hands up the backs of my legs, pushing my skirt up over my waist as he lifted me onto the marble countertop next to the cash register and slid my underwear down over my ankles.

I leaned my head back and spread my legs wide, letting him flick his tongue along my inner thighs until I was burning to have him inside me. He knew what I wanted and made me wait, made me beg for it. I loved this about him. I loved the anticipation almost as much as the climax.

There was a line out the front door when we opened.

The neighborhood was hungry, literally hungry, for sixteen-dollar toast and incredibly Instagrammable almond croissants and cinnamon rolls.

I had a local artist paint massive pastries on the blank brick wall outside and it became a destination for anyone planning to picnic in the park.

The mural did all my marketing for me. I had to hire two more employees and I was often at the shop baking well into the night.

Grayson didn’t like that I was so busy. He didn’t like it at all.

That’s when Lizzie told me she had gotten her first promotion to staff reporter and with it a modest raise that would just cover a plane ticket out to the West Coast. Could she plan a trip to see me?

“Of course,” I texted, stupid with excitement. “You’ll stay with me. I can even take off for a day and we can head up to wine country and get squishy.”

I mostly quit drinking when Grayson and I got together.

Since he didn’t indulge, I didn’t want him to think less of me when I did.

Sometimes I had a couple of glasses of wine when I went out with the shop employees, and we had all toasted with some champagne the morning we opened, but that was it.

I was excited for a little one-on-one time with Lizzie, when I could get silly with only her.

A couple of days before she was set to arrive, I got my first real press in the San Francisco Chronicle .

Their food reviewer had been by, and I’d answered a few questions about what inspired me and my business plan.

They were curious if I had plans to expand.

“I’ve only been open a month,” I’d said with a laugh.

But then my ego got the best of me, and before I knew it I was saying on the record, “We’ll end up being the most successful bakery franchise in the Bay Area.

” The night the article came out I stayed late at the store and celebrated with another bottle of champagne.

I only had a couple of glasses, but I didn’t make it to our place until well after midnight. Gray was still awake when I got back.

“Where were you?” he demanded when I used my key to let myself in.

“The bakery,” I said, balancing on one foot to unlatch my sandal. It was hard to do in the dark and when I reached for the light switch at the same time I stumbled against the wall.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

“No.” I giggled because I was nervous at the gruff tone of his voice.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Of course not. Gray, what’s wrong?”

“My girlfriend, the biggest baker in the wholllllle Bay Area, ditched me tonight and then comes stumbling home drunk like a little whore and laughs in my face.”

His words were a sucker punch right in my gut. He’d never spoken like that to me before.

I finally found the light switch and took a step back when I saw the hatred in his eyes.

“We didn’t have plans tonight?” I said it as a question because maybe I’d forgotten something. I’d seen his texts come in and I’d meant to respond, but my hands were always busy and I just didn’t get to it. I approached him despite the rage coming off him in waves.

“You said you’d make me dinner. But you got too carried away celebrating the biggest bakery in the Bay Area to come home.

” I didn’t remember promising to make dinner and I’d missed the sarcasm dripping from his words the first time he said “biggest baker in the Bay Area.” Suddenly I felt shame at my hubris in that interview.

Shame I shouldn’t have felt. I should have felt proud.