Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
GRAYSON
“ A ll right, this is the last point,” Harper says, looking at everyone dramatically to create tension. “If Abby gets this, you guys win.”
I lean forward, strangely invested in this game of charades we have going on.
“But if you don’t, we win.”
She motions to her, Owen, Elena, and Kelly—the opposing team. The losers, more accurately. Because our team is going to win.
“No pressure,” Kristen says, patting Abby’s knee. “It’s been a fun night, no matter what happens.”
I give my sister a skeptical look. “When did you get so uncompetitive?”
Eli snorts a laugh next to her, but wisely says nothing.
Kristen rolls her eyes. “Since I became an adult.” She nudges her index finger into my shoulder. “Unlike you.”
I grin, loving riling her up. It’s my job as her big brother.
Abby stands, wiping her palms on her jeans.
“You’ve got this, Abbs,” I tell her.
She nods but doesn’t look like she believes me as she approaches the basket in the center of the table with the clues. We wrote clues for the other team, and they wrote ours, so me, Kristen, and Eli have no clue what’s on the slip of paper Abby draws.
She studies it for a moment, then sighs. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.
She gestures to indicate it’s a movie and one word, but after that flounders a bit as she makes what looks like a rectangle in her hands that breaks in half.
“Um, snapping,” Kristen says. “ Jaws !”
For someone who claims she’s not competitive, she’s certainly invested in getting the right answer.
Abby shakes her head, then wiggles her arm around and theatrically lowers it to the ground. What the hell?
She tries again, but no one knows what she’s doing, so she moves on, making a circle shape around her neck next.
“A necklace,” I shout, unsure why I’m yelling. Getting into the spirit, I guess.
Abby nods, pointing to me.
“ Pretty Woman ,” Eli says. “ Breakfast at Tiffany’s .”
Kristen gives him a what the fuck look. “Those aren’t one word.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Ten seconds,” Harper says smugly, holding up her phone with the stopwatch app displayed on the screen. Thirty seconds is criminally too short a time to guess some of these.
Abby glances around frantically, then pulls me up to join her, moving me so I’m standing behind her. Her hands find mine and bring them to her waist, then she spreads her arms out wide.
It happens so suddenly, I’m startled, frozen in place as I stare down at her, the crown of her head right at the level of my nose. I inhale unthinkingly, her scent both familiar and heady.
Damn. She smells really good.
At her waist, my fingers flex, unable to help myself. I’d held her against me on the horse earlier, but that was different. Or, rather, I’d told myself it was. That was an emergency. This…
I’m interrupted from my internal dilemma as Kristen screams, “ Titanic !”
Abby jumps up and down in response, my hands tightening around her instinctively, fingers pressing into her hip bones. She stops, glancing over her shoulder up at me questioningly, and I force myself to let go, returning to my seat.
I take a swig from my beer bottle, accepting Eli’s clap on my back as Kristen gets up and hugs Abby.
“Good to see you’re still not a poor winner,” Owen says to Kristen in a rare public display of teasing. It’s usually me who does that.
Kristen lets go of Abby. “I’m celebrating, not rubbing it in your face. Besides, Grayson’s not showboating nearly as much as I expected.”
All eyes turn to me and I take another swallow of beer. “Maybe I’ve matured.”
Kristen laughs at the thought. “Yeah, okay.” She turns around and hugs Harper, then Owen goodbye. “Thanks for the fun night. But me and Eli have to go relieve Mom of babysitting duty.”
Which means Mom will be home soon. And since I’m staying at her house this week, it’s another night of watching CSI reruns with her. If I have to watch one more person get murdered on that show, I might kill myself, too.
“You ready to go?” Kristen asks me, since I rode with her and Eli here.
“Kelly and I can give you a ride later,” Elena says, curling a finger around a long strand of her dark hair. “If you want to hang out here a little longer.”
Hmm, it would be nice not to have to go home yet. But I don’t know if I want to listen to Harper and her friends yap to each other, either. Every time I’ve been around the three of them the past few days, they’re all up in each other’s business gossiping.
“I’ll take him,” Abby says, curling her hand around my upper arm. She stares at Elena, who stares back for a moment before smiling and nodding her head.
What was that about?
“Yeah, sure,” I tell Abby. “If it’s no trouble.”
We say our goodbyes, too, and as we get in her car, I ask, “Could we actually not go to my mom’s yet? She keeps making me watch police dramas every night with her.”
“We could hang out at my house,” she suggests, U-turning around Owen’s wide front yard back toward the dirt road that leads to town.
I gladly agree, ignoring a small voice of warning in my head that remembers the strangeness of holding her waist, of being terrified for her when her horse had nearly unseated her.
This is just hanging out. I’ve known Abby forever. It’s not like anything is going to… happen.
When I enter her house this time, there’s an orange cat lingering by the doorway who definitely wasn’t there the other day. He takes one look at me and bolts, scrambling around a corner to what looks like the kitchen.
“Leo,” Abby says in exasperation. “You’ll like Grayson, I promise.”
“Leo? Because he looks like a little lion?”
Abby smiles. “Exactly.”
She turns the same corner and a moment later there’s a shaking sound. I peek in and spot her on the floor with a bag of treats, trying to coax the cat out from under the kitchen table.
“I don’t want to invade his space,” I say, feeling bad now.
“No, he’ll be fine. He just needs a minute. If he can handle Jenny, he can handle you.”
Good to know my reputation isn’t as bad as my niece’s.
Leo slinks out from under the table and sniffs the treat in her hands before devouring it. He lets her pet him a few times, then turns to me, meowing balefully.
I hold up my empty hands. “I don’t have anything for you.”
“Here.” Abby gives me the bag of treats. “To butter him up.”
I crouch down and shake out a few treats in my palm and hold it out.
The cat looks at my face, then my hand, and back at my face, studying me.
“Can he see into my soul?” I whisper.
Abby presses her lips tightly together, holding in a laugh. “Sometimes I swear he can understand me. I’ve asked him to blink twice if he’s a person trapped in a cat’s body, but he hasn’t done it yet.”
Leo decides to give me a chance and approaches carefully, then gobbles up the treats as fast as he can.
“Treats won you over, huh?” I ask him, stroking my hand down his side. “Wow, he’s soft.”
“Yeah, he’s my fluffy boy.”
See, things are normal between us. Those off the wall thoughts I had earlier were a freak occurrence.
“You don’t have any pets, do you?” she asks. “Your family never did growing up.”
Mom had resisted all attempts of ours to bring home an animal, claiming the three of us were wild enough animals already.
“Nah, Owen’s the only one who ever branched out into pet ownership.” I continue petting Leo, surprised when he rubs the side of his face along my outstretched fingers. “I guess I’ve never thought about it much.”
“He likes you. Maybe you’re destined to get a cat.”
“Yeah, maybe. Better than a dog, at least. I’m not home enough to take them on walks.”
She gets up and fills the tea kettle on her stove with water. “You work a lot?”
“Yeah. Fifty-to-sixty-hour weeks are the norm at my job.”
“You know, I’m not sure what you actually do. Kristen said something in finance?”
I chuckle. No one in my family has ever taken an interest in my job. “I’m a financial analyst.”
She smiles as she opens the cabinet to the right of the stove. “Sounds complicated. Tea?”
She holds up a mug and I nod, then settle in one of the kitchen table chairs.
“Not to sound rude,” she continues, “but I thought you’d always end up doing something more exciting.”
“I can see how you’d think that. I was kind of a daredevil, huh?”
“Yeah, you were.”
I shrug. “Guess I got it all out of my system when I was younger. I’m boring now.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute.”
I breathe out a laugh. “Why?”
“Because you were always the most exciting guy in town.”
She reaches back into the same cabinet and gets two tea bags, but all I can do is stare at her back. She thinks I’m exciting?
There’s that strange pull in my stomach again, something that’s never happened around Abby in all the years I’ve known her. Before this week, that is.
But I haven’t really known her, have I? Or rather, bothered to get to know her.
I ask her how things are going at the library and she chatters on happily as she cuts thick slices of banana bread and slathers them with butter, then sets the plate in front of me.
Man, I love banana bread. What are the chances she’d happen to have some?
I nod and mm-hmm at the right places as she speaks, but I’m more interested in watching her move around the kitchen, preparing a plate identical to mine for herself, readying the tea, placing a steaming mug in front of me along with saucers of milk and sugar. There’s something graceful about her movements as she flits from table to counter, keeping her hands busy, idly petting Leo every so often. And though I have no idea why we’re eating banana bread and drinking tea at nine o’clock at night, I’m not complaining.
“Oh my God,” she says, finally pausing. She’s standing behind me, so I have no idea what she’s referring to.
“What is it?”
“You have this awful scratch. Here, on the back of your neck.”
A cool fingertip brushes the nape of my neck, sending a tingle down my spine. I turn around in my chair, not wanting to be caught off guard again.
“What?” I ask thickly, not sure what my body’s response meant.
“I bet the tip of a branch got you when we were speeding through the forest. One got me, too.” She pushes up her left sleeve to reveal a Band-Aid. “I can put some antibiotic cream on it.”
“Um, sure.”
I agree without thinking about it, and I take a huge bite of banana bread, comforted by the mellow, sweet flavor.
She’s back a minute later with the cream and a bandage, and stands behind me, pulling the neckline of my shirt down slightly.
I swallow heavily, that tingling sensation back as she applies the cream.
It’s just Abby , I tell myself as she puts on the bandage next, her fingers delicate where they sweep against my oversensitive skin.
Abby, who I’ve known forever.
Has she ever touched me before this week? I can’t remember a time she would have.
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me? Why am I getting worked up over a little touch? I swear I’ve felt less sensation during hook-ups than this.
“All better.” She smiles as she takes her seat across from me at the table.
But all I can think of is her hugging me at the stables when I’d admitted I was worried about her, how she placed my hands on her waist for that Titanic clue during charades, of her unexpected touch on my neck.
And how I want her to do it again.