Chapter 39
cleo
. . .
“Uno!” Charlie called as Grady and I stared at her behind our handful of cards. She laid a red two down on the pile, beaming at our misfortune.
“She’s a swindler,” I muttered, staring at my cards, which were woefully lacking in the ones I needed.
The power had gone out over an hour ago, so we’d spent our time playing cards while hoping it would come back on, which didn’t look like it would be anytime soon.
Outside, the storm was still raging. You could barely see the road through the thick sheets of rain.
Grady shook his head. “I don’t know where she gets it, honestly.”
“Oh, come on. You’re telling me you’ve never hustled anyone in a card game?” I drew three more cards before finally landing a red one.
“I didn’t say that,” he said with a wink. The simple move alone had my thighs clenching to stave off the way my stomach did a stupid little flip. “But I never taught her my tricks.”
“What’re you guys talking about?” she asked.
“Just how good you are,” he said, sighing as she laid down her final card.
Charlie hopped up and danced around the table. “I win! I win!” she shouted as her dad and I set our hands down and watched her celebration. By the time she sat back down, she seemed settled. “I’m bored with this game.”
“Thank god,” Grady muttered.
She turned to me. “Have you ever heard my daddy play music? He’s a professional.”
One of the hardest things about talking to Charlie about her dad was knowing how much to tell her about our past. I was afraid of overstepping, but it wasn’t like I wanted to keep things a secret from her.
I wanted to share things with her, like the fact I was one of the first people to hear him sing live, and how, before the masses sang his praises, it was just me shouting from the front table in a dive bar.
“I have. He’s excellent.”
Beneath the table, Grady’s hand covered mine, giving it a squeeze. “She was my first fan.”
“Really?” Charlie’s eyes grew wide.
“Really, really. Well, second, I guess. I even have a sweatshirt to prove it.”
Grady burst out laughing, turning to me with a twinkle in his eye. “Oh my god, I forgot about that. You and my mom made those before my first show. Do you still have it?”
I nodded, ducking my head because I could feel the heat flush my face.
“I do.” Other than a picture of us as kids that I hid in my wallet, the shirt was one of the few things I kept after our breakup.
Most of the time, it was tucked beneath piles of socks in my dresser, but on nights when the pain of loving and losing hit, I would pull it out in search of comfort.
Grady’s eyes softened. “I want to see that.”
“You should play for us, Daddy,” Charlie said. “Can we bring the piano in here?”
I glanced at the spot along the wall where the old upright piano once stood. It was empty, a glaring reminder of Marsha’s death. “You still have it?”
“Dad moved it into my old closet. It was too hard to have it out here, apparently.”
“When did he do that?”
Grady blew out a breath. “Not long after Mom passed. He tried to get rid of it, but I talked him into keeping it. Figured he would drag it out someday and put it back where it belonged, but so far, he’s kept it locked away.”
“Ah,” I said, unable to find the words. While I didn’t begrudge Robert for not wanting to stare at such a blatant reminder of Marsha, I wasn't sure I would have forgiven him if he’d sold it outright.
Even if it was hers, there were so many of Grady’s memories tied to it as well.
To have just taken that away in a moment of grief would’ve been a travesty.
“Want to help me get it out? I don’t even know if it’s tuned.”
“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Moving the piano was the least of our concerns.
Once we got it out, we realized how terribly out of tune it was.
It hadn’t been cared for for years. Thankfully, Marsha kept a kit with it, so after an hour of watching instructional videos, Grady was able to tune it just enough so it wouldn’t sound too twangy.
Charlie and I were nestled together on the couch, watching Grady set up. We’d spent part of the afternoon gathering all the candles we could find. Now that the sun was going down, I lit them to give the room a romantic glow.
“I’m a little rusty,” he joked as he sat down, running his fingers along the keys. “I don’t play nearly as much as I used to.”
“It’ll come to you,” I promised. “I’m just excited to see you play.”
“You should temper your expectations. I used to be much better.” He played a few notes, settling into a classical rendition of Somewhere Only We Know by Keane.
Even though I had no idea what he would play, some parts of me were glad it was this song.
I’d never been able to hear it without thinking of Grady and those sweet memories that felt like falling in love for the first time.
And when he started singing along, I felt myself melt into the familiarity of it.
Though I’d heard him only a year ago at a concert in Ashwood, it was pretty different from this in-home concert he was treating Charlie and me to now.
There were no bright lights, electric guitars, or drum kits.
There was just Grady on his mother’s out-of-tune piano, singing from his heart in front of his daughter and the woman he loved.
It was still weird to think of us like that—in love.
I’d spent nearly half my life trying to convince myself otherwise.
Yet, here I was trying to rewire my brain after two short weeks of being together again.
What was weirder still was how right it felt falling into old habits after I stopped getting in my own way.
Loving Grady had never been hard, but letting him love me was another thing entirely. I could own that admission. I struggled with it in nearly every aspect of my life. But out of all the people who tried to break through, I’ll admit Grady’s determination and insistence had never made sense.
But was love supposed to?
As the song ended, Charlie and I both erupted with thunderous applause—at least, as much as we could, given we were only two people. Grady stood from the piano and bowed at the waist. “Thank you, thank you. What’s next?”
Charlie tapped her finger against her chin. “What about the guitar, Daddy? Can you play that too?”
He glanced my way before clearing his throat and disappearing into his room with a mumbled, “Yeah, of course. One second.”
When he came back, he was holding an old case that looked eerily like the one he had as a kid.
It was covered in stickers, some from the places I guessed he had traveled to and bands he’d opened for.
Surely it wasn’t the same, though. He had all the money in the world to buy any guitar he wanted.
It was crazy to assume he still had the old pawn shop one his mom had bought him.
As he pulled it free, I realized just how wrong I was.
There, on the underside of the instrument, were our initials carved into the body.
He’d done it shortly after we got together.
I told him he was crazy, we didn’t know what the future held for us, but he told me he was sure that no matter what, I was meant to be his girl.
And then I saw the bluebird engraved at the bottom of the soundboard.
Be still, my fucking heart.
“I got it done shortly after, well, you know,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve used it on every tour, at every show.”
“Oh, Grady,” I whispered. It took everything I had to stay in my seat and not walk over, crawl into his lap, and kiss him the way I wanted to. The way he and I both deserved.
It was disarming coming face-to-face with the fact that the man you thought had moved on and forgotten you had done everything but. He had held onto my memory so tightly, I wondered how he hadn’t suffocated himself with it.
But then again, I had too, hadn’t I? Even if I hadn’t meant to, I’d held onto the idea I was too messed up to love again, that the men in my life—apart from my dad—would leave me or that I wasn’t enough.
The loss of Grady had followed me around, even through my relationship with Thomas.
It had consumed me whether I’d been honest with myself or not.
Now we had a real chance to put the past behind us and right our wrongs, and that started with the way I looked back at our history.
If we hadn’t broken up, who knows what our future would’ve looked like?
We wouldn’t have been the people we were today.
He wouldn’t have had Charlie or maybe even his career, and I don’t know I would’ve been as close with my sisters.
While we’d bonded over the years as my sisters reached adulthood, I hadn’t ever felt the actual depth of our camaraderie until after Thomas and I divorced.
Moving home had turned out to be one of the best things I’d ever done for our relationship.
“Now you know,” Grady said gently, “that you’ve always been with me through all the years and shows and tours. I bring it out for every acoustic set.”
I was up and out of my seat before I could stop myself, walking toward him with a sense of purpose. Grady tilted his head, staring up at me with parted lips, waiting to see what I would do. He didn’t ask me what I was doing. He didn’t tell me to stop, so I kissed him. Consequences be damned.
His arms wrapped around me, pulling me closer as he met each fevered stroke of my tongue with his own. We were lost in the other person for only a moment before Charlie’s loud claps took us by surprise.
Turning around, we saw her smile as she jumped off the couch, did a little dance, and ran toward us.
I knew she must have questions, but there was such a sense of relief I felt when her little body slammed into ours.
Grady and I both opened our arms to welcome her into our embrace, the three of us laughing at the craziness of it all.
Charlie was the first to pull back. “Wait, does this mean you’re gonna be my mom, too?”