CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
LINA
I wake up in a cold sweat.
It’s not necessarily abnormal for me, but I still catch myself breathing a little heavier, reorienting myself with my surroundings.
This hasn’t happened in a long time. Not since I’ve been consistently sleeping in the same bed as Grant.
Since I’ve been working on getting my sleeping habits back to normal, I’ve had to come to terms with the uncomfortable truth that sleeping requires vulnerability.
I might be most aware of it when I’m conscious, but only because I’m aware of what happens when I’m not. Sleep requires an unguarded stillness that makes me entirely too aware of the type of vulnerability I’m forced to hand over.
It was what I had to get over after I ended up in the hospital, finally bending to the will of Grant’s suggestion to sleep in his bed.
Now here I am. For the first time, Grant is sleeping in my bed, and I’m about to launch my body off of my bed and onto the floor.
My heart is still racing, my chest still rising sharply with my shallow breaths, when I feel Grant shift next to me. His arms stretch over his pillow, and a small grunt leaves him before he cracks his eyes open.
He reaches toward me automatically, eyes barely open, brushing a piece of hair off my forehead like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
If I were easily embarrassed, I’m sure this would be one of those moments where I told him I was fine, pleading with him to go back to sleep.
But I’m not. And I know Grant wouldn’t.
“Hey.” God, who knew a groggy voice could be so hot? “What’s going on?”
It’s only now that I realize the position I’m in. With my side of the duvet tangled at my feet and a hand braced over my chest. I look as if a tornado came through only my side of the bed.
My first instinct is to change the subject—talk about something other than my mother or my inability to sleep like a normal person. Grant probably wouldn’t like that, though.
“Did you struggle to sleep after your mom died?” I ask, not completely changing the subject.
I’m sure Grant will find a way to circle the conversation back to where he wants it, anyway.
“I did the first few nights, but then I started sleeping on the floor of Claire’s bedroom. By that point, Abby had moved out, but she was sleeping in Claire’s bed. Sleeping in the same room as them made me feel better.”
He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Because of course he did. Of course he anchored himself to someone else. Of course grief made him give more , while mine made me shut down entirely.
It’s always been the difference between us.
My mom’s death was a freak accident—completely out of the blue and unexplainable.
No warning. No buildup. Just silence. And the silence made me afraid.
Grant lost his mom to something slower. Something with signs. With warnings and patterns. Somewhere in his brain, that meant he could’ve stopped it.
So now, he tries to stop everything. Before it breaks. Before it slips. Before it dies. Grant obsesses over trying to keep everyone stable.
His grief made him responsible for the world. Mine made me terrified of it.
“You’re good to them,” I tell him.
He hums quietly, like he knows it’s true but doesn’t want to admit it out loud. Knowing him, he probably thinks it would be some kind of bad omen.
“Did I tell you Abby found out the baby’s gender?”
I shake my head, turning to lie on my side so I’m facing him. Grant props himself up on his elbow. “What is it?”
Grant tucks a finger under my chin and tilts my face toward him. It’s not even flirtatious, really. It’s reverent. Like he wants to make sure I’m looking at him when he shares the good parts of his life.
His smile tells me before he says, “It’s a girl.”
He says it with that quiet kind of joy that creeps up on you, not the loud kind that takes over a room. It’s more the kind that tucks itself into your chest and stays there for as long as you’ll let it.
And I think that’s what Grant is like, really. He doesn’t overwhelm you. He just shows up. Until one day you realize he never left.
“A girl,” I repeat, quieter now.
He nods.
I try to imagine Grant holding her—this tiny, wrinkly, screaming creature with all those gorgeous Vandenberg features —and I know without a doubt, he’ll be the softest version of himself with her.
He’ll braid her hair and let her draw on his arms with glitter pens. He’ll carry her favorite stuffed animal in his coat pocket when she asks him to. I know this. I know it with the same certainty I know my own name.
Grant will hand her everything he never had. He’ll lose sleep over whether she feels safe. He’ll keep showing up, again and again, the way he does now.
And I know, too, that it’ll wreck him. In the best, most beautiful way.
“You’re going to be her favorite,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
Grant’s mouth twitches. “I better be.” Then, after a beat, “You’ll be her favorite too.”
I freeze.
I don’t know why it catches me off guard. Maybe because he says it so casually. Like it’s a given. Like there’s a version of our lives where I’m still around when that baby girl is old enough to know who I am. Like he doesn’t doubt that I’ll still be here.
But I do. I always do.
Because I haven’t trusted permanence. I’ve never trusted the idea of people staying.
Yet, everything about this conversation makes me want to.
Because Grant is my boyfriend. I know this because before we fell asleep, I yawned and looked over while we were watching a space documentary and asked, “Are we dating?”
He had given me a confused look at first, but then when he deciphered my question through the yawn, he countered with, “Was that not assumed?”
Of course, there was a bit more of a conversation, but it was all the confirmation I needed.
Grant Vandenberg is mine for the foreseeable future.
“Do they know what they’re naming her?”
He shakes his head. “They have a list, but Abby wants to have a baby naming party where everyone gets to vote on what name they like the best.”
“Well, make sure they know Gigi is already taken,” I joke.
Last Friday, during Grant’s weekly phone call with his sisters, I got to join in.
The two of them wanted to hear about everything, and I’m pretty sure I ended up talking to them longer than their brother.
Grant didn’t mind. In fact, he had held the phone for me while I lay across his lap, hearing all about their lives while also periodically filling them in on my own.
Growing up as an only child where my dad also wasn’t in the picture, I never really wondered what it would be like to have siblings. My mom and I were enough for me.
Now, I’m flooded with relationships that I can only describe as sisterly. My roommates, Savannah, and Grant’s sisters.
They’ve all entered my life so suddenly and yet so seamlessly. I can’t keep from feeling a bit undeserving of it all.
As if I stumbled into this and have been completely knocked off my feet by the feeling of belonging.
“We’re all going to the lake house next week. The girls requested that you come,” Grant says, breaking me from my thoughts.
“Really?” From what he made it sound like, Grant was the only one who regularly visited the lake house. “What for?”
He stalls immediately, leaning down to kiss my neck and my collarbone. Clearly, it’s a question he doesn’t want to answer. The motion of him moving to hover over me, rolling me on my back in the same movement, dizzies me a bit.
Grant’s hand slips beneath my tank top, his hand splaying across my ribs. There’s no real intent behind it. It’s just natural.
I know I shouldn’t let him avoid this, but I also wonder if this is the distraction he needs.
All my logic is telling me that distracting yourself as a form of avoidance isn’t healthy.
Yet, my fingers still get lost in his hair, kissing him back feverishly.
As if it’s not ridiculously early in the morning.
As if we’re both not holding things back.
But my lapse of judgment only lasts a moment. My brain kicks back into overdrive right as his hands continue trailing down my torso, leaving trails of goosebumps.
“Grant.” I press a firm hand to his bare chest, ignoring the ripples of muscles in favor of keeping my composure. “Stop.”
He rears back, his molasses-thick, brown eyes immediately boring into mine.
It’s my turn to ask, “What’s going on?”
His hair is a mess from my fingers. His mouth is still parted like he hasn’t figured out how to stop kissing me even though I’ve asked him to. He doesn’t touch me now, doesn’t move closer. Just looks at me.
Then Grant deflates and flops onto his back beside me, staring up at the ceiling without a word.
“Grant,” I say again.
“Abby’s friends planned her baby shower for this weekend. I guess they didn’t know…” He stops himself, and I reach out to grab his bicep. He’s as rigid as a brick wall.
“Didn’t know what?”
“They planned it for the same weekend as the anniversary of our mom’s death.” His voice stays steady, but I’m not naive to the weight behind it.
“Oh,” I breathe, moving my hand closer to his collar.
“She almost didn’t even realize because she was so excited, and then when she did, she felt awful.” His face sinks with remembrance. I know how much he cares about his sisters, and this is definitely hurting him more than he’s letting on.
The dynamic between Grant and me is hilariously lopsided when it comes to emotions. He grew up with two sisters who made him an emotional compass.
Whereas, I rely on rationality and facts. I was raised by my mother, who was so carefree that emotions were too much of a burden for her exuberant view of life. It was nothing she did wrong. It had to do with the fact that she preferred spending her time having fun.
Coupled with my photographic memory, I grew up cataloging information rather than dissecting emotions. Emotions aren’t something I can memorize or study, and I’m smart enough to recognize my weaknesses.
A photographic memory is good for many things. Emotional fluency? Not one of them.