Seven. Too Much of a Good Thing
Seven
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
After bailing on Mom, I sneak to the guest room and change into a tight sweater. I don’t plan to bump into Grant at Wok’n Tall, but his bar is right across the street. I’m not taking any chances of looking as disheveled as I did yesterday.
My Uber driver, Ralph, only wants to talk about Christmas Day NBA games, a refreshing surprise, given that every driver in LA seems to be trying to sell a screenplay or record a demo. He drops me off in front of Wok’n Tall, and I can smell the kung pao from outside.
But just as I’m mentally preparing my order and about to give the door handle a pull, the owner appears at the glass and is turning the lock with an echoing finality. “We’re closed. Try tomorrow.”
“Please?” I shout to be heard over the traffic on Ninety-Fifth.
“Sorry! We close at nine.”
I look up and down the block but see nothing open. But there’s a light shining in one establishment across the street.
And of course, it’s Grant’s Place for Drinks.
No way am I going in there, even if my boobs look amazing in this sweater.
I’m shivering, and I check the rideshare app. Twenty minutes for a car.
My parents’ place is just over a mile away. I’ll walk back.
I turn toward home, immediately stepping into a crunchy pile of snow that seems to close tightly around my ankle. At least the wet snow has to fight to seep into my new socks. They’re surprisingly absorbent. I’ll have to tell Dad.
But I’ve walked for all of two minutes when I realize it’s true what they say about moving to warmer climates: they thin your blood. After my years in California, I can no longer take the cold, even if by Chicago standards, tonight’s not nearly as cold as the city can get.
My choices are to die of hypothermia or go to Grant’s bar.
I actually stop to think about it for a minute, but a freezing gust of wind that sounds like it’s whistling, Go back to LA, you weak little baby , supplies the answer.
Grant’s Place for Drinks is housed in a big brick building that used to be a school and was one of the only structures in Powell Park when it was first established in 1903.
After the city built a slew of schools in the 1970s, the building sat vacant.
In the ’80s, it opened as an Italian restaurant that was notoriously a meeting spot for Chicago mafiosos.
It caught fire when I was in seventh grade and was empty again until the Heath family bought it in 2016.
Grant’s dad bought it, to be exact. But Grant’s dad’s name is Louis, and because there was already a bar named Lou’s a mile away, he named it for Grant.
I cross the street and stand on the corner outside, trying to collect myself.
Wasn’t seeing him once this trip enough?
My whole plan had been to avoid him forever after our breakup.
We were only together about a year and a half and broke up three years ago, so by breakup math, I should be way past this.
But I never gave myself time to mourn the relationship, because mourning it meant thinking about it, and thinking about it hurt too much.
I’d been blindsided by his sudden ending of things.
Not that I should have been. I was the one who told Grant to leave.
I was the one who always figured he’d wake up one day and notice that he could have anybody.
When he left—not even looking back—I finally had proof of what I’d suspected all along: that our relationship hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to me.
There’ve been dozens of times when—churning through our last fight again and again—I’ve almost texted or called to ask what happened, what went wrong, or if he ever loved me at all.
One big fight shouldn’t have done us in.
Other times, I’ve imagined I’d casually text—easy, breezy—but I was too mad and sad to convincingly sound unbothered.
To treat Grant like someone I could trade life updates with would have been like telling myself that splashing in a pond felt as exhilarating as being tossed around by the ocean.
Plus, he never checked in on me, either. Not even a birthday text.
I open my coat and adjust my V-neck so that I have the advantage of cleavage.
Grant may not be inside, but if he is, I need all the ammunition I can get.
I climb the steps and push through the heavy double wooden doors.
How the hell did schoolchildren in the early 1900s manage these, especially given their lack of gummy vitamins?
“Of all the gin joints in all the world, why did I have to walk into his?” I mutter the second I’m inside.
The place is nearly empty, everyone else in town busy with holiday to-do lists: wrapping gifts, putting final touches on Christmas décor, making late-night Amazon impulse purchases for people they almost forgot.
There’s a group of women having margaritas at a corner table and one guy a little older than me at the bar, nursing a beer.
Grant’s back is to me. I allow myself a few seconds to enjoy it.
You can access a great many lascivious thoughts based entirely on the indent of a man’s shoulder blades, the tapering of his waist, the compact jut of his ass beneath his jeans.
Grant’s more lean than muscular; he cuts a nice silhouette.
It hits me then that if I go any farther, I’ll have to talk to Grant again.
And that won’t go well. And does it look like I’m desperate, me coming to him?
I start to back out the door because this was a bad idea.
If I can leave without him noticing, I can call Mom for a ride, as embarrassing as that will be.
I back up a step, not realizing the wood doors are still finishing their slow swing shut behind me. Before I know what’s happening, I’m caught between the doors, my left leg outside in the snow and my head and shoulders inside the bar.
Grant turns and his eyes meet mine across the room.
They drop to my boobs, which are pressed together as I fight with the doors, and I think, Gotcha!
for a split second before I croak out a “Help!” His eyes and mine meet in mutual panic, and he shouts, “Oh shit!” He could be talking about the fact that it’s me trying to enter his bar or that a bar patron is stuck inside the Doors of Death.
Grant leaps over the bar in one Olympian move—graceful athleticism being another thing he naturally possesses—and races across the room toward me.
He puts one shoulder against the closing door and grabs me beneath the waist. His grip tight, he hoists me toward him.
I instinctively wrap my arm around his shoulder and press my upper body tightly to his.
He holds me steady so I can plant my left foot firmly behind me.
Or as firmly as I can in heeled booties.
My foot slides forward on the ice, bringing me back to an upright position and forcing my hips to meet Grant’s like we’re two halves of a zipper.
The pocket of cold surrounding me from outside melts against his heat.
I may not have any idea how to give Grant a piece of my mind, but my body sure wants to give him a piece of my pelvis.
When enough seconds pass that it’s clear I’m not going to topple down the stairs and crack my skull on the curb, Grant moves his hands up to my arms and straightens me out. He pulls his head back and squints into my face. Back at CVS, I avoided looking at him looking at me for a reason.
The freckle beneath his left eye tilts up into the crease at the corner.
He’s got the best stare, the best gaze, the best squint.
Not eyes. His eyes are lovely—dark-brown pools, if you will—but they are not necessarily extraordinary until he’s using them to look at something.
The way Grant gazes at things makes me wish I could shrink myself down and walk around behind his pupils to see what he is seeing, how he is seeing it.
I look away.
“Jill, what the hell are you doing here?” He takes a step back from me.
“That’s no way to treat a customer,” I say, ignoring the judgment in his tone. I can still feel his hands on my waist. I walk past him, into the bar. This was dumb, but I’m here now. “This was dumb, but I’m here now” also being the story of my recent life.
He follows me. “You’re right,” he says. “I was not expecting to see you again is what I meant.”
Or did he really mean he didn’t want to see me again?
My shoulders close together in a blip of tension I force away.
“I’m just here for a drink.” I give my best flirty smile to the guy at the bar as I sit down next to him.
He smirks back and signals to Grant that he’ll pay for me. Grant purses his lips.
“Well, thank you,” I say to the guy, loud enough for Grant to hear.
“It’s nice that someone in this place has a generous Christmas spirit.
” I do not flirt like this—with tackily obvious lines and hair twirling.
But the guy at the bar is grinning dopily at me and my cleavage, and by keeping my attention on him, I can avoid looking at Grant.
He’s fixing me a drink without even asking what I want, and what sucks about that is that whatever he makes will be perfect.
“So, what’s your name?” My new friend’s breath smells a little sour, and I see as he flips his phone over that he was swiping through Hinge. But I feel Grant’s eyes on us, so why not?
“Jill,” I say. I draw it out like a striptease. Jesus Christ, why did I come here? “What’s yours?”
“If I told you Jack, would you believe me?”
I bat my eyelashes. I am ridiculous, and any sobriety I regained standing in the snow is disappearing again as I sip the amazing bourbon concoction Grant just put in front of me. I lean closer to the guy whose name is probably not Jack and whisper, “Should we fetch a pail of water?”
What the actual fuck am I saying? It’s not even sexy. It’s weird.