Nineteen. Nutcracking Myself Up #2
I’d met Adam on a few occasions. He was a compactly built and equally tightly wound guy who framed everything he did in terms of return on investment.
Grant agreed that Adam was intense, but he appreciated that Adam was loyal and also practical; restaurants were a notoriously tough business, and Grant said you needed an Adam to stand a chance.
Still, I’d always thought Adam viewed me as an investment that wouldn’t rate a good enough return for Grant.
“Yeah. What about him?” I said.
“He’s partnered up with Ella Zolana—she has a restaurant group in New York.
” My stomach clenched at the words “New York,” and it twisted at the careful way Grant assembled his next statement.
“He bumped my resume up to her, and she liked it. There’s a sous chef job for me at her new place if I want it. ”
Of course he wanted it. Why wouldn’t he? If a studio had called me and said they had somehow hacked into my laptop and wanted to produce my unfinished screenplay, I would have wanted it. And Ella Zolana was a big deal. She was a Food Network mainstay and known for classy, timeless style.
“So we should probably talk about that. Maybe even now, since I’ll feel weird keeping it to myself at the party,” he said.
We were standing in his kitchen at home, and he slid a tray of stuffed mushrooms for the party out of the fridge, then placed it on the counter before sidling closer to me.
As he did, I edged farther away, leaning into the corner so it could prop me up as my legs went weak.
It was the first I’d heard that he’d even been thinking about this job.
But I knew a little bit that something like this might be coming.
I’d seen Grant’s resume up on his screen.
I could have asked him if he was looking for jobs—and if those jobs were in Chicago—but I didn’t want to be the anxious, needy girlfriend.
“You should go,” I said.
“That’s it? You don’t want to talk about it?”
“What’s there to say? It’s a great offer. Why would you pass it up?”
“You’re not even open to the possibility of going with me?”
“If you wanted me to go with you, you would have said something already,” I said. “Given me a hint.”
“I tried. Or I wanted to. I just feel like anytime I bring up your work or mine, you change the subject. It doesn’t make it easy to have conversations about the future,” he said.
“There’s more to the future than what our jobs will be,” I retorted.
“I know. But I never want to feel like it’s all about me, and you shut down whenever I bring up your writing lately. And I guess I thought I’d see if I got this gig and then ask you to come with,” he told me.
I saw it all too clearly. Grant had been biding his time with me, waiting for his real life to start.
Exactly like I’d always believed. And what if I went with him to New York?
Then everything else I worried about would come to pass: things would go amazing for him, I’d stagnate in a new city with higher rent, he’d realize I wasn’t really who he wanted to be with.
Him casually asking me to go like this was his way of throwing me a bone. Because I didn’t have anything going on to compare to what he did, on any level.
“I can’t just leave.” I could. But my surety that we weren’t going to work told me not to.
That a breakup in a strange city would hurt so much more than one on familiar grounds.
Plus, I’d told myself I’d move to LA, like Frankie Carroll had.
And I’d been putting it off to enjoy this bubble I’d been in with Grant.
But here it was. Bubble burst. Time to get on with it, Jill.
“I mean, you haven’t been writing anything much here. Maybe New York will give you some fresh inspiration.”
“Yeah, I’ll have lots of room for inspiration while I sit in an empty apartment with no job.
Anyway, I decided I’m moving to LA.” I’d been looking at places, it was true, but with no real plan to go.
Fantasizing about LA was a way to stave off what I thought was a less-realistic fantasy of Grant and me ending up together forever.
But now I hurled the decision at Grant like a dagger I hoped would make a wound.
“I’d be there,” Grant said. “But what—you just decided to move and you weren’t going to tell me?”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s not that much different than what you’ve been up to. Maybe we were meant to tide each other over until the real thing comes along.”
That was the dagger.
“I thought this was a real thing,” Grant said.
“A real thing where my options are to be the loser sitting at home waiting for you, or trying to be part of your world only to have people like Fiona remind me that I’m a chef groupie who doesn’t really get what the restaurant business is.”
“No one told you to wait at home,” Grant said. “I’ve been telling you to write. I’ve been reading whatever you give me. I picked you, not Fiona. And I’ve believed in you from word one.”
The idea that he could believe in me struck me as far-fetched.
I had nothing to show for what I said I intended to do.
I didn’t even feel particularly good at my library job—I was more like a warm body.
I could already imagine Grant being celebrated for his talent, his charm, his specialness.
He’d been mistaken about me from the beginning, thinking I had something special, too.
“This lasted while it was fun,” I said, taking great satisfaction in the punch of the line, if not how cruel it sounded coming out of my mouth. “But like you said, you have to get serious about your life. And I do, too.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now? So this was all a what? Some kind of joke to you? I think you want to be angry at me so you can let yourself off the hook for all your disappointments.”
“Yeah; it will be harder to let myself off the hook for this one,” I said. Digging in deeper in hopes I could make Grant hurt as much as I did.
Grant huffed out a laugh with no humor in it. “Well, merry fucking Christmas to me.”
I went to the Christmas Eve party alone, though Grant insisted I bring the mushrooms.
Now, Grant sits next to me, his handsome face clouded by a sad expression. Is he remembering our last fight, too? Softly, I ask, “Why aren’t you at the party?”
Grant shrugs. “They were starting to karaoke.” He scowls to em phasize how much he hates karaoke, as if I don’t remember. Although, I’m relieved that hasn’t changed about him.
“Oh, Fiona’s not going to sing you ‘Santa Baby’?
” I hate that I’ve said her name, but I can’t help myself.
I can still see the two of them in their intimate tête-à-tête in the corner and the way they seemed unaware of anyone else in the room.
I extend my hand toward Grant, indicating the Baileys, but he doesn’t give it up.
Instead, he turns it around in his hands and inches closer to me on the couch.
“I don’t think she is,” he says. He bends forward so that his head is below mine and he can look up at me as he adds, more softly, “And I wouldn’t want her to. I don’t feel that way about Fiona.”
His eyes study me with that intricate care, so I can almost feel his focus scraping lightly over my face, from my eyes to my nose to my lips before coming back up again and holding my gaze steadily in his.
Like he wants me to know that it’s me, not Fiona, he has feelings for.
I gulp. Maybe I’m imagining it. But then he says, “I don’t think I can feel any kind of way about someone who’s not you. ”
It’s somehow the flipside of what Corey said. I didn’t die, but what if I was Grant’s Christina? And he’s…
Who I’m kissing before I even know what I’m fully thinking.
At first, it’s me, lunging toward him, my lips hitting his as my upper half cants forward so I can greedily seize his mouth with mine.
For a second, a mortifying second, I think I’ve gotten it all wrong and he’s not going to kiss me back, but then he’s tossing the bottle behind himself and pulling me into him with enough force that he falls backward with his head on the arm of the couch and me on top of him, our kiss never breaking, only becoming more intense, as if by giving in to our mutual want, we’re creating more of it at the same time.
This is so not a scene from a Heartfelt movie. And so not what I expected to happen when I invoked Baby Jesus two minutes ago.
His hands come up my back, and he grips me hard, pressing me tighter to him, murmuring, “Jill…” At the sound of my name infused with so much need, I grind myself into him and feel how hard he his.
He gasps at the pressure of me and then grabs my ass, squeezing me tighter to him as he thrusts toward me.
“Wow, who’s the nutcracker now?” I joke.
Grant digs his fingers into my hips and gruffly says, “No joking. This is serious.”
I lift from the kiss for a split second to look at him, and his face is grave.
His eyes burn into me with reverent zeal, like he’s offering himself up for whatever I want.
And I want him. I suck in a sharp breath before I’m tearing at his shirt, undoing the buttons with wrenching motions.
In response, he yanks at my sweater, twisting the hem as he pulls it up over my chest and cups my breast with one hand as he rocks beneath me.
His fingers, always deliciously callused, run roughly over my nipple, and I emit a guttural sigh.
I don’t care if I ever get anything else I want ever again. This is why I’m here , I think. In this world, I can have Grant again.
All of him. A flash of us bolts through my mind, a weekend we spent at a hotel in the city when we lived in the king-sized bed, reading, eating room service, fucking, forgetting that we existed outside those four walls.
That power we had, in that room, to shed all the facets of our identities that weren’t solely in service of each other and the island we formed.
“See? Layers,” Grant says, reaching up to brush the hair off my face.
Layers. This layer of us always worked, but underneath, he’s still the guy who’s going to end up leaving me.
We couldn’t live on our island forever back then, in the real world.
Grant always had eyes on the horizon, waiting for something bigger than what we were.
Heartfelt World isn’t real, but my memories are.
And when things get real, we’ll still be the same people who will break each other all over again.
He pulls me close for another kiss, a softer, more teasing one this time, but as much as I want to give in to every touch, my lips are in retreat.
I’m not here to fall into a fantasy with Grant.
I already did that. I’m supposed to learn a lesson, and even after today’s setback with Corey, I still believe he’s part of that lesson.
And even if I’m wrong about Corey, I certainly should know better than to repeat my same mistake.
Then I hear sleigh bells, the sigh, “Open your heart.”
This time, I think I know why I’m hearing the Heartfelt sounds: my nonreality reality is busting in to remind me that getting with Grant is not what I’m here to do. I’m supposed to seal the deal with Corey even if that seems more impossible than ever.
I pull away midkiss. My lips instantly feel the absence of Grant’s, like I’ve shed some essential skin.
“What’s wrong?” He’s looking up at me with hurt in his eyes, like he already knows what I’m going to say.
But I say it anyway. “This is a mistake. I have to go.”
I get to my feet and dash outside into the perfect snow.
Grant doesn’t follow me, and I’m not surprised.