Twenty-Two. Pleased to Meat（ball） You, Louis Heath
Twenty-Two
PLEASED TO MEAT(BALL) YOU, LOUIS HEATH
In our new teams, we have two days off to come up with a whole new recipe. Which means Grant and I should be working on something. But we never really broached that plan, given we were so focused on not speaking to each other the day at the grocery store.
I do get a text from Corey. I really meant that I’d like to try again, but between Christmas cookie orders at SweetHart’s and working with Fiona on our recipe—not to mention I need to finally wrap all my kids’ gifts!
—I feel like I’m spinning in a snowstorm.
But I don’t want you to think I didn’t mean it. So, soon?
I respond that he should take care of what he needs to, and we’ll have plenty of time once he’s feeling less stressed. Corey is so different from the guys I’ve dated in LA, who put off plans with barely two words, if that. I can tell it’s important to him that I don’t feel like he’s leading me on.
Which makes me feel a little guilty when I text Grant to make a plan to go to his dad’s house.
The messages were innocuous enough (mine: Is your dad around tonight?
I’d love to stop by. Grant’s: Perfect timing.
I’m heading there to hang out with him for a while.
How about 6:30? ). Even so, I still don’t tell anyone as we eat pizza at my parents’ house and tease the kids as they beg to shake the gifts under the tree.
Once we’ve cleaned up, I lie and say I have to go into town to find a few extra gifts.
It’s half-true. I can’t go to Grant’s dad’s house empty-handed.
But while the Louis Heath I know considers a case of Miller High Life to be not only the champagne of beers but the champagne of champagne, there’s no way I’m going to find a liquor store in Sweetville.
So I stop at Amano’s Deli, curiously a holdover from Powell Park that looks exactly the same, right down to the extra-jolly Santa eating a giant sandwich painted in its street-side window.
I get Louis his favorite meatball sub and some cannoli.
While Grant kept an apartment above the bar, his dad lived in a house just a few streets away.
It’s a small place, a fairly plain Powell Park bungalow, but the Sweetville version appears to have fresh tuck-pointing and new hedges planted on either side of the doorway.
Instead of Louis’s chipped plastic Nativity on the front lawn—something Louis kept to honor Grant’s mom, as Louis always described himself as a fallen altar boy—there’s a wooden version with gleaming golden lights lining the top of the manger.
My hands are clammy clutching the Amano’s bag.
What if Grant changed his mind and doesn’t want to see me?
I can’t figure out why he went from cold at the grocery store to friendly at the play and settle on the fact that maybe, even if things aren’t good between me and him, he still trusts that I love his dad.
I ring the bell and wait on the steps. I hear Louis yell, “Who’s there? Carolers? I was about to put on the Bears game.” I laugh to myself. Louis is enough of a Chicago Bears diehard that even the Sweetville version of him would shoo away carolers for Thursday Night Football.
Grant opens the door. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and dark jeans and has a dish towel around his neck. He smiles when he sees me. Then his eyes cut to the bag. “You did not bring Dad a meatball sandwich, did you? I just had to beg him to eat a salmon salad.”
“Meatball what? Who’s got meatballs?” There’s the sound of a cane and footsteps slowly thumping across the floor, and I stand there looking at Grant like, What do you want me to do? The man now knows there’s a sandwich present , when Louis appears in front of me.
“Jill Jacobs! Even better than meatballs,” he booms. Grant’s lankiness comes from his mom’s side, because Louis is about my height, with a solid barrel of an upper body.
His face has always been crinkled, especially when he smiles, but all these years later, he’s more wizened, and his color is a little less hearty than it was.
“But did I hear that this angel brought me a meatball sandwich?”
“I’m hardly an angel,” I say. “But I have my moments.” I wave the paper Amano’s bag in front of Louis’s face. He’s surprisingly quick at grabbing it from me.
“Whatever you are, you’ve saved me,” he says. “Salmon isn’t enough to keep this engine chugging.”
He takes a halting step backward so I can come inside.
“Good thing you’re here. The Bears are on,” he says, heading into the living room. “And you know what they say—misery loves company.”
Louis puts his sandwich on the table next to his easy chair and makes his way into the kitchen, waving me to follow.
The house still has a warm, lived-in feel, and I’m happy to see Louis’s kitchen décor hasn’t been replaced with a bunch of corny Heartfelt signs.
His fridge is plastered with news clippings, and when I inspect them more closely, I see they’re all about a New York restaurant called Struck.
“That’s Grant’s restaurant,” he says proudly. “Weird name, great food. I had some veal that was to die for. You ever been?”
Grant enters the kitchen from its door off the dining room and gets back to work on some kind of delicious charcuterie board that seems to be intended for my visit, then glances up. “Dad, Jill lives in LA now, remember? She doesn’t get to New York much.”
Grant glances across the kitchen island at me, as if to verify that this is true. That I haven’t been to New York and not told him.
Louis helps himself to one of the rolled pieces of prosciutto Grant sets out. “That’s for Jill,” Grant scolds him. “You’ve got meatballs.”
“It’s the holidays. I need to indulge. And you, Jill, get to Struck.
It’s never too late,” he says. “So, tell me about your movie career. Did I ever tell you the story of the time I went to California and I met James Garner at a Costco? Don’t ask me why I was at a Costco on vacation.
But”—he points at Grant—“your mother was a big fan, and she was ogling him. This was when we were first married—ah! We were buying snacks for the beach and your mom loved seeing what the samples were—but we were in line, and I said, ‘Bet you and McQueen couldn’t Great Escape your way out of this one.’ He loved it. ”
“I love that one, too,” I say. I like it a lot better than my LA story. “I’m working on a few things. The movie business kind of bends you this way and that.” And my particular contortion is telling myself I’m ever going to make it when I can barely keep a dead-end job.
“I’ll be the first one at the theater for your motion picture debut,” Louis says. He clatters to the island and lifts the charcuterie board with his caneless hand.
“Dad, I got that,” Grant says.
“You made it pretty; I’ll carry it. And then I get to put it closer to me.”
He places the tray of meats and cheeses next to his sandwich, then gets set up in his easy chair and flips to the game.
Grant takes a seat at one end of the couch, and I sit at the other.
We all watch something happen in the first quarter—no matter what dimension I’m in, football will never make sense to me—and no one says anything.
“Wow, two real conversationalists I’ve got here,” Louis pipes up.
I look to Grant, and he looks at me. There’s a feeling in the air of expectation, but whose expectations is unclear.
“You’ve got a Bears game on. There’s not much to say that’s kind,” Grant says.
“You have a point.”
We watch the game as Louis eats some of the sandwich and grunts in disgust at some of the action on TV. I shift in my seat, pretending to pay attention to the game while stealing a glance at Grant’s profile. He’s facing the screen, but I can tell his mind is elsewhere. That makes two of us.
My stomach rumbles, and I remember the charcuterie board. I reach for it at the same time as Grant, as if we both realize that having our mouths full is an allowable reason to keep the uncomfortable silence going. Our hands touch as they land on the same cube of cheese.
“You go ahead,” I say.
“No, you,” Grant says.
A honking snore from Louis directs our attention back to him. He’s knocked out on the recliner with half a meatball sandwich in his lap.
“He had physical therapy today,” Grant says. “It wears him out.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he’s in more pain than he lets on.”
“I think he gets more worn out turning on the charm for every cute nurse in the place,” he says. He turns down the sound on the game and stands up. “You want a beer?”
Huh? How is it that the bottle of Baileys appeared in a cabinet Grant’s dad made and now there’s somehow beer in his house when I can’t find a drink anywhere else?
Though Santa did say that you can’t shake the true nature of the people you really love…
or something like that. And Louis and Grant do run a bar back in Powell Park.
“Sure,” I say. Grant disappears to the kitchen and returns with two bottles of High Life. He hands one to me. “Sorry Dad fell asleep before he could make a Godfather reference about the cannoli you brought.”
I laugh and take a sip of my beer. It’s perfectly cold. “It’s okay,” I say. “I know he’s good for it.”
Grant sips his beer, too. I think back to how fast I felt tipsy off the Baileys the other night and how that worked out. I have to stop after this beer. Because it’s not just the drink. The heat coming off Grant makes me feel lightheaded on its own; the pull of him is dangerous.
“I should probably head out,” I say. “It was really nice seeing your dad.”
Grant’s eyes scan the room as if he’s trying to remember its details for later. “You sure?” He eyes my half-full beer, then looks back at me. “It’s really nice having you here again.”
“Yeah,” I say dumbly. “So nice but I should get back.”
I start to stand up, but before I’m half off the couch, Grant’s reaching for my arm. “Wait,” he says. “There’s something I wanted to tell you.”
I’m hovering over the couch, trying to decide whether to sit or stand for what he’s about to say. The intense look in Grant’s eyes tells me that being seated is my best bet. I do.
“I wasn’t entirely honest with you. About why I signed up for the competition.”
“You secretly love and revere baking?”
Grant scoffs. “Never.” He drops his hand from my forearm. The skin he was touching feels lonely without his palm there. “I wasn’t lying about wanting to help my dad win the prize money and do the historic register thing. That would be great.”
I shift my body ever so slightly closer to his. “Okay. But there’s something else?”
“Yeah.” There’s a long pause as he stares at the TV, or really, in the direction of the TV. Finally, he turns back toward me.
“It’s you,” he says. “I was just there checking up on things and saw you walk in with Corey. It really got to me. So I signed up, too.”
A cheer goes up in the game on TV at the same time my heart roars in reaction to Grant’s confession. My mouth is hanging open. The night at the inn wasn’t just Grant being lusty. He still has feelings for me. Or had.
“I thought you should know.”
I swear I see a smile tick up at the corner of the still-sleeping Louis’s mouth.
“Oh,” I say. I pick up my beer again but don’t drink it. I need something to do with my hands. I’m clasping the sides of my bottle as my blood pulses so wildly I think my heart’s on the loose and careening around my body. “Thanks for telling me.”
Corey is where my energies have to be concentrated. Still, I can’t help but eat Grant’s admission up.
It tastes delicious.