CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
“I’m dying. What do I need with nutrition?”
“Fair point.”
His initial choice is his mom’s chicken pot pie, but then he decides it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to cook when her son’s about to die, so he opts for an Italian sub from the deli near his apartment.
Then I ask him which candy bar he’d give to a caveman, and soon we’ve built a whole conversation of hypotheticals—which song lyric we’d get tattooed, what we’d do with a million dollars, which Golden Girl we’d save from a fire.
Over the course of the evening, I start to realize how much I didn’t know about Grant.
That he’s ride or die for Dorothy Zbornak.
That he grew up in New Hampshire, where his super-secret hobby (which he still won’t tell me) wasn’t close-up magic, or Zumba, or competitive Rubik’s Cubing.
And that the one book he’d want if he were stranded on an island, as he says almost reluctantly, is The Hobbit.
“I’m surprised,” I say, digging into a plate of souvlaki. “I thought you were more of a crime novel guy. Did I kidnap the wrong professor?”
He shrugs, chewing. “I didn’t grow up reading crime.
It was my dad’s thing.” He becomes focused on tearing his pita into pieces.
“I started reading through his book collection after he died a few years ago. Turns out, I liked them.” Before I can offer condolences, he looks up at me with a tight grin.
“It figures that’s when I’d finally find the one thing we had in common, right? ”
The tension in his voice gives me a wave of sadness for him.
I’ve never had that problem with my parents.
Sure, they can be judgy about those interests which I share with the other—Dad rolling his eyes at my romance novels, Mom wishing I were less of a thrill-seeker—but at the end of the day, I’ve always had common ground with them both.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Parents are complicated.”
I worry that I’ve said the wrong thing, that I couldn’t possibly know the half of it with both my parents still alive, but he raises his eyebrows in a don’t I know it way and echoes, “Parents are complicated.”
He stares at his plate, pushing food around with his fork. I can see that there’s more he could say, and also that he’s not ready to right now. So I break the silence myself.
“Marry, fuck, kill—US presidents.”
He snorts a laugh and we pick right back up, debating whether it’s better to marry someone based on hotness, policy, or their ability to give you the legal name Grant Grant.
After dinner, we decide that since we’ve come this far, we might as well walk the rest of the way back to Lesley’s.
As white stone buildings turn into sleek glass-front retail spaces and back again, it dawns on me that this is the first I’m really seeing of London—not as the backdrop for a high-octane thriller but as a city.
A real city, full of real people and places and all their little details.
The blue plaques showing where famous figures lived and died.
The peals of laughter wafting from restaurant windows.
We pass West End theaters, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square.
“This is a very touristy route we’ve accidentally taken,” Grant remarks.
“That might be because we’re sticking to the main roads,” I point out. “I think we’d need to head off the beaten path a bit to uncover the hidden gems.”
Grant eyes a shadowy side street distrustfully. “Maybe next time,” he says. “For now, the beaten path feels like a great place to not get murdered.”
“Grant. If you haven’t learned yet that you can get murdered anywhere and everywhere, I really don’t know what to tell you.”
He pulls a face at me and we continue along the well-lit street.
As it happens, even the main thoroughfare has a few gems up its sleeve.
There are dozens of memorials and statues along the way, and we entertain ourselves by guessing at their origin stories.
My suggestions tend to be fairly ridiculous, while Grant’s are more plausible—but every now and then, he surprises me by making up something outrageous.
Even so, his impeccable poker face fools me every time.
“I meant to thank you, by the way,” Grant says, when we’ve paused to read the inscription of a statue who is not, it turns out, William Gigglywiggins, inventor of the wet willy. “You really saved my neck earlier.”
“Oh.” I had almost forgotten how this day started out—how, for a while, I thought I might never see Grant alive again, and how that thought turned everything else into a blur. Suddenly I feel weird and self-conscious. “Anytime,” I say too casually, kicking a pebble. “I, uh … I’ve got your back.”
“I’ve got yours, too.”
I give him a small, appreciative smile. He almost returns it, and then his face falls into a grimace. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he gripes.
“Like what?”
“Like that. Like Thanks, Grant, it’s sweet that you think you could fight someone. I’m trying, you know.”
“You are trying! And you’re doing a really good job.”
“And it’s not like I don’t have my own strengths. If we go up against someone who’s more on my wavelength …” He tries to affect a tough-guy scowl but can’t seem to keep a straight face. “They’d better watch out.”
“Absolutely,” I say. “If we ever meet a serial killer who will chop off our heads unless we can answer his riddles three, you are the only one I’d want there with me.”
He breaks into a grin, and the laughter ripples out of us until it’s just a pair of smiles, like the surface of a lake returning to stillness.
I look over his shoulder. “Don’t look now,” I say, and he immediately whips around to see. “We’re being tourists again, in a big way.”
As if to punctuate the statement, Big Ben clangs before us. It might be a cliché, but even so, we hurry to a spot on Westminster Bridge where we can admire the big clock, gloriously awash in gold light. I can’t help but let out a sigh.
“Well, we may not have stumbled upon an underground cannibal rave—”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a cozy family-owned pub, but sure,” he interjects.
“In any case, I’m not sure we could say we’d seen London if we didn’t see Big Ben at least once.”
“It’s actually Elizabeth Tower that we’re seeing,” Grant says in his Grant way. “Big Ben is the bell inside.”
I’m so tempted to groan in annoyance from the word actually alone.
But something in the way he says it gives me pause.
Makes me think he might not be trying to be an ass after all.
He might just be a big nerd who can’t keep all the random facts in his head from leaking out sometimes.
And I have to admit, I have learned a lot of trivia from him.
“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly, and I don’t think he’s talking about being a know-it-all.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I shouldn’t have sent those emails. I just panicked. I felt so helpless and desperate to get out of here that I went a little crazy and ruined everything. For you, too.”
I’m quiet for a second. I don’t think he should be the one feeling guilty. I just don’t know what to say.
I clear my throat. “I do believe I heard tell of a limerick, or a sonnet or something?”
Grant winces, running a hand over his jaw. “Yeah. Like I said—desperate and going insane.”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me see,” I say, waiting for that fuck off stare. But it doesn’t come. Instead, though he grimaces slightly, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and thumbs through it, then hands it to me, looking away.
“It’s only fair,” he says.
I scroll through the neat little rows of messages, all eighteen of them, and begin reading. They start off sensible enough—well, as sensible as can be expected under the circumstances—but then it’s all downhill.
Dear Ms. Matthews,
I know this sounds unbelievable, but please hear me out: My name is Grant Hoffman and I’ve been kidnapped by your protagonist Roxie Mitchell.
Somehow the things you’re writing are actually happening to us, and it’s clear we’re in grave danger if this story continues.
Would you be open to a meeting to discuss further?
We are in London (presumably because you set your book here), so I’m happy to accommodate your schedule, provided you don’t write us a murder event that conflicts.
Best,
Grant Hoffman
Ms. Matthews,
I know what you’re doing with this Harrods thing, but I won’t be bought. I need to get out of here so please, stop writing this now. You’re putting actual human beings in danger. I have a life. I have a cat. Does that mean nothing to you??
Best,
Grant Hoffman
Anna: I DON’T WANT TO GET PULVERIZED. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
Best,
Grant Hoffman
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
An accidental secondary character in an unhinged crime disaster of a novel who just watched a guy LIGHT HIMSELF ON FIRE PLEASE END THIS
Best,
Grant Hoffman
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Get me the fuck out of here,
Respectfully
Best,
Grant Hoffman
Stop stop stop stop stop
stop stop stoP STOP STOP STOP STOP
STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
Best,
Grant Hoffman
“A haiku,” I say. “Nice.”
He nods. “There’s an acrostic, too. It spells HELP HELP HELP down the side.”
But that’s not the message that catches my eye. Instead, I skip to the last one, dated March 7—three days ago.
Listen, I’m a writer, too. I get it. You have a firecracker of a protagonist who is probably as thrilling to write as she is to read.
She’s vibrant, funny, and sharp, and while she’s also chaos incarnate and seems to be so fearless that it’s borderline pathological, I’m sure you have plans to unpack that.
But I’m afraid I’ll never find out because you’re going to get us both killed. Can you please at least reply?
Best,
Grant Hoffman
When I look up, I’m grateful to see that Grant is facing the water. My face feels like a heat lamp and it probably shows.