20. Elliot
20
ELLIOT
GRADY
What are you doing right now?
Reading.
GRADY
Where?
In my room.
It’s been two days since our night on the bathroom floor, and I’ve barely seen Grady. We had another loss against the Astros, which meant no one was in the mood to talk on the flight from Houston to Chicago.
Today is one of our rare free days that isn’t consumed by travel since yesterday’s game was early in the day. I never have any plans on off days, but I had secretly hoped Grady would want to hang out at some point. Checking my phone again, I frown when I see it’s been almost three minutes since Grady read the text, but he hasn’t said anything back. Maybe he accidentally left our messages open and didn’t see my text? Is it too weird if I send another one now?
I shake my head, annoyed by how much thought I’m putting into this. I have choked on this man’s cock. I can send him two fucking texts in a row.
Why?
The moment I hit send, I drop my phone on the table beside me with a sigh. I don’t realize just how audible the sigh was until Colton looks up from his phone. “Dude.”
“What?”
“You went from smiling at your phone like a love-sick puppy to dramatically sighing in less than three minutes.”
“I wasn’t a love-sick anything,” I defend, adjusting my grip on the book in my hands. He’s right; the moment my phone vibrated, I knew it would be a text from Grady, and my stomach did a little flip at the idea of him reaching out to me. The idea that Grady was thinking of me, that any part of his mind might have been focused on me, is a surprisingly heady one. “Or dramatically sighing, by the way. That was a perfectly normal level of sighing.”
“Is there a normal level of sighing?”
Someone knocks on our door, and I jump at the opportunity to leave this conversation. Setting my book next to my phone, I walk past Colton’s bed with my head held high. “There is, and you’ve just heard it.”
I hear him mumble, “Whatever makes you feel better, I guess,” but I ignore it as I look through the peephole. A slightly distorted version of a neck I’m now intimately familiar with stares back at me. I nearly duck before remembering that Grady can’t see me through the door.
A nervous giggle builds in my chest as I run a hand through my hair in the hopes it might smooth any bits sticking out, before I throw open the door. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Grady’s soft reply is accompanied by a lopsided grin that has me smiling dreamily up at him. “Are you busy?”
He knows I’m not, which makes me think that question is for Colton’s benefit rather than mine. “No, we’re just hanging out. You want to come in?”
“Actually, I came to see if you wanted to run into town with me. You can come, too, Colton,” he calls cheerily into the room, but his wide eyes lock on mine and he shakes his head dramatically.
I nearly give him away with a laugh, but Colton’s immediate response of “I’d rather be shot in the leg than spend my day off shopping with you, Grady,” covers my muffled snort.
“Let me grab my phone.”
I’m halfway across the room when I catch Colton staring at me. The look on his face is one of mild interest, but there’s something about his eyes that gives me pause. “What?”
“Nothing,” he shrugs, looking down at his phone. It isn’t until I’m stepping into the hall that I hear Colton mumble, “See you later, puppy .”
I try to mask my panic over the implication in Colton’s words. He doesn’t know anything. At most, he suspects I have a crush on Grady, which isn’t a big deal. Anyone who has spent time around the two of us could easily make that connection, so it isn’t something to worry about.
That last thought repeats over and over, and I force myself to smile at Grady as if nothing is wrong. He gives me an odd look but doesn’t say anything as we move in unison toward the elevator at the far end of the hall.
Grady pushes the call button, his bright blue eyes assessing me as we wait for the elevator to ascend to our floor. We’re both dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but where Grady’s jeans are light to complement the soft blue t-shirt stretched too tight across his chest, mine are so dark they nearly blend with the old black band t-shirt that I’ve covered with my favorite grey cardigan.
“Should I be jealous?”
“Jealous?” I quickly scan our outfits again, searching for clues about what he could be jealous about. “Of what?”
The elevator doors open, and Grady reaches out a hand to ensure they don’t close again as I step inside. The doors are still open when a massive body presses me into the back wall of the elevator.
“Are you Colton’s puppy now, Princess?”
Grady growls the question directly into my ear as he bites down on my ear lobe, but I nearly miss it over the sound of the curse slipping through my lips. “No,” I shake my head, pressing back against his body. “I’m not his anything. I’m?—”
I nearly say, “I’m yours,” before I manage to stop the words from spilling out of my mouth. Grady reacted fine when I got jealous of the woman at the front desk, but that doesn’t mean he would be okay with me claiming him as mine .
“You’re what, Elliot?”
The elevator dings before I can respond, and we break apart as the doors slide open to reveal the lobby. Grady allows me to exit the elevator first, but my steps falter when we’re on the sidewalk outside. “Uh, where are we going?”
“Oh,” Grady’s face heats, and he quickly lifts a hand toward his hair. He frowns, and I realize he was reaching up to spin his hat around but he isn’t wearing it today. I’ve decided that’s definitely a nervous tick, but I can’t think of what he could possibly have to be nervous about right now. “I thought we could try this sushi place that Hoax recommended.”
“Just the two of us?” I watch a soft blush spread across his face, creeping down his neck as he shuffles his feet. I’ve never seen him like this.
“Yes.”
“Like...a...date?”
Grady’s gaze finally meets mine, his shoulders sagging as whatever is warring in his mind seems to win. “I thought we could take the experimenting out of the bedroom. You know, since you’ve only dated shitbags before.”
There’s something about the way he’s looking at me that fills my chest with the need to comfort him even though he’s just insulted my entire dating history. I’ve never been great at comfort, so I lean into my baser instincts and make it into a joke. “And you really think you can do better? Bit presumptuous of you.”
He snorts, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck as he gives me a sheepish grin. “I’ll have you know, I’m a fantastic date.”
“What do I get if this ends up being as terrible as all the other dates I’ve been on?” I poke him in the ribs, and he immediately drops his arm. I make a mental note that he’s ticklish there, in case I need to use that to my advantage later. “Do I get to kick your ass?”
Grady finally laughs, some of the tension dropping from his shoulders. “Those terms sound agreeable.”
“You’re pretty cocky for someone who doesn’t even know if I’ll say yes to this pretend date.” I bite my lower lip hard enough to leave a mark, but it’s the only way to hold in the smile threatening to break across my face. “You haven’t even fake asked me yet.”
“Elliot,” Grady steps toward me, tilting my chin up with one calloused finger. “Will you go on an experimental date with me?”
I make him wait for my answer, sliding my fingers through his belt loops as I breathe through the pounding of my heart. “I would love to.”
“Thank fuck.” The remaining tension seeps from Grady’s body, and he gives me a warm smile. “Now hurry up.”
“It’s only four-thirty.”
“I know,” he laces our fingers together, dragging me after him as he walks purposefully down the sidewalk. “But there’s somewhere I want to go before we eat.”
The place he wants to go is a three-story used bookstore on the west side of town. It’s a labyrinth of rickety-looking bookshelves that seem to lean on one another to stay upright. I’m not sure where to look first, but Grady gently pushes me toward the stairs leading to the underground section of the store.
“I say we start at the bottom and work our way up.”
Two hours later, I’m sitting cross-legged in front of a towering bookshelf on the second floor. Grady comes to check on me every now and then, his arms progressively fuller each time he pops back up. He keeps reminding me to grab as many books as I want, and I just know he’s going to try to pay for them when we check out.
When I first realized his intention, I tried to curb the number of books I was grabbing, but he noticed almost immediately and started adding every book I touched to his own stack. After a hushed argument, I begrudgingly agreed to add any book I wanted to my stack, regardless of how many I had already picked up.
Now, I’m surrounded by a small fortress of novels to sort through as I decide how many I’m willing to allow Grady to purchase.
“If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, stop it.”
Guilt washes over me as I look up at him. Grady holds half as many books as I have in my piles, but he eyes my choices with curiosity rather than surprise. “Oh, you found the sports section, too. Did you see they have a copy of that Pete Rose memoir?”
“This one?” I ask, digging a book from the bottom of the stack near my left knee. Grady laughs, dropping to crouch at my side. He leans forward, brushing our lips together in a soft kiss. It’s the second time he’s done that, and it fucks me up even more this time because I’m not sure why he’s done it. “I’m going to borrow that book from you later.”
He smiles at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that makes my heart beat faster. “Okay,” is all I can think to say, but it earns me another sweet kiss.
“Do you want to look around more?”
“Grady,” I sigh, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of that question. “I always want to look around more.”
It’s meant to be a joke, but Grady takes it very seriously. “The restaurant is open until ten, so you’ve got plenty of time. If you want, I can take those books down to the register for you while you keep looking.”
“No,” I place a hand on his arm, using the unyielding muscle to leverage myself onto my feet. “I was joking, but you’re very sweet. I’m all done.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I start to collect the books, but Grady beats me to it. He manages to grab more than half of them before I can, and I pretend to be very upset about it as we walk down the stairs toward the checkout.
Ten minutes, one argument, and two hundred dollars later, we’re back on the sidewalk with three overloaded bags of books. “Are you hungry yet?”
“I could eat. How about you?”
Grady smirks, moving the bags he wouldn’t let me carry to one side so he can take my hand in his. “I’m always hungry when you’re around, Princess.”
The laugh that bursts from my chest is loud enough to bounce off the buildings around us. Grady watches me until the giggles subside, and I offer him a murmured apology. “I wasn’t ready for you to call me that in public.”
“Fair enough.” He drags me into his side, kissing my temple before giving my ear a sharp nip. “You have an incredible laugh.”
“Thank you,” I breathe against his chest, suddenly very aware of how close we’re standing. This almost feels...real? Like it’s an actual date planned by someone interested in me, not just a spur-of-the-moment idea to cure Grady’s afternoon boredom. I straighten and give him a teasing grin when I realize I’m leaning too hard against his side. “Your laugh is just okay.”
“Just okay?” Grady squawks, pinching me with the fingers that are still wrapped around mine. “I’ll have you know that I always get compliments on my laugh.”
“From people who want to sleep with you.”
“Oh, now my laugh is ‘just okay’, and you don’t want to sleep with me? This is the best first date ever.”
“It actually is,” I admit, falling into step next to him as we move down the sidewalk toward our next destination. It’s a small sushi restaurant filled with black metal chairs and brown wooden tables. The walls are covered in a mix of brick and bamboo, and there’s a counter near the back where you can see them making the sushi.
Grady points to a table near the windows, and a waitress greets us the moment we’ve sat down. We don’t talk much as we look over the menus, so we’re both ready to order when she returns with our drinks.
The moment she steps away from the table, Grady begins digging through the bags of books at his feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for something.”
“I gathered as much,” I roll my eyes, but there’s no heat behind it. “What are you looking for?”
“This.”
Grady holds up a little white book with bright red letters splashed across the front. My eyes dart from the book to his face and back again. “What are you planning to do with that?”
“Start at one and go until we run out of questions?”
“Grady,” I giggle, pointing at the number taking up half of the cover. “It’s One Thousand and One Random Questions . We won’t get past twenty before our food comes.”
He flips the book open with a shrug. “I’ll take that bet.”
Over the next ten minutes, I learn that the last dream Grady remembers having was driving his car on a road made of candy in the sky. He didn’t have a good explanation, but apparently most of his dreams could be pitched as either animated films for children or PSAs on psychedelic drug use.
His first celebrity crush was Miller’s dad, which makes complete sense. Wayne Miller was a certified heartthrob in his time, but Grady surprises me by saying he’s never told Mills that. “I didn’t want him to worry that I was only friends with him because of his dad.”
The worst gift he’s ever received also involved Miller, but that isn’t surprising. “He gave me a pot of glitter for my birthday once. Did you know that putting glitter in a jar with a lid doesn’t actually keep the glitter inside? Nothing can contain glitter, Elliot. Nothing .”
The next question reveals that Grady is always on time, unless he’s late.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m always on time,” he shrugs, giving me a crooked smile that makes my heart beat faster. “Unless I’m late.”
“What’s your go-to French fry dip?”
“Ranch.”
That’s the moment the waitress arrives with our food, so it’s several minutes before I can bring us back around to the horrors Grady just confessed.
“Okay, I can handle the acid trip dreams and the cryptic answers about being late,” I pretend to tick off each point as if I’m physically counting his sins. “But I cannot abide dipping your fries in ranch.”
“If you’re about to spew some nonsense about ketchup?—”
“The correct choice!”
“Except that it isn’t. Ketchup is weird.”
“It’s...weird?” I stare at him, waiting for the moment he admits that he’s joking.
He does not admit that he’s joking.
“Have you ever tried dipping fries in ranch?”
“No, because I am not a heathen.”
Grady’s deep laughter warms me from the inside out, and it’s nearly enough to distract me from the fact that he’s clearly unstable. “Maybe I’ll have to change your mind about that, Princess.”
“You can try,” I shrug, deftly snatching one of the spicy tuna rolls off Grady’s plate. He yelps as if I’ve slapped him, and I nearly fumble my prize before it even gets to my mouth.
“What was that for?”
“It’s tax for listening to you drone on about your ranch fetish.”
I wink at him before placing the stolen sushi into my mouth with a satisfied hum. Grady’s eyes zero in on my lips, his entire demeanor changing in the span of a breath. “If you want to talk about fetishes, Princess, all you have to do is ask.”
Choking on raw fish isn’t the way I pictured my life ending, but I decide the self-satisfied smirk on Grady’s face is worth the near-death experience.