Chapter 12
twelve
LILIANA
Thursdays are Grant days. Not Tuesdays. Yet, in the last moments of my shift, it’s Grant who strolls into the café with his familiar gray backpack.
The brown of his sweater vest matches perfectly with his similar-colored slacks, and the short-sleeved button down beneath it does nothing to hide his forearm tattoo.
It takes more will than I’d like to admit to tear my vision away from the ink. Only to be staring at smiling green eyes when he approaches.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ordering a medium matcha cloud latte and a medium iced hazelnut latte.”
My eyes narrow. With how badly my past few days have been, I’m already in a sour mood. I don’t want to take it out on him, but my confusion and stress is heightening everything.
“It’s Tuesday.”
“And you’re wearing purple.” I glance down briefly at the purple dress peeking out behind my work apron. When I look back up, Grant is smug. “Both truths I hold dear to my heart.”
There’s sarcasm in his tone. It might be naivety, but an instinct in me says the sarcasm only applies to half of his statement. Specifically, the part that isn’t about me and purple and his heart.
I swallow and say again, “It’s Tuesday.”
“Are you trying to get me to repeat myself?” His head tilts, wavy hair flopping around.
“You’ve never been here on a Tuesday.”
“You’re keeping track?”
A grunting sound comes from the back of my throat. He’s cheekier today than normal. With my mind still struggling to get ahold of who Grant is to me, and the stress of how badly my second act has been going, his attitude is too much.
“Grant, please tell me why you’re here on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday.”
The gentleness of my voice quickly melts his demeanor. Less playful, more sincere, he replies, “I wanted to see you.”
For a moment, the background of my workplace fades. It’s just me, the boy who stole my heart in undergrad, and the itching need to return to sneaking side glances and blushing behind textbooks.
It’s too much.
I know I can’t and won’t treat Grant the same way I did before finding out the truth. After imagining myself in his position during that finals week, I can find it in me to forgive him, at least. But I refuse to revert to the girl who swooned helplessly over the cute artist from class.
Even if he’s leaning over the counter holding a black credit card, insisting to buy her favorite coffee.
“One iced matcha cloud latte and one iced hazelnut.”
“I can buy my own latte.”
“I know.” He pushes the card closer to my hand.
“Grant.”
“Liliana.”
He doesn’t budge. There’s a small glance between my eyes and his card, before he adds, “I’ll get our drinks, and when you get off your shift we’ll go hang out somewhere. You choose.”
Warning sirens. Alarms of blaring volumes go off in my head. Because drinks and hanging out and Tuesday are completely out of norm for the agreement we made. The alarms get louder when I realize I don’t hate the idea of being with him outside this café.
I could be overthinking it. Things like that could be friendly, and maybe I can see myself being friends with Grant again. Maybe that’s why hanging out with him doesn’t seem so bad. Sometimes, when we joke, it feels like we’re heading towards that.
Still, I can’t ignore how my skin prickles and my heart rate increases at the concept of us doing something out-of-the-ordinary. I’ve barely gotten used to seeing him regularly again.
“No,” I answer hurriedly. His face falls. “I really need to work on my second draft tonight.”
“Oh.” It should be enough to deter him. Despite that, he motions to the card in his hand. “Let’s do it together. If you’re more comfortable here, we can do that, too.”
His genuine, warm smile reappears, and I’m being bombarded with my weaknesses. Grant’s kindness and promises of academic assistance.
I should say no. My head is jumbled enough.
If I’m honest, once I realized my second act was falling apart, my first thought was to reach out to Grant.
I almost did. But I thought I could mold myself into independent success if I pushed hard enough.
And if I can’t manage this assignment without his help, who’s to say that I can do any of my story without Grant lending a hand?
Falling into a state where I need his guidance is a fate I want to avoid.
But Kam walks through the door, someone who I’m sure has finished his draft already, shocked look on his face. It’s a signal I can finally clock out. And enjoy a free drink. And maybe figure out this draft without crying myself to sleep tonight.
I sigh in defeat.
“Can I have a large iced hazelnut instead?”
“So.” I gulp down another sip of my drink. “Any ideas for act two?”
Grant’s pencil strokes pause, his face scrunching. “How far have you gotten?”
“About four hundred words.”
“Out of?”
I stare to the side, away from him. I tried to do this on my own. Since the day I got my first act back, I’ve spent multiple hours sitting in front of my desk. If I felt productive during those times, I would’ve written ten short stories.
It was harder than expected, though, to produce something. Everything I wrote felt wrong and got deleted soon after. Only a few passages were good enough to keep. Now, with the date approaching and nothing in mind, it feels like I’m hopelessly back at square one.
“According to the curriculum, I need at least two thousand five hundred.”
“Geez.” He drops his pencil onto the sketchbook, back straightening. “And when is this due?”
“Tomorrow.”
Grant winces. A heavy dread of anxiety slams through my chest. For good measure, I pulled out my agenda when we settled at the window table and double checked my due dates. I hoped that by some miracle I misread the page, and the deadline was some distance away.
Unfortunately, my organizational skills are too honed to misread or miswrite a deadline.
The large frame looming on my left is a distraction from my thoughts.
“You have a lot of shit going on.” Grant scans over the page. “You schedule your shower times?”
His own finger, calloused and defined by the constant movements of his pen or pencil or brush, trace over my weekly schedule. I watch it too closely than I’d ever admit.
“So I know how much study time I have every night, yeah.”
His brows raise, but I don’t feel judged. His expression is less surprise and more concern.
“If I micromanaged my schedule like this, I think I’d always be stressed about what I’m supposed to do next.”
The dark cloud of anxiety expands, growing closer to being unmanageable.
Thinking of the “next” has held me and my achievements together up until this semester. Once I fell behind, my balance faltered, and I’ve been desperately grasping for ahold on my “next” ever since. I can barely stay grounded with the now.
“Don’t admire me too much. I try to anticipate the future but couldn’t even prepare myself for my assignment tomorrow.”
I laugh, but it’s empty and lonely, and Grant’s stare is unamused.
“Do you have your first act with you?” I don’t answer verbally but retrieve the marked-up papers out of my tote.
His fingertips, damp from the condensation of his cup, cool my hand when he flails it and the assignment.
“You wrote this off an outline you originally scrapped. You decided to bring it out of the throwaway pile to make this. You’re capable of writing a second act, too. ”
His grip leaves a chill in its wake. It spreads further across my body when the same hand pushes slightly outgrown locks out of his eyes. I force myself to refocus on the assignment and not the flex of his fingers or the sound of his voice.
“There must be something more you thought of. What was written in your outline?” I opt not to answer that verbally, either.
Another stack of pages gets yanked out of my bag, and I hand it over for him to read.
“Perfect. You planned a montage of hangouts to get them more familiar with each other. What’s the issue? ”
“I don’t know.” I can barely admit it. “It started off fine when I was writing. The first scene was so easy. And then it was time for the second and I had nothing.”
I tried to unravel my characters and piece together what I think they would do.
I compared my work to romance novels with similar premises and hoped for inspiration that never came.
I even asked Kam what he would do, and after being told four different ways to “write what you like”, I decided I’d never ask him for advice again.
I’m stuck. I’ve been stuck. While everyone else in my cohort probably finished their precisely outlined stories, I’m bested by a laser tag scene. It’s almost an insult to them that I’m in the same master’s program.
The gravity of the situation, that the good grade I got must be a fluke considering my idiotic track record, crashes into me.
“Oh my gosh.” My shallow breaths weigh down my shoulders. “I’m so screwed. There’s no hope for me or this degree.”
Panic expands in my chest and I feel lightheaded in the worst way possible.
“Hey.” Grant is blurry in my peripherals. “You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine. It’s not fine.” I turn the first act face down. I can’t look at it when imminent failure is setting in again. The talk with my mom, and with Rosie, scream at my thoughts and highlight my failures. “This was so stupid. I can’t believe I thought I could do this.”
“Liliana, stop.”
Teardrops gather at my waterline. The worst emotions overwhelm me. Embarrassment, disappointment, anxiety. More embarrassment, because I’m going to cry in front of Grant.
At my workplace. Because I set myself up for failure and have no one else to blame. And after realizing the grudge I held over him was a valid mistake made while he was grieving his mother.
He came here to see me and bought me a drink, too. Only for me to immediately fall into self-pity and cry over homework.
“I’m pathetic.”
“Don’t say stuff like that.”