Chapter Nine
“Are you sure they’re plugged in?” Tony asked as he and Grant stared at Mrs. Karnacki’s house, hands on their hips in identical poses of masculine befuddlement.
“Why wouldn’t they be plugged in?”
Tony shrugged. “I always start with the most obvious reason something might not be working and go from there. No point in calling the plumber when the reason the water isn’t running is that the batteries needed to be changed on the fancy motion sensor faucet.”
The pair found where the lights were plugged in and, for good measure, unplugged them, then plugged them back in. No change.
“Well, Einstein, what’s your next suggestion?”
“The breaker, obviously. Unless you want to go through and twist every individual light bulb.”
Grant shook his head. “Even I don’t hate myself that much.”
“Speaking of hating yourself,” Tony said, “Ivy is going on a date with Austin. How are you feeling?”
Grant pretended to closely check the cord for any loose wiring that could have caused the outage. “Why would you think I have any feelings about that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you looked like someone ran over your dog, stole your wallet, and keyed your truck at the same time when he asked her out.”
“I don’t have a dog.” Grant straightened. “Let’s see if the side door to the garage is open.”
“That wasn’t an answer,” Tony pressed, following close on Grant’s heels.
“What do you want me to say?” Grant tried the doorknob. It turned, but the door didn’t open.
“I want you to tell me how you feel about this so you don’t end up in the emergency room again.”
Grant shot his best friend a slight glare.
Everyone in Grant’s life knew not to bring up his late-night trip to the ER ten years ago.
That was a closed door that didn’t need opening, unlike Mrs. Karnacki’s garage.
Grant rammed his shoulder into the real door in front of him, resolved to keep that other door firmly shut forever.
There was some give, but it didn’t open.
“She looks really good,” Tony continued with an affected air of nonchalance.
“I didn’t think you noticed women.” Grant grunted as he pushed against the door again.
“I may not be attracted to women, but I recognize a makeover montage when I see one.”
Grant slammed his shoulder into the door a third time. All he had to show for it was a throbbing shoulder.
He rubbed his arm and said, “He never noticed her before. All those years and all that time they had together at school, he didn’t care. And now because she changed her hair and her clothes and started using mascara, he suddenly cares?” He glanced at Tony. “Why are you smiling?”
“You noticed she was wearing mascara. You’ve still got it bad.”
Grant looked up at the sky. “Why did you curse me with a fucking dipshit for a best friend? Why?”
“If you want answers about me, you’re looking in the wrong direction.”
“You know you’re not going to hell, right?”
Tony put his hands on Grant’s shoulders and sighed with the weight of the entire world. “It was a joke, dude. Even if I believed in hell, I know I’m not going for being gay. Every day I hope and pray that the stick wedged firmly up your ass has a flared base, so we have some chance of removing it.”
Grant rolled his eyes. “Forgive me for caring about your emotional well-being.”
“Only if you’ll stop being obstinate while I’m caring about your emotional well-being.” Tony patted his cheek firmly. “Now, how do you feel about Ivy going on a date with Austin?”
“Like fucking shit, since you’re dying to know. I don’t want it to go well because seeing them together makes me physically ill, but I don’t want it to be awful because the idea of Ivy getting hurt makes me feel even worse.”
“There. You said it. No more stewing in your own sauce.” Tony released his shoulders and swept a hand toward the side door. “Go forth and smash.”
Grant took a few steps back and charged.
As his shoulder connected with the door, Tony yelled, “Yo! Ivy!” Grant tried to turn to see if Tony was messing with him, but the door finally popped open and he crashed through, sprawling on the concrete floor.
“Ow.”
Grant picked himself up, brushed off the dust and general debris, and prepared to give Tony shit about not caring that his best friend had gone through a door like a 1960s cartoon character, but Tony wasn’t where Grant had left him.
He wasn’t even next to the house. Tony had taken his chatty ass down to the curb and was talking to Ivy, who had a shopping bag and a grocery bag in one hand, an iced coffee in the other.
Maybe she hadn’t seen him fall through the door? Surely there was some justice in the universe.
Not with his luck.
Grant slipped back inside the garage and found the electrical panel. Tony was right—the outside breaker had tripped. He flipped it back into position and headed outside to see if that solved the problem.
Even in the middle of the day, the blue-and-white lights shone brightly along the outline of Mrs. Karnacki’s house. At the curb, Ivy’s eyes sparkled with delight. Grant found himself drawn to her, not in control of his own feet.
“I want to see the dress,” he heard Tony say once he was in earshot.
Shyly, Ivy reached into the paper bag and lifted out a length of red fabric. Grant knew what that was. A date dress.
Austin didn’t deserve it.
“That is so cute,” Tony gushed, rubbing the material between his fingers. He looked at Grant. “Isn’t this cute?”
Grant’s tongue was heavy and useless. “Um, yeah.”
The light radiating from Ivy dimmed. Grant’s stomach sank into his butt.
“Do you know where he’s taking you?” Tony asked.
Color spread from Ivy’s cheeks up to her forehead and down to her neck. “I don’t know. He, um, hasn’t texted me yet.”
If there had been a roof, Grant would have gone straight through it. How the fuck had his brother not texted her already? He’d asked her out. He’d gotten her phone number. How had he made it more than forty-five minutes before locking down a date and time?
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Tony said. “He’s probably just waking up for the day. Hollywood types, y’know.”
Ivy nodded, but the certainty didn’t reach her eyes.
Grant’s body flushed despite the cold. He didn’t know what Austin was doing, but whatever it was couldn’t be as important as making Ivy smile.
As soon as they were done talking, he was going to march into his parents’ house, find Austin, and make him text Ivy so she’d have some damn answers.
“Yeah, totally.” Ivy cleared her throat. “I have to go answer some emails. I got put in charge of my dad’s surprise retirement party. It was good to see you, Tony.”
“Always good to see you, Popcorn Girl.”
They stood in silence while they watched Ivy walk to her house and go inside. The door closed and Tony smacked the back of his hand into Grant’s chest.
“Ow! What the hell?”
“Um, yeah,” Tony mocked, making Grant sound six hundred times more vapid than he had in the moment. “I used to not understand how she couldn’t see how you felt about her, but now I think she didn’t know because you’ve got the effusiveness and eloquence of a rock.”
Grant rubbed his chest. “That word-of-the-day calendar is really working out, huh?”
“I’m rapidly becoming Team Austin.”
Grant threw his hands up. “What should I do? You saw it. She doesn’t want to talk to me. She said goodbye to you but not me.”
Tony looked uninterested in his excuses. “Have you considered—and this is going to sound radical but stick with me here—talking to her? Being friendly? Extending the olive branch?”
“I think she’d stab me with it.”
“That is your own damn fault.”
“I was nineteen. I was emotionally blindsided. I was a mess!”
“I keep hearing ‘was’ but I’m seeing ‘am.’”
Grant tried to glare at Tony, but he couldn’t muster up the malice.
“Fuck. You’re right; I know you’re right.
” He glanced at the Weavers’ closed front door, then back at Tony.
“I’ll figure something out, but first, I need to go talk some sense into Austin before another Underwood man disappoints her. ”
The motion-activated Santa greeted Grant as he entered his childhood home. “Austin!”
Piper appeared from the kitchen, half a fat sandwich in one hand.
“Is he here?” Grant asked.
“Yeah, he’s upstairs.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What did he do?”
“Not your business.” Grant roughly untied his work boots, kicked them off, and charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The sound of the shower grew louder as he ascended, so he marched down the hall, threw open the bathroom door, and ripped back the curtain.
Austin shrieked, one hand covering his junk, the other instinctively flying to his nipples.
“What the hell!”
“Why haven’t you texted her yet?” Grant demanded.
“What?” Austin sputtered, water entering his mouth as he tried to talk.
“Ivy. Why haven’t you texted her yet? You asked her on a date, got her number, and haven’t done anything with it. Why?”
Austin grabbed for the shower curtain, but Grant refused to relinquish his hold.
“I’m thinking about it. But can we talk about this when I’m not holding my dick?”
“You shouldn’t have to think about it!”
“It was less than twenty-four hours ago!” Austin shouted back.
“Why did you even ask her out if you weren’t going to follow up?”
“It. Was. Last. Night.” Austin emphasized every syllable. “What’s the big deal?”
“What’s the big deal?” Grant’s voice had a piercing quality not normally found in nature. He needed to calm down before he did or said something he’d actually regret. After a deep breath, he calmly said, “You need to text her, okay? It’s rude not to follow up.”
“Okay, okay.” Austin successfully wrested the shower curtain from Grant and pulled it closed.
Grant turned to leave, but Piper was standing in the doorway, eating her sandwich. She raised her eyebrows at him and he shook his head.
“Can you close the fucking door?” Austin shouted from behind the shower curtain.
Grant nudged Piper into the hallway and shut the door hard behind him for emphasis.
“What was that about?” she asked around a mouthful of turkey and sourdough.
“Austin hasn’t texted Ivy yet about the date he asked her on, so I needed to remind him of his manners.”
Piper followed him through the hall and down the stairs. “And that couldn’t have waited until he was out of the shower? What if he’d been…” She made a jerking-off motion with her free hand.
“Ew. You don’t know what that is.”
“If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going to tell you all the other things you think I don’t know.”
He narrowed his eyes, pausing in the entrance to the kitchen. “You wouldn’t.”
A devilish grin appeared on Piper’s face. “Oh, but I would. Like how during Hallow-week, I went to a frat party and—”
Grant clasped his hands over his ears. “La-la-la-la! I can’t hear you!”
Piper chased him around the kitchen island, around the dining table, and toward the living room.
Grant tried to take the corner at speed, but his socked foot didn’t plant.
It simply followed the first rule of physics and remained in motion, flying out from under his body, which got a crash course in gravity.
He landed hard on his side, all the air escaping his lungs in an oof.
Piper, only a few steps behind him, couldn’t stop in time, and no amount of home plate training could have saved him.
She landed on top of him, her weight crushing his poorly protected organs, her turkey sandwich sailing through the air and landing several feet away on the carpet.
They groaned in unison, curling into identical balls of agony.
“My…sandwich…”
Grant rolled onto his back. “Serves you right.”
“It had…mustard.” Piper sat up. “Mom is going to kill me.”
Grant pushed himself into a seated position, sucking in air. “We can fix it,” he wheezed, eyeing the yellow blob no doubt already starting to stain. “Or hide it.”
After they sprayed, rubbed, and blotted, Grant and Piper moved the sofa a few feet to cover the lingering stain. Then, of course, they had to adjust everything in the room slightly to account for its new center of gravity.
“If I ever need to hide a body, I’m calling you,” Piper said, flopping ungracefully onto the sofa.
“Depends on who you killed.” Grant sat next to her, all the aches and pains catching up to him. “Don’t worry about Austin and me, okay?”
“I know you’re not telling me shit.”
“There’s a lot of shit I don’t tell you for your own good. Remember how I didn’t tell you that Santa wasn’t real?”
“You had me convinced Santa was real until the sixth grade, you asshole.” She halfheartedly tossed a pillow at him, which he batted away. “You’re seriously not going to tell me?”
Grant sighed. “There isn’t anything to tell, Pipes. Austin is taking Ivy on a date. The end.”
It really was the end, too. Twenty minutes alone with her, and Austin was bound to discover what Grant had that summer at the movie theater: Ivy was the most wonderful person on the planet. And soon, Austin would know that’s how she’d been thinking of him for years.