Chapter Eleven
“Do you want to watch another movie?” Piper asked, prodding Grant from his doze with her foot.
He shook his groggy head. “Nah. I am wiped.” He couldn’t stop the yawn that came out. “Do you really want to go to work with me tomorrow?”
“Of course I do.” Piper had the same energy as a puppy who’d learned to recognize the word “walk.”
“You don’t want to hang out with your friends or lay on the couch all day?”
“My friends are still trickling in, and today was my rot day. What time are you picking me up?”
“Seven a.m. We start early,” he warned.
“I’ll be ready.”
Grant stretched and caught his mother’s eye. Or he thought he did. She wouldn’t stop staring at the couch. The first thing she’d said when she entered the living room was, “What’s different?”
“Thanks for dinner, Mom.”
Grace was still deep in thought, looking at the couch. “Uh-huh.”
Grant mouthed, Good luck, to Piper and went to put on his shoes and get his coat.
How was Austin’s date going? Were they having a good time? Were they still at dinner or had they moved on? It wasn’t like he’d decided to hang out at his parents’ house tonight on the off chance the date went badly and Austin came home early, but…
He fished in his pocket for his keys. He’d have to pump Piper for information in the morning.
The transition from warm house to cold outdoors was always an unpleasant shock, but not as shocking as seeing their mom’s sensible, snow-capable Subaru in the driveway.
Austin couldn’t have snuck in because the motion-activated Santa would have given him away in an instant.
It was as good as a burglar alarm. So where was his brother?
A voice floated through the cold air like snow and chilled him to his bones. “You know what mistletoe means…”
Grant turned toward the Weaver house and experienced the emotional equivalent of being T-boned by a speeding semitruck.
Ivy and Austin were kissing. It was exactly as excruciating as he’d imagined it would be.
It was over quickly, though, and that made him frown in surprise instead of abject despair.
When Austin leaned in for a second kiss, Ivy gave him her cheek and rushed inside so fast that she shut the door in his face.
That wasn’t the behavior of a woman who’d had a great date—hell, even a decent date.
Fuck being a better person. If there was a sliver of a chance that Ivy wasn’t as head-over-heels in love with Austin as she’d been when she was seventeen, Grant couldn’t roll over and give up.
All the years between then and now snapped together in a crystal-clear picture: not only was he back in it, he’d never been out of it.
His heart pounded so hard in his chest, he didn’t think he’d feel the cold if he took a snowball to the face.
He needed a plan. Lots of plans. The kind of plans he wasn’t capable of planning on his own. Even if she rejected him, at least he’d be able to sleep at night knowing he’d tried.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about my date?” Austin called after him as they passed each other in the driveway.
“Nope!” Grant shouted back, yanking open his door and swinging himself into the driver’s seat.
“Tony! I know you’re in there. I saw your truck. I need to talk to you!”
Yelling through his best friend’s door wasn’t dignified, but this was an emergency. Grant held his thumb down on the doorbell.
“What?” Tony screamed as he wrenched open the door, only to have it get stuck after three inches because of the privacy chain. “What. Do. You. Need?”
“Austin kissed Ivy.”
“They went on a date, dude; there was a high likelihood the night was going to end in a kiss. This is not an emergency. My non-emergency emotional support hours are from—”
Grant spoke quickly. “I don’t think she liked it.”
Tony sighed and rested his forehead against the doorframe. “And what makes you think that? Delusion? Hopes and dreams?”
Grant shook his head, starting to vibrate with excitement. “It lasted maybe five seconds, and the next time he leaned in, she gave him her cheek and ran inside. I don’t think she’s into him anymore.”
“Let your wishful thinking keep you warm while I put some pants on.” Tony shut the door.
Grant paced on his welcome mat for what felt like an eternity until the door finally opened again. “Come on in,” Tony beckoned, waving Grant inside. “Want a beer?”
Grant shook his head and made himself comfortable on the couch he’d helped Tony haul from a yard sale several summers ago.
Tony sat down and twisted the cap off his beer. “So to recap, Austin kissed Ivy, she dashed inside like Cinderella at midnight, you started picking out wedding colors. Continue.”
“I did not start picking out wedding colors,” Grant protested.
“You tried to batter down my apartment door and used my doorbell as a form of sound torture. If this doesn’t end in a wedding, I’m going to be pissed.”
Grant picked at a threadbare spot on the couch. “I still have a chance, Tony. I never thought—” He found he couldn’t quite get the words to form. “Help me figure out how to apologize?”
“Say ‘I’m sorry.’ Two words. Three, if you want to stretch it out and break up the contraction.
” Tony sipped his beer and ignored the daggers Grant was trying to glare at him.
“Too much time has passed. I don’t think there’s a natural segue into this, dude.
You’re going to have to bite the bullet, put on your big boy panties, and eat crow. ”
“I would eat shit with one of those tiny little caviar spoons if I could even get her to look at me,” Grant said, “but at the moment she’d rather make small talk with someone who calls her Popcorn Girl than say hi to me.”
“In her defense, you did stand there like a—”
“Tony!”
The bastard had the gall to grin. “So you need to break the ice. Have you considered sacrificing Piper? Don’t look at me like that; I’m being serious. Have you thought about sending Piper over to say a few good words on your behalf?”
“This isn’t junior high.”
“Are you sure?”
Grant let his head fall back against the cushions. “I’m going to be alone and miserable for the rest of my life.”
“With that attitude you will.” Tony slapped Grant’s thigh. “Get up. Pace. Find the solution.”
And because at some point he had to stop arguing with the guy whose door he’d beaten down looking for advice, Grant got up and paced around Tony’s small apartment.
He’d practically worn a racetrack-shaped path into the carpet by the time Tony kicked him out, but he also had the outlines of a plot to make sure Ivy knew this time around how he felt about her.
Ivy hadn’t been the only one to get a cinematic education the summer they worked at Mr. Donaldson’s theater. Grant knew when he’d been gifted a second chance—and more than that, he knew not to waste it.