Chapter Thirty
The house was sweltering. Ivy had opened the windows on the ground floor and the back slider, and it was still hot.
Not everyone will show up, my ass.
More people had shown up than were invited. Or it felt that way. Everywhere she looked, there were people. People in the living room, people in the kitchen, people in the hallway, even people in the backyard without their winter coats, cooling off.
Because there were so many people, they’d started to run out of things. Cups, ice, drinks, food. Ivy anxiously looked at the front door every time she walked by, waiting for Grant to come back.
Grant had shown up exactly at party start time with a bottle of wine and a tweed jacket he must have found at a thrift store because it was a little tight on his muscular arms.
“Are you expecting an army?” he joked, looking at the food covering the kitchen.
“If you want peace, prepare for war. I think that’s how the saying goes.”
Grant’s strong fingers massaged the tight muscles on the back of her neck, and she bit her lip to stop from moaning.
“It’s going to be okay,” he told her. “It’s just a party. It’ll be fun.”
Those might have been the words that cursed them.
People arrived in strange, staggered waves based on when they thought it was appropriate to show up for a party.
Ivy directed foot traffic, pointing to where the food and drinks were, where they could put the presents she could have sworn they’d noted weren’t necessary in bold on the invitations, and taking coats.
Since she didn’t leave the foyer for an hour, she should have been buried under coats, but they disappeared from her arms almost as soon as they were placed there.
It wasn’t until the flow of traffic calmed that she realized Grant was lifting them from her arms and shuttling them into the study.
A little while later, she went to take out the trash that was sure to be overflowing, but the can was empty and there was a brand-new bag inside. She walked quickly around the house, trying to find the trash can everyone was using, but they were all empty.
“I have no idea where everyone is putting their trash, but all the cans are empty,” she confided to Grant in a hushed tone when she finally found him refilling a chip bowl.
“I know,” he answered calmly. “I took out the trash.”
He pressed a quick, reassuring kiss to her forehead, then went to wash potato chip grease off his hands while she stood in the same spot, stunned.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said once the shock had worn off.
Grant shrugged and dried his hands on a kitchen towel custom-printed with Hastings’s derpy face wearing a Santa hat.
“Don’t worry about it. Go have fun. Socialize. Be the life of the party.” He did a horrible shimmy, and she couldn’t help but laugh.
She found him in the foyer a little later, directing stragglers and taking their coats. Ivy leaned against the wall because her knees had become a little wobbly. When Grant turned and saw her, he winked, and her pussy tingled.
A firm hand rested on her lower back when she was trapped talking to the university bursar, nodding politely and participating too much in his mini-lecture about fly-fishing.
“I’m sorry,” Grant said, “I need to borrow Ivy.” He led her away with a reassuring hand on her back.
“How did you know I needed out of there?” She flapped the sides of the tweed coat she’d borrowed from her dad’s closet. “Is it hot in here?”
“It’s a little stuffy, so I opened some windows. You might need to do more.” He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “I don’t want you to freak out, but some things were getting low, so I sent Austin and Piper to pick up more drinks, and I’m going to run to the store for some more food.”
Ivy had a protest locked and loaded—that it was her responsibility, not his, and he’d already done so much—but then he kissed her quickly and took advantage of her stupefied state to slip out of the house.
That had been forty-five minutes ago.
Ivy glanced toward the front walk as she did her sixty-seventh casual pass by the front window.
“Watching for the stripper cake?” Lorelai asked. Ivy jumped.
“No! No. I’m, um… Have you heard from your brother?”
“Since Austin is soaking up exaggerated condolences about his canceled show in the backyard, I’m guessing you mean Grant.” She checked her phone to be certain before saying, “Nope. Not a word.”
Ivy tried to suppress a groan, but pieces of it squeaked out. “He went to get more sandwiches, and he should have been back already.”
Lorelai peered out the window with her. “Do you think he got lost?”
That thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. What if he—
“You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
Lorelai grinned at her mischievously. “I wasn’t sure if it would work, but the look on your face was worth the risk.” She put her arm around Ivy’s shoulders and squeezed. “It’s not like he went to the store to get milk and cigarettes. He’ll be back.”
“It didn’t even occur to me that he might not come back.” Newfound dread squeezed the air from her lungs.
“So, what are your intentions with my brother?”
“Well, since his ego knows no bounds, making sure he’s aware that he’s firmly in the friend zone remains a top priority, but since I think you’re talking about Grant and not Austin, I’d say my intentions are lewd and tastefully disrespectful.
” Ivy waited for Lorelai to stop cackling to say, “I don’t actually know what my intentions are, because I’m not sure how to manage my expectations. ”
“Do you want to go talk outside?”
Ivy nodded. They were almost to the front door when she asked, “Wait. Where’s your kid?”
“She’s trying to find your cat. She made a baby sling out of a blanket and is convinced he’ll love being carried around in it.”
The crispy, cold night air hit them, and Ivy wondered if there was steam coming off her. They sat on the front porch swing, her skin almost hissing against the frigid wood.
“How are you so calm? I thought first-time moms were supposed to be helicopter parents.”
“Gemma’s a pretty good kid. And being a teacher, I’ve been around so many different kids and seen that, for the most part, they all turn out okay.
I try to let her be her own person and guide her to the right choices, but I also think mistakes are really valuable.
So, if she gets scratched by the cat…” Lorelai shrugged and held her hands up in a “whatever it will be” gesture.
“Do you have any guidance for me?” Ivy asked. “I’m guessing Grant already told you everything.”
“Oh yeah. I’m like Aslan. I was there when the deep magic was written.”
“You knew he had feelings for me?”
“Yes—but not until he broke his hand. He told you about that, right? Because I’m torn between telling you the story to see the look on your face and possibly respecting Grant’s privacy.”
“He told me,” Ivy said, “yesterday.”
Lorelai rolled her eyes, but there was a faint smile there, too. “That is the exact amount of emotional output I expect from an Underwood man.” She pushed the swing in a gentle lilt with her foot. “What do you want to happen between the two of you?”
“Can I get an easier question?” Ivy tried to smile to show she was joking, but she suspected it was closer to a grimace. “I don’t know. Because what I want is way too big for the timeline. It’s only been a few days, Lor.”
“Eh, if you go by Grant’s timeline, it’s closer to ten years, but go on. If you weren’t worried about the timeline, what would you want?”
Ivy allowed herself to peek at the girlish fantasies she kept locked deep inside her heart.
“I’d want to buy new sheets for his bed and then sleep in them every night.
I’d want to spend weeks showing each other all the movies we’ve watched in the last ten years, and the rest of my life catching new releases together.
I want him to be the person I come home to after a trip, who empties my lunch box before my emotional support apple gets mushy because I never remember to do it until the night before my next overnight trip.
I want to be the person he points to and says, ‘That’s her.
’ I guess what I’m saying is…I want him to be mine. ”
Saying the words, letting them take shape in her mouth and have presence in the world, made them feel something akin to attainable. They were real now, at the very least.
Grant pulled his truck into the end of his parents’ driveway.
“Did you get lost?” Lorelai shouted at him when he climbed out of the cab.
“Had a little hiccup,” Grant shouted back, opening the passenger side. He hefted out a large cardboard box and closed the door with his hip.
“How many sandwiches did you get?” Ivy asked, horrified, when he reached the porch.
“That was the hiccup. The deli was closed for the night. So, I made a call to Curly’s and asked for a lot of whatever they could make for me quickly.”
Ivy blanched as she opened the door for him. “That must have cost a fortune.”
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it.”
In twenty years, her lovelorn teenage children would be asking about the exact moment Ivy had fallen in love with their father, and she would point to this moment.
On a night when she was struggling to keep her balance, he’d quietly steadied the ground beneath her.
He hadn’t waited for her to ask for help—he’d used his eyes to see what needed to be done and did it.
When fresh problems arose, he fixed them.
There wasn’t any showboating, either. Ivy had seen plenty of men need loud, bombastic credit for doing the smallest tasks.
They needed a parade because they’d remembered to pick up the cake for the party.
Ivy took his face in her hands, rose on her toes, and kissed him.