Chapter 4
Rory
“I’m moving,” Grandma says while we walk down the hall together. Well, she hobbles down the hall with her cane at a really fast clip, and I lengthen my stride to keep up. We’ve just left her apartment in the senior living community and are headed downstairs to have lunch.
“You’re not moving.”
“I hate it here.”
“You promised me six months. It’s only been two. You haven’t even given it a chance.”
“Bah. What’s there to give a chance? All the women here hate me. They think I’m trying to steal their boyfriends.”
“Well, are you?” Grandma may be eighty-three years old but I wouldn’t put it past her.
We arrive at the elevator and Grandma presses the button to call it.
“Hell no,” she says. “Their boyfriends are ancient. If I’m going to spend my time with a man he better be a hot young thing.”
The elevator doors open and Grandma steps in, joining an old man with a walker who was already in the elevator.
He blinks at us. It’s a walker with the tennis balls on the bottom, although this is a really nice place.
If someone can afford to live here, they can afford the fancy walkers with the sliding feet.
Grandma aggressively pushes the first-floor button, even though it’s already lit. “At my age, the next time I have sex might be the last. Who wants to waste it on an old fart like this one?” She jabs her cane in the direction of the old man.
If the old man takes offense to this—if he even hears her—she doesn’t give him a chance to object. “No, if I’m going out with a bang, I’m going out with someone at least twenty years my junior. A nice young stallion. Like the one you should have.”
I roll my eyes, not even bothering to hide it from Grandma. She should check her math—twenty years her junior is sixty-three, and I’m pretty sure if I brought a sixty-three-year-old man to meet Grandma she’d be pissed about the age gap and then complain that I’m “hogging the eligible men.”
“I hear,” she says, leaning toward me, “that there are strippers in Here that make house calls.”
My mind flashes to Morgan and all the abs and obliques and tattoos that I saw two weeks ago, and I squeeze my eyes shut extra hard. Grandma’s trying to distract me. I do not for one minute believe that in a small town like Here there are male strippers that cater to a geriatric audience.
“You can’t just randomly flit about to different places.”
“Why not? You’re flitting about too.”
“I’m not flitting. There’s no flitting.”
Grandma looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “It would be different if you were settled down.”
I ignore that comment. I’m aware that if I was in any kind of committed relationship, Grandma would stay settled. She would complain constantly, but she wouldn’t be making me pack up her shit every few months.
It’s one of the only regrets I have about my last breakup.
“You’re not moving,” I tell Grandma. “You have four more months. You need to make friends.”
“Why should I make friends?” Grandma huffs. “You haven’t made any either.”
The elevator dings and Grandma’s off like a shot and around the corner. I politely hold the door open for the old man, though I refuse to make eye contact with him. He really didn’t need to overhear my grandma’s death-sex wish.
He shuffles out. “My name is Arthur Hayes.” He speaks glacially and has a slight tremble in his hand when he raises it up to point after my grandmother. “You can tell her to find me at apartment number one-four—”
“Yeah, okay, thanks, Gramps.”
I drop my arm and chase after my grandmother. The old man is mostly out the door, he’ll be fine.
When I come around the corner she’s waiting for me halfway down to the cafe. “Hurry up, the clock is ticking.”
“Lunch isn’t over until two,” I shoot back, catching up to her.
“I wasn’t talking about lunch, I was talking about my life.”
“Four more months, Grandma. Make some friends.”
“You make friends.” She says it like a threat, which, well .
. . it is. This is Grandma’s fourth retirement community.
The first one only lasted a month, but when she moved from the second one, I caught on to her game.
She’s going to princess-and-the-pea her way through all the retirement communities in the tristate area, wasting her money and both our time until I agree to quit my job and stay home with her.
As it is, I’m on the road too much to live with her properly, but she can’t live by herself. Who knows what mayhem she could get up to on her own. Once I came to visit her and found a miniature pony living in the house with her. In the house!
“I do have friends,” I insist.
She scoffs. “Liar.”
We get to the cafe and my grandmother greets the hostess by reminding her she doesn’t like to sit next to the windows because they’re too drafty.
The hostess just smiles. This must be one of the ones Grandma hasn’t broken yet.
We’re led to a table by the wall and settle in with the menu, not that I need one.
The food is pretty good here, and I’ve got a favorite meal picked out.
But Grandma studies the menu as if she’s never seen it before, when I happened to know for a fact that they slip one under her door every morning.
There are several regular dishes and a few daily specials.
I look around the room while Grandma gives commentary on the menu. “Liver and onions! How old do they think we are?” and “Quinoa? I’m not a hippie.” There’s a group of women my grandma’s age sitting in the corner.
“What about her?” I nod my head toward the woman I recognize from the last time I was here. “You could make friends with her.”
Grandma peers in that direction and huffs. “She told me I had poor taste in music.”
I roll my eyes again. Honestly, between her and Morgan it’s a miracle that I don’t strain something. If one can even strain their eyeballs, I’m sure these two would drive me to it. “You can’t honestly tell me you thought this crowd would like your EDM playlist.”
“It makes me feel young.” She turns back to her menu and puts it down decisively. “I’m going to have the salmon. Now, who is it?”
I turn back to the woman. “I don’t know her name.” She looks like a Betty, if I had to guess.
“No.” Grandma rolls her eyes. See where I get it from? “Who’s your friend in Here?”
Oh. Uh-oh. Grandma’s fact checking.
Well, I do, technically, maybe, kind of, sort of have one friend here. “Morgan.”
Grandma stares at me, and then makes a rolling motion with her hand. “Morgan . . . ?”
I do not know his last name. “Morgan the bartender.”
She harrumphs. “Morgan. Are they a potential love interest?”
Grandma may be a pain in my ass, but she is a strong ally. Ever since I came out to her as bisexual—and explained gender fluidity to her—she’s always been careful with pronouns.
“Morgan is a he.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Is he hot?”
“He’s too young for you, Grandma.”
“I didn’t know there was a limit. What is it? Twenty-five?”
I put my face in my hands. “Jesus.”
“They need to be that young if they’re going to keep up with me.”
“In the hallway or in the bedroom?” I mutter, thinking about Grandma power walking the halls.
“Both.” There is nothing wrong with my grandma’s hearing, even though sometimes I wish there was. “And obviously he’s hot, or you wouldn’t be blushing.”
“I am not blushing!”
“Has he not asked you out yet?”
I pause and think about it. Does teasing me about sex count? Probably not, but maybe if I had prospects in this town, Grandma might actually try. “He has.”
“Of course he asked you out, he’s not blind.” Grandma gestures at me. “Wait, is he blind?”
“No.”
“So you said no.”
“I said no.”
“Why not? Too hot for you?” She looks over her glasses at me. “Is he poor? You know that doesn’t matter. You could use a good house husband.”
“I said no because—”
“Because you think you should die old and alone just like me.”
Thankfully, we’re interrupted by the server coming to take our order. This one’s a blond woman, who greets us in a singsong voice and repeats our order back to us as if we’ve ordered the best thing ever!
(Trust me, there was an exclamation point.)
Grandma asks approximately fifty questions about the menu. Most of them are about the regular menu items, so I know she’s just testing the waitress, who starts to shift and gives me wide eyes, searching for a rescue. I throw her a bone and ask for a few more minutes.
When the waitress leaves, Grandma eyes me. She holds the silence too long and there is about a sixty-forty split between her ragging on me more or her changing the subject to complain about the housing situation again.
I cross my arms and rest my elbows on the table, bracing myself for what she’s going to dish out next.
But then her face shifts and oh no. I forgot about the other part. It’s not a sixty-forty split. It’s maybe a 58-38-4 split. There’s a four percent chance I’m going to be reminded of why I love this woman so much.
“Rory,” she says gently.
Yup, the four percent is making an appearance despite all odds.
“You don’t like to think about it, and I get that. You’ve thought about death too much in your life.”
I look away. It’s not often that either of us bring up the car accident anymore.
“But someday I will die. Probably soon. Maybe not.” She shrugs. “But probably. And I just want you to be happy.”
“I know, Grandma.”
She reaches over and pats my hand twice, and then grips it. I look at her, and we smile at each other. I’m lucky to have had such a strong, fun woman raise me. It’s not every grandparent that can look after a ten-year-old.
“Besides . . .” She releases my hand and pats it again. “You need to get laid.”