Chapter 4
4
TESSA
I had been smart to go first, because Grant’s speech was impeccable. Sometimes Grant said the wrong thing and it was totally awkward, but deep down I’d known that, given time to write it, his speech would be phenomenal. The theme had to do with competing with Ethan when he was a kid. Grant had been older, and he talked about racing or playing games with Ethan and letting the younger boy come close, but never letting him win. I knew from experience how hard it was to grow up in the shadow of your older sibling—but I had two. Emily was always the smart one, just like Grant, and Claire always the beautiful one. Grant and Ethan were probably equally attractive, but Ethan had been born with all the charm.
I couldn’t say the same. In our family, that gift had been delivered to Nora in spades. If I were to get a distinguishing characteristic, it would probably be “the forgettable one,” but irony of ironies, forgettable people don’t get remembered that way. Instead, I’d overheard countless people describe us the same way. They’d say, “ The Davis sisters. There’s Emily—she’s so smart. And Claire—she’s beautiful. My favorite is Nora, though. She’s so much fun. Oh! And there’s Tessa. She’s the middle sister—between Claire and Nora.” Nowadays people sometimes added the fact that I was a teacher. And while I was proud to be a teacher, it wasn’t exactly a top-choice defining characteristic. Who would you rather be, smart, beautiful, fun, or the teacher?
The crowd laughed, but I missed the joke, and I tried to tune back into what Grant was saying, my eyes focusing on his mouth as he spoke. I hadn’t expected his lips to be as soft as they were. Not that I’d been thinking extensively about Grant’s lips prior to today, but I’d always thought of every part of Grant Dupree as hard. Perhaps that was just the effect of his dry, sarcastic nature. It put a lot of people off—I knew Claire and Emily hated him, but I’d never disliked Grant. As a kid, he’d been the handsome older guy at all my parents’ parties, and in the year and change since he came back to Bridgeport, he’d made me laugh. That’s not to say he wasn’t awkward as hell sometimes—he had a way of saying the absolute wrong thing, admittedly—but I liked him. Hadn’t planned to kiss him though. And while it’d been an interesting development, I didn’t plan to do it ever again. Whether because he was now Nora’s family, or because he was the man Mom was sure Claire belonged with, or because Claire and Emily both disliked him—Grant Dupree was off-limits.
“All those years you were trying to be like me, to beat me, but I always knew the truth, Ethan. You’ve been winning since you were seventeen years old. Because it’s special to find a girl like Nora—to find a love like you two share. You’ve won the most important thing, and I want you to remember that—want you both to remember that—to cherish it and take care of it, even when it gets hard.” Grant paused and smiled and I was riveted, even though he wasn’t looking at me.
“Nora,” he continued, “I think this is the part of the speech where I welcome you to the family, but I’m not going to do that.” There was a strange still in the air, like the whole crowd was waiting for Grant to fuck this speech up—to make it awkward— and I hoped for his sake more than Nora and Ethan’s that he didn’t. “Because to me you’ve always been part of the family.” He smiled, wholly unaware the crowd was exhaling a single, silent, simultaneous sigh of relief. “But I think that’s your greatest gift. Everywhere you go, everyone you meet, you make them feel like family—like they belong. And I’m so happy my kid brother picked you. I love you both, and I wish you nothing but the best.”
Applause erupted as Grant hugged a smiling Ethan and crying Nora in turn, then he handed Janet the microphone, and he walked away. And every part of my being knew I should leave well enough alone, so I watched him walk away toward the house.
And then my feet followed him.
I had no idea what I was doing, and so, naturally, I decided on stealth. Grant was distracted, never stopping or turning back, even when I made a little too much noise and even when I crept closer than I meant to. Instead, he began to walk more quickly, taking a turn past the lobby. I was trying to run on my tiptoes so my heels wouldn’t clack on the floor, trying to keep up with his breakneck pace, and I took the last turn faster than I should’ve.I hit Grant’s chest with a thud, and one arm came around my waist to hold me in place. “Why are you skulking behind me, Tessa?”
“That was a very predictable trick,” I grumbled.
“And yet you fell for it,” he replied dryly. “Or…” the word hung between us for a second, Grant’s eyebrow ticking up as if he quite liked this or .
“Or?” I asked irritably.
“Or you ran into my arms on purpose,” he suggested, pushing the door next to us open and walking through. We were outside again, but this time on an enclosed patio, invisible to the wedding party happening just past the hedgerow.
Of course I hadn’t run directly into his arms—except, where the hell was I following him to? If not to end up like this, what was my goal? I licked my lips, and Grant’s eyes fell to them. “It wasn’t on purpose,” I said, though I wasn’t sure that was true.
“Okay. It wasn’t on purpose,” he agreed, though he didn’t sound any more convinced than I was. “What can I do for you, Tessa?”
Well, shit. What the hell had I followed him for? “I wanted to tell you your speech was very good.”
“Thank you,” he said. I waited for him to comment on my speech, but he didn’t.
“Jesus,” I groused, hitting him in the center of his chest lightly. “This is where you’re supposed to tell me my speech was good, too.”
“Sorry,” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t hear most of your speech.”
“You were—you were right in front of me. Was the mic not working? Shit.” My mind was spiraling, but Grant shook his head.
“We could hear you fine. I was just…”
“Not listening?” I offered when he trailed off.
“Thinking about you. That you look beautiful…and that you’ve been in Bridgeport every day since I moved home, but, mysteriously, I haven’t spent all of those days sneaking glances at you the way I am today.” He frowned thoughtfully, and I had no doubt these had been exactly his thoughts during my speech. Thoughts normal people might’ve filtered rather than share. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended.
“Probably because it isn’t every day I kiss you like a psychopath,” I replied, tittering nervously.
“Nothing crazy about that kiss, Tess.” His level tone made it a wildly ambiguous sentence, and I stood, staring stupidly at him, until he finally said, “You wanna dance?”
I thought he meant out on the dance floor, which was a terrible idea, since conjecture would immediately begin between our two families, but he held his left hand up in the air, and I felt the fingers of his right hand spread across my lower back. The music from the wedding drifted to us softly. “I like this song,” I said as I clasped his hand, as if that might be the reason I was going along with him.
“I know you do,” he replied. “You always play it when your mom puts you in charge of the Bluetooth.”
I lifted my hand to meet his, and then we were moving. These weren’t big, sweeping movements like he’d used when we were introduced. More of just a sway in the small space between the tables, and I took a moment to look around. “I didn’t know this space was here,” I said. We were outside, close enough to the wedding to hear the music as it played, and yet completely closed off in a tiny back area that was surrounded by ten-foot hedges. There was an assortment of tables and a small pool, all strung with twinkle lights.
“Really?” he asked, twirling us around the tables so we had a little more open space, though I thought we were growing perilously close to the pool.
I shook my head, but my eyes stayed on the edge of the pool warily. “I knew there was a pool, but I’ve never been out here. I’ve only peeked through the main door.” I gestured with my chin toward the main entrance, which was a single glass door on the other end of the small yard.
Using our conjoined hands, Grant angled my chin back to face him. “I promise not to dance us into the pool.”
I trusted Grant, but still I wasn’t sure I could hold his gaze like this. Up close his blue eyes were unnerving. “Has anyone ever told you your eyes look like one of those White Walkers from Game of Thrones ?”
Grant barked out a laugh. “I can’t recall ever being told that. It doesn’t seem like a compliment.”
“That’s fair,” I conceded, “but I meant it as a compliment. They’re beautiful.”
He chuckled. “Can’t say anyone has ever told me that, either.” Grant shifted so the pool was behind him and spun me away from him, much like he had during our introduction dance. This time I knew to spin back without him prompting me.
“Well, that’s silly,” I said as our bodies came close again. “People shouldn’t be afraid to tell you you’re beautiful just because you’re a man.”
With my back to his chest he lowered his face close to my ear, and the temptation to lean into his lips was overwhelming. I let my head tilt, just the tiniest bit, but enough to bring the shell of my ear to his mouth. Grant drew back, but I felt his breaths grow ragged. “They’ll miss us soon.”
They would. I knew they would. I’d already done the math, had begun doing it the second I’d decided to follow Grant. At any given time during the wedding, I had a ten to fifteen minute window for going missing. Anything past that and someone would probably notice.
I nodded, and Grant turned me in his arms to enjoy the last few moments of “All of Me.” I wanted to lift up on tiptoe and kiss him, just as I had earlier, but that was dangerous. I knew I wasn’t going to want to stop, and we were already tight on time. Grant must’ve been thinking something similar, because he dropped his face down until our cheeks brushed.
He was still holding me, his face pressed to mine, when the song ended. I felt his bulging jaw tick a few times against my cheek, then he stood. “We should get back out there,” I said.
“Probably,” he agreed. “I’m going to use the washroom first. It was why I came in, before you started following me.” His lips tugged up on one side, and without thinking, I stroked down that cheek. I should’ve been mortified, but his grin deepened, and it was one of the small smiles I liked best. I wanted to touch him again, to see the smile grow even deeper, because he was absolutely beautiful.
Grant pinched my chin between his finger and thumb. “I’ll see you out there.”