CHAPTER 28
FIRST OFFICIAL DATE
“Where are you taking me?” I fingered the blindfold across my eyes as I sat in Grant’s passenger seat on our first official date, Sunday, September 10. Grant had wanted to wait two weeks to show Elaine respect, which had been fine with me because I’d needed to adjust to the idea. But I hadn’t really adjusted, I’d just panicked, and barely functioned, having to turn clients into numbers even though we were discussing finance, and even that hadn’t worked. “I’m taking this thing off.”
“Eh.” He pulled my hand away from my face. “Not yet.”
“Grant, this thing is itchy. What’s it made out of anyway? Horsehair?” I didn’t want to tell him, but I liked the itchy blindfold. It was oddly soothing, the uncomfortable thing to focus on instead of my anxiety over this date.
“Wool. And we’re here.” He shifted the car into park and turned off the engine. “Keep it on. I’m coming around to get you.”
He opened my door, bent down, and lifted the blindfold. His proximity flipped my stomach.
I stretched and surveyed our surroundings.
Like a diving board waiting for a diver, so was the rock before us, a jumping-off point for the eyes as they scanned the world below. The carpet of trees gave way to a city turning on at dusk. High up on this mountainside, it was as if a basin had scooped up the setting sun, serving it when it was the most awe inducing, something you wanted to be suspended in.
I thought back to our seconds in the rain, where sunset-colored powder pooled at our feet. This was another occasion I’d tuck away, but now, Grant and I were together, and were I to kiss him—
“This is my version of Chattanooga’s Sunset Rock,” he said. “We can hike to the actual Sunset Rock tomorrow if you want to, but there’s something about this spot.”
“We’re in Chattanooga? Isn’t this two hours away from Nashville?” I lost time when I was with Grant. Two whole hours had melted away. “Wow. This is the most spectacular sunset I’ve ever seen.”
“You know that generic ‘happy place’ people talk about? This is mine. It feeds the soul.”
We stood in silence, transfixed by the energetic colors fading into one another. Once the majority of the sun had nestled into the trees, leaving a generalized glow behind, Grant pulled a blanket from the bag at his feet and then lined his hands up, looking from the ground back to the sun like he wanted to make sure the blanket was in the perfect spot.
Under his spontaneity, a sense of order defined his life. To look at me or my office, you’d think we had the same values. But step into my home or look under my skin, anything below the surface, and I was a mess. What if he was only attracted to the superficial me? He’d seen some of my cracks, but he hadn’t glimpsed the faults that waited to swallow us both.
Suddenly the peace of the sunset was being stretched tight like the corners of Grant’s blanket.
But as he patted the ground beside him, his smile gave me a piece of myself I wasn’t sure had ever existed before. That single possibility that this was the person I’d needed but had been afraid to find filled a hole in my heart, despite all my reservations. But my heart was still like swiss cheese, and the other holes mocked me, reminding me that if I continued down this path with Grant, I’d have a lot more to lose.
I took a deep breath and fought the fear that clung to the future moments, a fear that all this could end.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Starving. What did you bring?” I reached for the cooler, but he stopped me.
“The best thing is already here.”
Aww, Grant.But seriously, where was the food? I envisioned wineglasses, a pinot noir, sliced cheese, olives, and dried figs.
He reached into the bag beside the cooler again, and instead of bringing out the spiral ham I’d hoped for, he pulled out a handheld shovel.
He winked, moved off the blanket, and started digging in the ground beside us.
Digging.
“What are you doing?” My voice was singsong, like I was talking to someone who’d lost it.
“Give me three minutes.”
“What are you doing?” I repeated in the same tone.
He had asked me to a picnic, hadn’t he? Surely I hadn’t missed the part about eating wild grubs or being buried in the woods because he was a psychopath. And if he planned to kill and bury me, couldn’t he feed me first? Or at least have the decency to get a bigger shovel so this wouldn’t take so long?
As I contemplated whether to get up and head back to the car or embrace that my date had pulled out a garden implement and was hacking at the ground, Grant said, “Here it is.”
I blinked as he pulled a small piece of pottery from the ground.
“What are you doing?” I asked a third time.
He dusted the dirt from the little brown ceramic pot and held it up. “Feeding you. Do you know what this is?”
Do I look like I know what it is?
He opened the lid and exhibited an array of green, white, and red material that floated in a liquid. “Is that what’s left of the last date you brought out here?”
“Kimchi! It’s kimchi.” Grant held the container up like the dish was worthy of praise. “Beautifully fermented cabbage. You’ve had it before, haven’t you?”
My eyes widened. “This is our dinner?”
“Well, not just this, but I told you the best thing was already here. I buried this onggi about twenty days ago.”
“I thought you said it was kimchi, and you buried ... food.” The man I thought I was falling for had unearthed our picnic dinner from. The. Ground.
“Where’s the romantic picnic food? The brie, the—”
“We can have those things any old time. This”—he inhaled deeply—“this takes time to develop flavor and depth. Taste it. I made this one myself.”
“You made it yourself,” I repeated.
I should’ve known Grant’s idea of the perfect accompaniment to a beautiful setting sun was fermented cabbage. I should’ve known because it was the last thing I would’ve expected.
“When I was first starting out, I helped a Korean couple design their first home. They were extremely pleased and invited me over for a traditional Korean meal.”
He rummaged around in the cooler and brought out two plastic wineglasses and a bottle of sauvignon blanc.
He twisted a corkscrew into the soft cork and slid it out, then filled the cup he handed me halfway with the pale, straw-colored liquid. After filling his own, he leaned back, propping up on his elbow and crossing his outstretched legs at the ankles. “It was a large party. Extravagant decorations. Lavish food. I barely understood a word anyone said, but the food ...” Grant shook his head, then held up his gathered fingers and kissed them. “I fell in love with the spices, the flavor variations, the smells. But you wanna know the best thing there?”
“The kimchi?” I guessed.
“The grandma. She was dressed like royalty. As I was leaving the party, she had her granddaughter translate a message for me.” He looked out into the last rays of the sun, which was melting away behind the trees like the slow disappearance of ice cream in a cone. “‘It doesn’t matter what’s in here.’” He pointed to his head. “‘It matters what’s in here.’” Then his hand moved over his heart. “‘You chase this, Grant. This truth. Do you understand?’ I nodded. Her daughter was speaking English, but it was like I could understand her Korean without help.”
I took another sip and smiled over the rim of the glass. This is what contentment felt like.
“I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I thought of kimchi as an allegory for our relationship.” Then, like he’d just said something romantic, he reached up and touched my face, a slow caress down my cheek. “Because it takes time to develop and is really healthy, and ... are you ready to try this so I’ll stop talking? I learned how to make it from that little Korean grandma.”
I didn’t want him to stop talking. I wanted him to go on forever. I wanted to keep listening forever.
He lifted the spoon to my lips.
There was no way I wasn’t trying it now. I nodded without fuss and opened my mouth.
I chewed, picturing the tiny Korean woman and a twentysomething Grant making kimchi together. I wasn’t sure whether it was that mental image or the food, but to my surprise, it was ...
“Good,” I said, shocking myself.
An I told you so perched on his lifted eyebrow. He put the spoon down and handed me his glass of wine.
“She also gave me this.” He pulled out a second little pot from the cooler. This one was more rustic; the deep–sea blue pot had three tiny flowers carved into it and looked like it held not only rotting cabbage, but stories, pulled from the past and secured in that vessel. “This is a fermentation pot, an onggi. She made this one herself. I ordered the other one from Amazon. It’s tradition to bury the kimchi during the winter to keep it from freezing, but why not now, right?” He took the pot and placed it in the hole left by the other onggi in the ground, and then he covered it up again.
“For next time. Fermented foods are good for the gut.”
“How romantic—you worried about the state of my intestines.”
“How else would you know I cared?”
“Ummmm, chocolate.”
“Look in the cooler.”
Inside, beside the tiny vase of miniature pink roses, were little petit fours, small, dark chocolate cakes with white chocolate dollar signs on the top of them. My eyes floated to Grant’s, misty. “Did you make these?”
“Hell no. Deanna made them. I told her what I wanted them to look like. She also made the chicken salad cups and those bite-size quiches.” He pointed back inside the cooler. “She must’ve thought we’d turned into gnomes or something because everything is small. Is that—”
I cut him off, my lips pressing into his. It was too perfect. He was too perfect. I didn’t deserve him, or at least, he deserved someone who would think of desserts shaped like little houses to surprise him with. I bet Elaine would think of that. But that didn’t stop me from letting my lips roam his, letting our tongues get tangled like brambles on a perfect summer day, when the sun’s warmth heated your skin but the cool breeze balanced it out.
“You like the picnic?” he asked, pulling away with a smile. I didn’t want to stop kissing him.
I nodded.
As the city lights beamed from windows and streetlamps, the trees and rocks folded in like a nest around us. The lanterns Grant had retrieved from the car danced like tiny fireflies, and we munched on sumptuous chicken and smooth bites of egg in pastry.
“You grew up in Nashville?” I asked. “Did you always want to be an architect?”
Up to this point, I knew a lot about Grant—that he liked healthy, “gut-protective” foods, that he was impulsive yet grounded, how he made me feel when I was with him—but I knew little about where he came from.
“The city and I kind of grew up together. After my parents died, I spent a lot of time walking around downtown, looking at decades-old buildings right next to the new ones going up. And it all kind of fell into place for me. They called out to me, told me what to do.”
“I like that. Your parents would’ve been proud.”
I wanted him to talk about his parents, to tell me what had happened to them, but I couldn’t ask because I knew what it felt like when people asked about mine.
“How much has Deanna told you about our childhood?”
I shook my head. “Nothing really. I’ve heard you both talk about your parents fondly, but I know very little.”
He half smiled. “You want to know about me?”
I swallowed, nodded. “As much as you’ll tell.” I picked a piece of phyllo dough off the side of a quiche, let it melt on my tongue. “You already know a good bit about my past. I know nothing about yours.”
“Fair enough.” He took a sip of his wine. “My dad, Davis, was an actuary. My mom, everyone called her Clemmie, was an ICU nurse.”
His eyes narrowed to slits, and a line materialized between his eyebrows, a tiny number one. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
My stomach tensed as if ready to flee, but I wanted to do this, to know more about Grant. And I wasn’t going to let my past rule me. “You can tell me.” It was what he’d said to me when I’d spoken the hardest words about my past.
“They were killed in a car accident when I was seventeen. Deanna was twelve.”
I closed my eyes. My grandparents had been killed in a car accident. I never knew them. Every time I thought of that, I wondered if life would’ve been better if they’d lived.
When I opened my eyes, he was watching me. “Was it hard when they died?” It was a ridiculous question, but I wanted him to go on.
He nodded. “Very hard. But I’d grown up around death. My dad figured out when people would likely die and how much their lives were worth, and my mom worked to prove him wrong. It was like their professions were in exact opposition to each other, but I couldn’t imagine a better team. They both taught me death wasn’t to be feared, that life held balance, a purposeful coupling of fragility and resilience. Is this too philosophical?”
“It’s powerful.”
“It’s almost like they knew they weren’t meant to live long. My dad even had me read an essay by this guy who lived in the fifteen hundreds, Montaigne. If I remember correctly, it was titled ‘That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die.’ He thought if we could understand death, we could understand life, and thereby live life to its fullest.”
I rubbed my hand over the blanket until my palm was hot. “That sounds like you. Living life to its fullest.”
“Yeah, well, it took me a while to get there. I didn’t exactly fall back on that premise when they died. I was devastated, too old to live with anyone else, too young to know what to do next.”
“So what did you do? Did you end up living with family?”
I thought about twelve-year-old Deanna. She’d lost both her parents at the same age I’d lost Brandon. I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering what life would’ve been for me if I’d lost both my parents instead of my brother. I wished it had been them instead of him.
“This is probably going to sound silly, but ...” He shrugged.
I reached for his hand, surprised by how easy it was for me to just be here with him, open.
“I was crying one night after I’d tucked Deanna in. My aunt and uncle were staying with us, helping us decide what to pack so we could go live with them for a while. I’d been tough up to that point, put on a brave face. I wasn’t quite a man, but enough of one to feel like I should leave the crying to my little sister, so I closed myself in my parents’ study.”
I squeezed his hand in mine. This was how he knew. He’d felt what it was to lose someone he loved beyond life. I tried not to cry for seventeen-year-old Grant, but tears moved down my face anyway.
“I was sitting at my dad’s desk, soaking some actuarial table he had expected to look at again. And then somehow, I was standing beside the wall opposite their desks. It was covered in pictures of family, friends, and even some of my mom’s patients. Then there were old newspaper articles and framed quotes. I must’ve walked past that wall a million times, but that day, my face rested on a quote I’d watched my dad frame years before.”
He looked out over the rock, quoted: “‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.’”
As he spoke, the words itched with familiarity. “Marcus Aurelius,” I said, finally placing it.
His head snapped toward me. “You know it?”
A wave of something I could only describe as magical passed over my arms, cooling my skin, which was weird because I didn’t believe in magic; I didn’t believe in anything, not after Brandon.
“One of my college professors read that quote in a history class when we were studying the fall of the Roman Empire. I remember because I wanted to live those words. I wrote them down, kept it as a bookmark for the whole semester.”
He smiled, nodded. “I’ve since learned that most people attribute it to Marcus Aurelius, but he might not have actually said it.”
“You’re kidding?”
He shook his head. “I’m not exactly sure who did, but it doesn’t matter. The sentiment stands. Anyway, I copied it that night, onto the back of a printed table that told people when they were gonna die, and put it in my pocket. The next day, I told my aunt and uncle I wanted to stay at home, in Nashville. They thought I was foolish. They reminded me that my little sister was twelve, but it was the first time I’d seen Deanna smile since my parents died. I knew it was the right decision.”
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. It was soft and yellow with age. I opened it carefully to reveal the handwriting of a grieving seventeen-year-old boy with more grit and determination at that age than most people had in a lifetime, a whole lot more than I’d ever had. Losing Brandon had destroyed my family, had crippled me. I never could’ve done what Grant had done.
“I carry it everywhere I go.”
I wanted to carry it everywhere I went, but I handed it back to him. “You stayed home alone with Deanna? You took care of her?”
He nodded. “I raised her, and she raised me. We made it work. I think I got a little lost along the way, a little anal. I made sure everything was clean and in order and we ate our vegetables, because no one thought I could do it. Everyone told me what a mistake I was making. Maybe it would’ve been easier another way. I don’t know. But I set out to make my parents proud and to prove everyone else wrong. I think that’s why I’m the way I am now: overprotective of D because I had to be in the beginning. And some people don’t understand me because of it. They see me as arrogant, too confident, a know-it-all. But I’ve worked like hell to make sure everything fit together. The greatest thing I’ve learned through it all is that you can’t please everyone, and it changes your world when you stop living for them and you start living for you.”
“Grant, I want to be like you.”
“I want you to be like you. Despite what William might tell you, I don’t want to date myself.” The last word caught in his throat, and he put a hand to his back, obvious pain shooting into his face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I tweaked my back a few days ago at the B and B worksite.” Another grimace crossed his face.
“You’re really hurting, aren’t you?” I scooted close, slipped my hands under his shirt, and dug into the tight muscles of his back. “You’re tense.” I was tense. Touching him had turned my whole body on, a Lite-Bright with all the pegs pushed in.
He tilted his head back. “I’m better now.” His deepened tone oozed into my core, softened my rigidity, and liquified my insides until I was a jellyfish. I felt his low moans in my palms as they permeated his back and shimmied into me, through my hands, to my wrist, then arms, shoulders, then my breasts. I wanted him.
“I like you, Penelope.”
The words were almost too bright, as if my eyes and heart needed to adjust to the light of them after being kept in the dark for so long.
“I do have a talent for back rubs,” I said, trying to pull up back to the surface before I got completely lost in it.
He turned, faced me, caught my hands in his. “Not because of the back rub.”
His eyes, like his words, bored into me, made my pulse clang like one of those windup monkeys smashing cymbals. “I’ve never felt like this. I think you’re it.”
I stopped breathing entirely, air lost in the maze of my lungs, as I tried to make sense of what he’d just said.
The silence was so filled with possibility I shook. “Is this because of the Marcus Aurelius thing, because—”
“It’s not because of the Marcus Aurelius thing.” His head tilted up to the sky. “Okay, maybe a little. That’s definitely something I’m not going to ignore, but I liked you before we ever set foot on this mountain.” He reached up and ran a thumb over my cheek, making my body shiver. “But I said it tonight because of the Marcus Aurelius thing.”
This thing between us was moving too fast. What we’d shared tonight was deeper than anything I’d ever had, anything I’d allowed myself to have, and I’d already been more intimate with him than I’d been with any other man in my life, and he’d barely touched me. This was different.
We stared into each other’s eyes in the dusky light, next to a little pot of fermented vegetables.
He leaned into me, and his lips gently caressed mine, not a kiss, but a whisper that dipped all the way to my toes.
“How’s your back?” I asked, breathy because I knew what was coming next. I needed it to so I would stop thinking and could focus on all the physical sensations that pulled my body like taffy.
“What back?”
He pulled away, bit his lower lip as his eyes devoured me, then swept my hair aside and bent to my neck. A warm tingle fanned out from the spot where his breath met my skin. I closed my eyes and waited for his lips, waited to see where he’d touch me next. The moment stretched, him maddeningly out of reach, until he began his trail of tiny, succulent kisses up to my ear, where he half sighed, half groaned, and I came half undone. My body arched toward him, and then he whispered the most peculiar thing: “I’m not going to make love with you, Penelope.”
I blinked, my body prepared to hear a completely different combination of syllables. Surely he was joking, and this was some twisted bout of foreplay.
“How do you know I want you to?” I teased, letting my hand move across the spot where I’d seen his tattoo, allowing my fingers to trace the waistband of his jeans.
“That look on your face tells me you want me to.”
“So what if I do?”
“I won’t do it.”
Were we playing, or was this about to get religious?
If we were playing, I was going to give as good as I got. If this was religious, well ...
I leaned down to his ear and huskily asked, “Are you sure?” And then my teeth softly scraped against his earlobe.
His moan told me he wanted this as much as I did, so I was surprised when he leaned away from me.
“Please don’t tell me you’re a virgin.”
His half smile was tortured. “I’m not a virgin, but I am serious about sex and you. Taking that step means neither of us will go anywhere.”
This was rapidly changing course. We’d gone deep, mentally deep, and I was proud of myself, but now I needed to stop being deep, except for the kind of depth where one part of him sank deep into one part of me. And now, I was saying “deep” too much in my head. “You think you might go somewhere?” I asked, because maybe he was still on the fence about us working out. Maybe he’d realized I was damaged and could never be like put-together Elaine.
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere. Except maybe here.” He kissed my cheek. “And here.” His lips flitted across my jaw. Then moved behind my ear. “And definitely here.” This was confusing while simultaneously lighting me on fire.
“Grant.” I managed to pull away from him. I needed to know what he meant, even more than I wanted him to touch me. “What are you saying?”
“I’m not going anywhere, but I think we should wait until you’re convinced I’m not going anywhere. You’re new at vulnerability. You’ve admitted that you’ve never really opened up to anyone. I want to get to know you. I want you to trust me. I want an emotional connection before a physical one.”
What?
“And what if I said that was now?” How was he logical when the heat inside my body was burning away thought? I wanted his hands on me. We’d already had an emotional connection. The physical would help balance out all the emotional, so I wouldn’t turn into a puddle of doubt and self-consciousness. I knew how to be physical, and now, he was stripping me of some of my best attributes.
“You really believe I’m not going anywhere? Because if ...” He swallowed hard. His eyes searched my face as if waiting for me to unexpectedly prove him wrong so he could pull me back into his arms.
“The truth?” I asked.
“This isn’t going to work any other way.”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe you’re here to stay. I want to, but I don’t.” Everyone left. That was my entire life’s experience. It was going to take a lot to convince me that our relationship wasn’t more of the same. Grant was different. He’d broken barriers no one else had even chipped, which gave way to this: my openness to try. But trying didn’t come with guarantees.
He pulled his lips into his mouth and nodded gravely. I’d confirmed his concerns. “Then we’ll wait. No sex ... for now.”
What man refused sex? I should’ve lied, told him I was all in. But he would’ve seen through it.
His hand pushed up my thigh and around to my back. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t do this in the meantime.” Then, he pulled me into a kiss that made the sunset seem like a kindergartener’s painting ...