Chapter 12 – Dean
Connie ducked her head into my office. “Blaire is a yes for next Friday’s gala. She’d like to be picked up promptly at seven.”
“Thank you, Connie.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Am I allowed to be both proud of you and irritated at the same time?”
“Not if it means I have to hear about it.”
She of course ignored my sarcasm and took a seat in the armchair across from my desk. “It was a smart move to have the invitation come through me. It keeps things very business-like. But you’re going on another date your mother planned for you.”
“This is true.” I didn’t look up from the email I was typing out. I had twelve more emails to respond to after this one. “How did Blaire sound?”
“Pretentious. Lovely. I have no idea how she actually feels about it, but she claims to be looking forward to meeting you. Do you even know what she looks like?”
“I do. I checked LinkedIn.”
Connie leaned in. “I heard LinkedIn is the new Tinder. Is that true?”
“Not according to LinkedIn, but yes. It’s super true.” I had the messages to prove it. They were not exactly professional. I never responded to any of them. As far as I was concerned, LinkedIn was for checking up on people, and that was it.
Blaire’s cover photo on LinkedIn made her look like a supermodel, except one who had an MBA and worked eighty hours a week in a law firm. I had purposely waited exactly one week before the event to ask her out, following my mother’s edict, but without looking over-eager about it.
I didn’t need Connie’s lectures. I knew this game well, the one where I did what my mother asked, but only just. Checking out Blaire’s resume was part of that, getting enough information to be able to make pleasant conversation without going too deep.
I looked up to see Connie engrossed in her phone. She might have even forgotten she was still in my office.
“Are you on LinkedIn?” I asked. “Find anyone interesting?”
“No, you rascal. I’m not interested in dating again. Gilberto, rest his soul, was it for me.” She stood and tucked her phone into the front pocket of her blazer. “I was doing what I’m always doing. Rearranging your schedule. Lunch will be here at noon. Your phone consult’s been pushed back thirty minutes. I’ll let you know when they’re ready. Also, Luis has a cancellation this afternoon at four. Would you like it?”
“Yes, please.”
“Good.”
Before leaving, Connie stole a root beer barrel candy out of the dish on my desk like she wasn’t the one to refill it weekly. She kept Life Savers on her desk, which I, in turn, raided every chance I got. Isaac kept old-fashioned strawberry candies on his desk. Nobody touched those. The gooey middle grossed me out. Every once in a while, I tried one just to make sure I still hated them.
Five minutes before my phone consultation, my phone chimed with a notification for GoWithFriends. I only had one notification set, and it was for Grace. They had the feature to make it easier to chat with people you’d hit it off with. I just used it so I didn’t have to check in constantly and see that she’d still ghosted all of us. I couldn’t exactly check in ten seconds after she did, though. It would make her suspicious.
Connie texted with a heads up that my phone consultation was ready anyway, so I ignored the app and launched back into work. I answered calls, finished sending emails, had a planning meeting with Isaac, got my haircut, and drove home. All without seeing what Grace was up to. My self-control when it came to her was legendary. Too bad there was no one to brag to about it. I had told exactly no one about my feelings for her, although I suspected Isaac knew.
Once home, I changed clothes, made myself a protein shake, and headed into my home gym in the basement, propping my phone up on the treadmill while I warmed up with a jog. It was time. I scrolled back through the comment feed in the app to see where Grace had checked in and started reading.
Grace: Hi guys.
Five seconds later:
Lacey: Where have you been?
Pretty sure Lacey had an alert set for Grace, too. Or maybe she just spent too much time on the app. She was always on there.
Grace: I’ve been busy at work.
Jackson: The most generic non-answer in the history of non-answers. But in all seriousness, we don’t have to talk about Knead unless you want to.
Stella: What Jackson means is spill. Also, Knead is now Dean. You’re going to confuse the new people if you keep calling him that, Jackson .
Jackson: The new people don’t care. I care. Unless Grace doesn’t want to talk about it. Then I don’t care either.
Grace: Why don’t we wait for Knead/Dean to show up before we dive into this.
Jackson: Good call.
Jackson: Unless you want to DM me. I can keep a secret.
Stella: He cannot.
Jackson: You’re right. I can’t keep secrets. You can still DM me, though.
I laughed and scrolled down until I saw that Grace had logged off not long after that. I checked the time. She’d probably be right in the middle of dinner with Piper. It wasn’t a good time to bother her. And yet, I really wanted to bother her. About anything.
Having a nice modern house was great and all. But it was just me here. There wasn’t music loud enough or a show interesting enough to make me forget that. Not that I didn’t ever have plans on a Friday night, but tonight, I had nothing, and the person I most wanted to make plans with would be surprised to hear from me.
I was about to close up the GoWithFriends app when Lacey spotted my check-in.
Lacey: Dean/Knead! Get Grace to come to tomorrow’s group activity. We’re hiking a two-mile loop. We start at eleven a.m. Lunch after!
Dean: I’ll do my best.
Grace: I’m a firm maybe .
Whaaat? When did Grace check back in? Apparently, the alerts didn’t work if you were already on the app. Well, if she had time to sneak up on me, then she had time to answer her phone. Not wanting the sound of the treadmill getting in the way, I powered it down and moved to kettlebell deadlifts, leaving my phone propped up on the now-quiet treadmill while I waited for her to pick up.
“Dean?”
“Hi, Grace.”
“Um, hi. Why do you sound out of breath?”
“I’m exercising.”
“Oh. In that case, it’s fine. We can talk later.”
“I called you.”
“Right.”
“Don’t worry. I can lift a kettlebell just fine while we talk. Any word from Flowers United?” That wasn’t why I was calling, but Grace did better when there was a purpose to our conversations. I asked about her business a lot. It started most of our conversations. Always had. She probably thought it was all I cared about. Me, business guy . You, business owner . I wasn’t sure why I was a caveman in this scenario, but thought bunnies were strange things.
“Yeah, they called me right before close and told me they were working on an offer. Isaac didn’t say anything to you? He said he would.”
“Isaac’s pretty much dead to me the second he’s off work these days.”
“It’s newlywed brain.”
She wasn’t wrong there. Carmen and Isaac were the newly-est newlyweds ever.
In the background, I heard Piper’s little voice. “Mom, is that Dean? I want to talk to him.”
I grinned. Grace sighed and promised she’d put me on speaker. I could hear scratching like a squirrel had gotten ahold of the phone before Piper’s little voice asked, “Will he be able to hear me good? Dean? Can you hear me?”
“Yep. Hi, pumpkin. I can hear you. What are you doing right now?”
“We’re making dinner. What are you eating?”
“A protein shake.”
“Ooh, what’s that?”
Grace answered for me. “It’s a disgusting meal replacement. Like a chocolate shake, but filled with sadness.”
“Yeah, right, Mom.” Piper was used to Grace’s dry sense of humor and didn’t believe a word she said. “Is it good, Dean?”
“It’s good for me. But your mom’s right; it’s not dinner.”
“Then come eat dinner with us. We’re having mac and cheese. There’s no sadness in it.”
It was a great sales pitch, but unless Grace was the one asking, it unfortunately didn’t mean a whole lot. I quickly changed the subject, asking her about school.
Piper filled me in on more than I ever wanted to know about the first grade, having pink eye, who got it after she did, and how their class pet went missing for six days. This morning, the janitor found Mr. Wiggles hiding behind a bucket.
“What is Mr. Wiggles?” I asked.
“A corn snake,” she told me proudly. “He’s a good hider.”
“He must be.”
“Dean,” Grace said, when there was a lull. “You’re welcome to come over. She’s got a lot more to talk about, and I’ve heard it all. I’m so glad you got to hear that she gave the whole class pink eye. I’m mom of the year over here.”
“Not the whole class,” Piper corrected her. “Just the kids I play the hand-clapping game with. The teacher says we can’t do that at recess anymore unless we use hand-appetizer.”
“Hand sanitizer?” Grace asked.
“That’s what I said.”
I was too stuck on the first thing Grace said to laugh at their back and forth. She was inviting me over? The only things she ever invited me to were arguments. “I’d love to come over. I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay, good.” Grace sounded nervous. That made two of us.
As soon as they hung up, I put the kettlebell back on the rack and ran upstairs to shower. My house in the hills north of Phoenix was about a twenty-minute drive from Grace’s small, older house in the city. I’d need to hurry.