Grace
My heart keeps racing, which is annoying, like I’ve de-aged. You think about making out with a guy once or twice and suddenly you’re a thirty-nine-year-old fourteen-year-old calling a boy for the first time. Also, what am I, a psychopath? Nobody calls anybody unannounced anymore.
After four rings, I decide that’s plenty. I’ll just hang up and go back to chilling with my dog and maybe have a chat with my dead husband like a normal per—
“Um, hello?”
I freeze and yell goddammit in my head. “Henry?”
“Grace?”
“Did I reach you on your rotary phone? Yeah, it’s Grace. Don’t you have caller ID?”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Hi. Sorry.”
The mom from Edward Scissorhands is giving Johnny Depp a tour of her weird little house. “I’ve got one for you,” I say. “A movie.”
“Yeah?”
“Question first. Is Edward Scissorhands Christmassy enough to be a holiday movie?”
Henry says, “Ha,” in my ear.
“What?”
“I’m watching it right now,” he says. “On, um, AMC.”
I see the channel’s logo at the bottom of my screen. “Really? I just turned it on.”
“Me, too,” he says. “Great minds.”
“Eh,” I say. “Minds at least. I forgot how weird this movie is. When is this supposed to be, exactly? Like, historically.”
“No idea. I like to imagine the pitch, though. Tim Burton sits some fancy executives down and says, ‘Okay, so, Johnny Depp stars in a sweet romance.’ And they’re like, ‘Awesome.’ Then he says, ‘But here’s the catch: He has scissors for hands.’ ”
Johnny Depp looks at framed pictures of Winona Ryder.
“Can you believe how hot she was?” I ask. “I mean, she still is, obviously. But young Winona? Come on.”
“Agreed,” says Henry.
“Did you and Brynn watch this one?”
“Yeah.” He says this in his Sad Henry voice, so I must’ve struck a nerve. “She had a thing for Johnny Depp.”
“Well, yeah, duh. He’s super weird now, but for a solid two decades there, he…made us feel things.”
We watch as Edward pokes a hole in a waterbed, and Henry’s laugh makes me laugh.
Then I say, “You wanna come over and watch with me?”
That was supposed to be something I eased into, but I just sort of blurted it out, and now that I have I realize how much I want him to say yes. Instead, he says nothing.
“I’ll hit Pause,” I say. “We can push Play when you get here.”
He’s still saying nothing. Then he says, “Um,” which isn’t a word.
Edward is trying to put pants on. It isn’t going well.
“Or not,” I say. “I mean, it’s fine, you don’t have to be all wei—”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
And that’s how I discover that straightening up and swiffering the first floor of my house takes almost exactly twenty minutes.
I start in the kitchen, do a circle around the empty humane trap, then work my way through the TV room.
As Harry Styles tries to attack the pole, I admit to myself that I purposely didn’t tell Henry that it’d be just us. Because if I did, he might’ve said no.
There’s a small knock. Harry Styles runs to the door and barks, then tries to tackle Henry as I open it.
“No Costco sweats?” he asks when he makes it inside.
My face gets hot. Along with the swiffering, my twenty-minute Henry prep included changing into yoga pants, which I also bought at Costco, but they were more expensive. “I don’t do yoga,” I say, “but I support the pants. The Crocs are mandatory, though.”
“Cool,” he says. Then he takes a bag of M&M’s out of his pocket. “Oh, and check it out. Is Bella still up? I brought her a present.”
Now my face is even hotter. Part of admitting to myself that I purposely didn’t tell Henry that the kids are gone means that I have to admit to myself that I want to be alone with him.
The other day at Edgar Allan’s I made fun of him when he tried to eat a chicken wing with a knife and fork.
Beside him, Ian was laughing at Elf, and Bella was working the soda gun for Zoe.
Henry smiled at me, a little embarrassed.
He had Old Bay flakes on his lower lip, and I thought, Oh wow, okay.
I can’t say any of that, because what if Henry doesn’t want to be alone with me? What if he just wants to keep trying to talk to his dead wife and coaching my kid at art? So, I make my voice as cool and casual as I can and say, “Ian and Bella are at my parents’. It’s just us.”
“Oh,” he says, which is technically a word but uninterpretable. “Is that okay? Should I…?”
“It’s fine, Henry,” I say. “Sit. I’ll get us some drinks.”
He takes his coat off and hangs it next to Tim’s old jacket, and that’s precisely when I hear the humane trap clank shut from the kitchen. Henry and I look at each other.
“Maybe we deal with that later,” I say. “Not like they’re going anywhere, right?”