Chapter Fourteen Nice, Not Kind
Chapter Fourteen
Nice, Not Kind
Beverly
For the next week, Griffin and I work together writing songs and scripts.
We’ve started recording our sessions so that we keep Griffin’s random strokes of inspiration.
I always feel energized afterward, immediately heading back to my room to work on the next script.
My sleep has never been better. My creativity has never thrived more.
The other night, I put my work aside at a reasonable hour—because I promised Griffin I would—then lay in bed, staring at my ceiling with leftover glow-in-the-dark stars, replaying songs and scenes through my mind.
I almost texted Griffin to get his opinion but decided not to.
We’re coworkers—not friends that randomly send texts.
And yet…he feels more familiar with each passing day.
I see it in him, too—the ease with which he falls onto the couch, how he reaches for his guitar and starts recording without hesitation, and the way he laughs when I do puppet voices.
Griffin has this low, rumbling laugh, deep in the pit of his stomach. It’s the only time he laughs like that.
I wonder what it would be like to be friends with Griffin Patrick Harvey.
Is he different from the Griffin I know now?
What is his normal routine? Is his musician lifestyle as all-consuming as Beau’s became?
I wonder if Griffin gets bored here. Writing children’s songs and having family dinners must look ridiculous beside parties, bourbon, and one-night stands.
One-night stands.
The thought makes my limbs fidgety. I know that’s likely how Ava was conceived, just based on passing comments here and there, like how he didn’t know her mom for a long time or that they weren’t very close. But I try not to think about that too much.
Ava sits in front of me, playing with Barbies and sifting through doll-sized clothes, always blissfully unaware of how her dad invades my thoughts.
“You like this one?” I ask, lifting a small fringed vest.
Ava nods with a shy smile.
“That’s my style too,” I whisper like it’s a secret, just between us girls. She giggles, jerking the Barbie toward me. It’s an unspoken demand to dress her.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I find Griffin’s gaze. He stares at me, watching Ava crawl into my lap while I dress her doll. He smiles. I can’t help but smile back.
Griffin Harv-E.
Friends with mE?
“That child needs more clothes,” Nana says from the recliner. “That’s the same sweater she wore three days ago.”
“I do laundry,” Griffin counters, sitting on the floor next to us with his back against the couch. His long legs stretch across the rug, inches from my own. “We weren’t prepared for this weather.”
To his credit, the temperatures have dropped dramatically. We’re nearing the end of January, and snow is bound to pop up again any day. You can feel it in the wind’s bite, nipping at your ankles like a threat.
“She’s gonna need a heavier coat soon,” Nana says.
“I could get her some clothes out of town,” I offer. “Nothing is open up here. And it’s not like Griffin can show up at a mall or something.”
Despite Elk Grove knowing about him, we try not to get out too much. Just in case.
Nana looks between us. “Or I think Taylor is doing inventory at the thrift store. She can let you two stop by.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Let me check with her momma. See what they’re up to.”
I bite my bottom lip as if to say Can we?
He hitches up the corner of his lips, shining a sliver of those white teeth through his beard. “Sounds fun.”
Griffin’s smile does too much to me; it’s a live wire to my chest. I feel silly. Ridiculous. We’re just working together. My family is hosting him for a couple of months. That’s all this is.
And, most of all, I’m just me. A small-town mountain girl with a love for puppetry. Friends with a big musician? Tried that already. They don’t have time for girls like me.
That night, I search our town’s thrift-store repository to prep for our shopping day. I find a cute pink jacket for Ava. I almost text him, but I decide not to.
Griffin steers his SUV into the gravel parking spot in front of our three-brick-building downtown block.
Puffs from the engine’s exhale still permeate the cold as he unbuckles Ava from the back seat.
He sets her on his hip and wraps her into his jacket.
His shoulders hunch as he tries to fight off the whipping breeze tangling through their hair.
“And it’s open?” he asks, peering up at Elk Grove Thrift.
“Supposedly,” I answer.
Farther down on street parking, Eddie and Maria leave their car. They toss a wave, both lingering on us before heading up to the diner. I tense and lead our crew to the creaking wooden porch. Best we keep our appearances minimal.
Taylor left the front door unlocked, just like Nana said she would.
Griffin, Ava, and I file inside, rattling the bell above the door.
Classic country music blares over the speakers perched on the front counter.
The building smells like too much lavender and a tinge of something burning, probably from a heating unit cranked up too high. It’s almost too hot to wear a coat.
“Hello?” I call out.
“Back here, Bev!” a voice yells, her accent making the one-syllable word stretch to two. “Look around all you like!”
Griffin lowers Ava to the ground, and she takes off running to a side room. We follow her, stopping when she runs between long hanging coats. Griffin keeps an eye on her, and I tap through the hangers on a low metal rack.
“Shopping for yourself too?” Griffin teases.
“Nah. But I spent many weekends scouring these same aisles in high school,” I confess.
“This explains a lot.”
I laugh. “What does that mean?”
He eyes my current outfit of thigh-high platform boots and a striped bell-sleeved dress, all under my usual fur coat.
“You always look like you landed right out of the ’70s,” he says.
“Lies.”
“Not a one.”
A few clothes catch my eye, but I tongue my cheek realizing how similar they are to his observation. “Okay, so maybe I have a preference.”
His lips crook into a smile before he follows Ava as she runs around another corner.
I trail behind them, but on the opposite side, we find a woman tabbing through her phone in front of an open plastic bin.
Empty hangers sit on a bare rack. Our creaking footsteps bring her eyes up, and they instantly grow double their size.
“Oh my God.” Her accent is so thick it sounds like Uhmahgawd instead. “Beverly!”
“Taylor? Hey. Nana said it was cool if we—”
She claps across the floor on wedge heels and pulls me into a tight hug. She smells strongly of bubble gum.
“It’s so good to see you again!” Taylor ends the embrace but continues gripping the outside of my arms. “Feels just like old times, doesn’t it?”
My head jerks back. Mostly because I don’t recognize her at all.
When Nana mentioned Taylor, I assumed I hadn’t met her before.
But the memories come back slowly with each eager bat of her smoky eyes and long lashes.
She was in my theater classes. If I remember correctly, Taylor was friends with most people.
I shake my head and blink through the memories. “Oh, hi! Yes, wow, it’s so great to see you! It’s been so long.”
She pats my arm and leans back, scouring my figure as if assessing me. “I know, I know! How have you been?” Bee-uhn.
“Good, yeah.” I never know what to say to that. It’s been fourteen years. That’s a lot of wiggle room for good, bad, and everything in between. “How about you?”
“Oh, you know”—she waves a hand that clacks with thin gold bracelets and thicker metal ones—“working here. I married Tyler.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great.”
“He’s all right, I guess.” She scrunches her nose into a playful I’m such a stinker face.
“Helps with the kids and all. But don’t ask him to clean.
Oh lord, you’ll never hear the end of it.
” The laughter that follows is boisterous but sweet.
“No, I’m kidding, he’s a good man. You do remember Tyler, right?
Football team? Never made quarterback, but he was real good. Sort of. Well, he had fun at least.”
I awkwardly laugh, and she barrels on.
“Now, but you were with Beau, weren’t you? God, he’s really taken off, hasn’t he? I mean, what a man. We went to go see him when he was in town—over in Raleigh—and wow. What. A. Show. We keep in touch sometimes, but he’s just so busy, y’know? Takes a few weeks to answer my texts.”
My heart ratchets into my throat. Everything about this conversation brings me back.
The familiarity with Beau in this town but also being in this specific shop.
Beau and I searched these racks for his first touring outfit.
I distinctly remember him lingering at a glass case near the register where they kept jewelry, thinking maybe he was looking at vintage engagement rings.
In my heart, I knew he wasn’t. I could sense how he pulled away from me first when we held hands, how he didn’t buy any clothes I picked for him, and how his laughs at my jokes turned to grimaces.
“I’ve heard he’s doing well” is all I manage.
“Congratulations, by the way,” Taylor murmurs.
“On what?”
“On that.”
“What?”
“Girl.” Her eyes bug out. “Griffin. Harvey.”
Oh.
Taylor’s eyes are locked on to a space behind me.
I turn and spot Griffin with his black baseball cap on, tilted low.
It must have been tucked in his pocket. But his pseudodisguise can’t hide his iconic jawline and gorgeous long hair.
Griffin doesn’t linger, moseying into another room behind Ava, who is too busy to care about adult conversations.
The old hardwood floors creak and whine under his heavy boots, sounding exactly how I feel.
I was so distracted about memories of dating Beau, I forgot about my silly little lie to make others not think about me dating Beau.
“Thank you,” I say quickly. “Yeah.”
“Look at you. Lucky duck with all these musicians.”