Chapter Twenty-Six Griffin and His Lap
Chapter Twenty-Six
Griffin and His Lap
Beverly
It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and the diner is bustling with conversation, clanking utensils, and laughter.
The town is always more relaxed after a good snowstorm, as if we’re thankful we survived another one, only to do it a million times more.
I almost can’t hear my phone buzz over the hum of activity, but when that familiar name pops up—that name that keeps haunting me—it feels less like Cupid is approaching and more like Michael Myers.
I turn my phone face down on the table. When I look up, Griffin meets my eyes.
He is the opposite of our holiday decorations, which scream in frilly pinks and red ribbons.
Hearts and love letters stick to the bulletin board.
Paper chains made of cardstock in red, white, and pink dip over the breakfast bar.
And then there’s Griffin, with his dark hair and black long-sleeved sweater, raising a single eyebrow in my direction.
Maybe he’s the true Halloween stalker.
It’d be eerie if it weren’t so attractive.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Mm-hmm,” I say, bringing my coffee up to my lips.
I’m fine. I’m absolutely not thinking about cuddling with him in bed. My argument is that I was tired and in a sleepless stupor, which meant anything sounded like a good idea. I could have run a marathon! Okay, not really, but…I followed my sleep-fueled base instincts, and that’s never a good idea.
Ava had my bed, and I had nowhere else to sleep. That’s all it was.
Griffin forks a piece of pancake into his mouth. I shamefully linger, watching the fork slide out between his lips when he’s done.
“Need a refill?”
I jump when my dad arrives with the coffee carafe.
“Yep. Please.” Parched.
Sitting beside Griffin, Ava grips a handful of pancakes and shoves it into her mouth. Dad chuckles.
“She’s feeling better, huh?” he asks.
Griffin reaches his palm down to rustle Ava’s bangs. “Yeah, she’s a tough cookie.”
Ava swats him away with a scrunched nose, then snags more pancake pieces.
My phone vibrates. I suck in a breath and put it on silent instead. When I look back up, Griffin stares back at me.
My mouth opens. I almost blurt out, It’s him! Beau is like an evil spirit that won’t go away! Save me!
But I won’t be saved by Griffin. That’s not his job. It doesn’t matter that his rough hands still feel like they’re possessing me even more than Beau’s texts. At night, I feel them ghosting over my waist. The tips of his guitar-calloused fingers, scratching across my stomach, up to my ribs…
He tucks another syrup-coated pancake bite into his mouth. His perfect white teeth slide over the tongs.
I stand without thinking. I don’t know what my objective is, but I can’t sit here like a creep watching syrup slide over his lips.
“I’m gonna go…um…I gotta talk to Greg.” I tuck my phone into my back pocket and stride across the diner, over to the kitchen window.
Greg is in his own world at the skillet, slowly squeezing a bottle of batter to create pancake art.
Daisy sits at the counter with her notebook, occasionally glancing up at him with a smile.
I do not have time to analyze that right now.
I walk farther into seclusion, into the bathroom hallway, where I pull out my phone and finally stare at the buildup of texts.
Beau, Beau, and more Beau.
I haven’t responded.
I wouldn’t know what to say.
And, for some silly reason, it would feel like betrayal if I did.
“Hey.” Griffin’s voice makes me jump.
I turn around. He stands with Ava propped on his hip.
He huffs a laugh through his nose. “You’re like a rabbit today. What’s going on?”
I laugh back, flicking my thumb over my nail polish. “Nothing. Just checking emails.”
My opposite fist clutches my phone tighter. His eyes jerk to it. I pull it closer to me.
I don’t want to keep secrets from Griffin. It’s not like he deserves to know anything; we aren’t dating. But I still find myself leaning closer, wanting to hold the phone up to share.
Ava blinks, looking between me and her dad as if wondering why both of us are silently analyzing the other.
Griffin points to the bathroom door behind me. “Mind if I…?” It’s the women’s bathroom. It’s also the only one with a changing table.
“Oh. Yes, sorry.” I step to the side as he enters with Ava. But not before tossing me a reassuring smile that has my knees buckling.
Oh my God, what am I doing?
He’s a dad with a two-year-old. He’s writing an album.
He doesn’t need to be worrying about me.
He sure as heck doesn’t need me swooning over him.
But sometimes I want to show him my scripts just to see him smile.
I want to make up new puppet voices because it makes him laugh.
I want to watch him dance his fingers over the piano keys, close my eyes, and soak in his whispered lyrics.
I am totally swooning.
I hear the whir of the paper towel dispenser, and then the door swings open again.
Griffin freezes. I do too.
“Hello again,” he says slowly.
“Not stalking you,” I joke, but with the way he blinks at me, it clearly doesn’t land.
I’m awkward.
This is awkward.
He clears his throat, setting Ava down. My dad comes around the corner.
“Hey, you two. Do you…uh…” He looks between me and Griffin. “Want me to take her back?”
Griffin nods. “Thanks. Yeah. I gotta talk to Bev.”
He’s making us talk alone.
Why?
My throat feels like it’s constricting.
This is how I die: of a heart attack in my parents’ diner.
Ava toddles off, escorted by my dad.
And then it’s just us.
My mouth is as dry as a bone when Griffin’s eyes swivel to me, slowly and deliberately. Focused.
“You’ve been weird,” he says.
“Oh” is the only answer I can come up with.
“I’m just calling it like I see it.”
“Huh. Well, all right.” Maybe if I sound nonchalant, I’ll believe that I am.
He inhales, rubbing his palm over his beard. “It wasn’t the…” He blows out his breath. “When we—?”
My body sparks like lightning striking a tree, setting it ablaze. Little licks of heat travel down to my limbs and fingertips. He’s gonna bring up the bed. The cuddling.
“No!” The word rushes out of me. “No. No no no.”
The corner of his mouth crooks up.
“That’s a lot of ‘no’s,” he says.
My shoulders deflate. “I know.” I give a sheepish smile at the wordplay. It grants me a twitching smile back.
“What’s going on, B?”
I sigh. I’m tired of this secret. There are so many people Griffin works hard for, and he deserves someone who does the same for him. Who tells him exactly what’s going on—not just that things are great and that’s that. Plus, I’ve never been a good liar anyway.
I unlock my phone, open the texts, then hold them out for Griffin to see.
I know the moment he sees the sender’s name, because his jaw tenses.
I nudge it closer. “Read them. I don’t mind.”
Hesitantly, Griffin takes my phone. As his eyes scan over the texts, I can still see Beau’s words myself. Every text is a ghost of Remember when… and I’ve been writing songs that feel like you. Is that weird?
I wish I could say It’s all weird, Beau, but that can of worms feels too difficult to unscrew. It’s like he’s leaving off where we were two years ago. No dates with other people. No hurtful words. No viral video where his fan base attacked me.
Like I’ll just forget.
Like I’ll just fall for him all over again.
Griffin’s mouth straightens into a tense line once he’s finished. He looks off to the yellow diner walls, at anywhere but me. His jaw ticks, like he’s considering a thousand things and can’t settle on one word.
He hates me. He must.
“Beau hasn’t texted me in years,” I say.
“Why now?” Griffin asks.
I’ve had days to think about it, and I know why.
I know what I like.
Griffin. Griffin and his lap. Griffin and his Hey, baby.
When I don’t answer, Griffin shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He slowly nods. “Me.”
“Yeah.”
I can tell he’s angry by the little lines on his forehead, but they disappear as he watches me, like he’s analyzing my emotions and replacing his in real time to accommodate mine.
“Well…how are you feeling about it?” he asks.
My head pulls back.
He doesn’t hate me?
Beau never asked questions like that. If someone else texted me, it always triggered jealousy with Beau. Possession. It was flattering at the time. Now, it feels so childish.
“I don’t like it,” I confess.
“Me neither,” Griffin agrees matter-of-factly.
“I don’t know how to respond.”
“Do you even want to?”
I thought I’d feel like I was caught between a rock and a hard place whenever we crossed this bridge, but Beau’s boulder had tumbled out of my life so long ago. Now it’s only Griffin. There’s nothing difficult about this at all.
“No,” I answer.
Griffin tilts his head to the side. “Is it awful if I say I don’t want you to either?”
I smile despite myself. The diner’s jukebox with Billy Joel or Elton John or John Denver sounds like a mosaic of tinkling notes in my ear that dulls on the impact of Griffin’s words.
“What are you thinking?” he asks. His tone low and rough. Just like those hands.
This is getting complicated. Too complicated. A relationship—a friendship—born of falsehoods and business transactions.
What even are we?
Are we anything?
We’re friends. Griffin said that. That wasn’t an illusion. That was real.
We’re friends.
Griffin Patrick and B.
He chuckles, weak and pained. “C’mon, I can see the gears moving.”
I laugh. “Yeah, well…”
“Well?” he coaxes.
I let out an uneven exhale.
“Well…” The word fades on my tongue.
Our eyes dance over each other’s. I suddenly realize just how close we’ve been standing, crowded together around the phone like it’s a campfire. I waver backward, uneven on my feet, wobbling at the knees at the way he’s towering over me. My shoulders meet the wall.
He’s looking down at me through hooded eyes, coasting over my cheeks, lips, and down to my neck. I see his Adam’s apple bob.
Is he nervous?
The last few years Beau and I were together, he never seemed nervous around me. He had that confident nonchalance, that type of demeanor someone gets when they know they won’t lose you. Like it doesn’t matter what they say.
Griffin isn’t Beau.
I open my mouth to say that. I don’t know what it will mean, but Griffin needs to know he’s unique. He’s nothing like Beau.
What leaves my lips instead is very different.
“After the awards…you said you know what you like.” I whisper it, like a secret I’ve kept to myself this whole time.
Griffin leans closer. Strands of his thick hair fall from behind his ear, shrouding us in his messy brown mane, hidden away from the rest of the diner.
“Yes, I did,” he murmurs. It’s low, as much of a whisper as he can get, but with a hard edge, like a finger tracing over a sharp blade. Gentle but intentional. Careful.
“What did you mean?” I ask.
He lets out a wistful sigh. It drips over me, coating my shoulders and weighing them down. My stomach clenches as his eyes land on my mouth.
“You know what I meant, B.”
My lips part in disbelief, at the honesty behind it all. But Griffin’s always been honest with me, to the point of bluntness. That’s just who he is.
My back arches as my heart pounds through my chest, like it’s reaching for him. He lets out a low hum, deep in his throat.
I know what I like.
And Griffin might like me.
“Griffin?”
The diner chaos rushes in again. For a moment, it felt like Griffin and I were in our own world, but now the jukebox blares in my ears. Boisterous laughter cuts the silence. Forks clanking on plates. Coffee mugs thumping on tables.
Griffin leans away, pushing back his hair with a palm. Is it shaking?
Standing behind him is Uncle Greg.
I smooth out my clammy palms onto my skirt. “Hey.”
“Sorry,” Greg huffs out a laugh. “Ava is…” He throws a thumb over his shoulder.
Ava is climbing onto the table.
Griffin dips his chin down with a low grunt and rushes over without another word. The heat of him is all I’m left with. That and a curious smirk from Greg. He takes his forefinger and thumb and zips both across his mouth.
“Oh, go feed Daisy’s chickens or something,” I say, pushing past him with my cheeks burning and my mind racing.