Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dad: Lor and G are on their way and the snowblower isn’t working. Grab a shovel and come help your brother.
When Grant pulled up to his parents’ house, he could hardly believe his tired, bloodshot eyes. Austin had started shoveling snow without him. He wasn’t doing a good job, but he’d started, and that was a miracle.
“Dad went to the hardware store,” Austin said, anticipating Grant’s first question. “From what I could tell through the garbled cursing, the belt broke? Or he needs a belt?” He frowned and leaned on his shovel. “Or maybe he said ‘melt.’ Is a melt a thing on a snowblower?”
Grant stared at his brother and wondered if they really had grown up in the same household, or if that was a shared hallucination.
“Why would a melt be a thing on a snowblower? What is a melt?”
“It’s a…melt.” Austin twisted his hands around an imaginary ball that was supposed to be a snowblower part. “It melts the snow. So you can blow it.”
“If it melted the snow, it would be water, and you’d end up making ice because if it’s cold enough to need the snowblower…” Grant waited for Austin to catch up.
“Don’t get mad at me for not knowing. Dad wouldn’t let me touch the snowblower growing up.”
“He didn’t let me touch it, either, but I know a ‘melt’ isn’t a snowblower part.”
Grant went into the garage to grab a shovel and passed by the dead snowblower.
He’d been so excited the year his dad brought it home, because he thought that meant the end of shoveling.
It did not. Tim was the only one allowed to use the blower, and he had a list of reasons the length of his arm for why Grant could shovel instead.
Grant got so good at shoveling that he started a little business clearing driveways around the neighborhood.
He wanted to call it Underwood Brothers Shoveling, but Austin didn’t want to work.
So he did it himself and made enough money to buy himself an Xbox. That he had to share with his siblings.
Austin had resumed shoveling and, as tempting as it was to let him keep doing it his way so Grant could laugh at his back injury later, he was being painfully inefficient.
“You’re doing that wrong.”
Austin stopped with his shovel hip high and laden with snow. “Oh really? Pray tell, wise sir, how I should be doing something as simple as shoveling snow? You got any hot tips for walking and chewing gum at the same time, too?”
Grant held up the blade of his own shovel. “See how this looks like a plow?”
Austin rolled his eyes, exasperated. “I don’t need a lesson on the history of the shovel. Show me or shut up.”
“You don’t lift the snow and walk it to the side. You push, then lift.” Grant pointed to the neglected portion of the driveway they were supposed to be working on. “Clear a strip down the center, then start pushing in sections. It’s faster, and you won’t throw out your fucking back.”
Austin looked at the snow in his shovel. “Where the hell were you twenty minutes ago?”
“You’ve been at this for twenty minutes?!” Grant’s voice pitched high with disbelief.
“It doesn’t snow where I live!”
“You grew up in Wisconsin. Where it snows!”
Grant showed Austin the technique he’d described and was relieved his brother was a visual learner. They cleared snow in almost companionable silence, but Grant’s eyes kept straying to Ivy’s house.
Was she home? Had she stayed up all night examining every facet of their fight under a mental microscope, too?
Grant recognized that he’d probably overreacted, but hearing that she’d been hanging out with Austin all day instead of even sending him a good morning text had rocketed him straight back to being nineteen again.
Maybe he would have handled it better if he hadn’t had a shitty day before she showed up.
It started with spilling coffee all over his kitchen counter, which he should have taken as a sign to get back in bed.
The wrong cabinet pulls had been delivered and installed on a job that was already delayed and it was, according to Tim Weaver, Grant’s fault.
Tony’s truck had a flat tire and Piper had dented Grant’s bumper backing into a brick mailbox.
And then he realized that he’d left his lunch on the counter because he’d been cleaning up the spill, so he ordered Jerry’s to go.
Except when he got back to the jobsite, it wasn’t his sandwich in the box but a dry, sad salad.
And the entire time he wanted to text Ivy, but he didn’t want to be clingy, and then when he finally broke down and texted her, she didn’t respond.
Because she was hanging out with Austin.
“So what did you do yesterday?” Grant asked, keeping his eyes on his own shovel to seem casual.
“Woke up, did yoga, worked out, took a shower, helped Ivy go through her parents’ storage room.
We went and got wings at Curly’s, and when the gang showed up, Ivy went home.
” Austin pitched a shovel of snow into the yard, then leaned backward to stretch his back.
“I kind of feel like I fucked up. We went on a date, it went so-so, I begged for a second chance, then told her I wasn’t in a place to be dating anyone.
Then we hung out yesterday and it turns out she’s so easy to talk to.
Not to mention, I kept staring at her ass when she’d bend over because—and I’m not sure how I never realized this before—she’s got a great ass.
Would I be an asshole if I flip-flopped again and told her I changed my mind about going on a second date? ”
“Yes,” Grant answered quickly. He could feel the conversation he’d been avoiding speeding toward him like a runaway train. Talking to his brother about personal stuff was as alluring as shoveling this whole driveway with his dick.
Austin shrugged. “Yeah, probably. Maybe she’d be open to fucking while we’re both here.”
A stronger man would have used his words and told his brother to be respectful, but when it came to Ivy, Grant was weak.
He lunged for Austin, his shoulder colliding with his brother’s midsection, and wrapped his arms around his waist. It was a clean tackle and they fell into the snow.
The miscalculation Grant made, though, was that his brother wasn’t little anymore.
They hadn’t wrestled in about fifteen years.
In that time, Austin had moved to Hollywood and procured a job that required him to have swollen biceps and washboard abs.
Grant couldn’t shove his brother’s face in the snow anymore when he was being a dickhead.
They rolled around in the snow, elbows and knees connecting with soft body parts as they each struggled for the upper hand.
“Not the face!” Austin shrieked when Grant’s elbow grazed his nose.
They continued to tussle, their bodies gathering snow as they tumbled through the yard.
“What the hell—I said not the face!—is your problem?”
Grant gripped the collar of Austin’s jacket tightly in his fist and shouted directly in his face, “Don’t fucking talk about her like that!”
“Why the fuck do you care so much?” Austin shouted back.
“Because I love her!”
The words shocked them both so much that they froze and stared at each other, Austin on his back and Grant on top of him, poised with a fistful of snow he was more than ready to shove down the collar of his brother’s shirt. Comprehension dawned on Austin’s face and he relaxed.
“Well, shit.”
A car door slammed down by the curb, and they both looked toward the street. Lorelai walked around the front of her minivan, glaring at them the entire time.
“What the hell is wrong with the two of you?” she stage-hissed loud enough for the whole block to hear.
The sliding door of the minivan rolled open and Gemma hopped out. Her straight black hair was French braided so she looked like the young version of Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters. Lorelai helped her put on her bulky winter jacket.
“Mama, what awe Uncle Austin and Uncle Gwant doing?”
“They’re playing,” Lorelai lied sweetly.
Gemma’s face lit up with joy. “Can I play?”
“Go inside and say hi to Nana first,” Lorelai deflected with practiced ease. “I bet she wants to make cookies and hot chocolate with you.”
Distracted by the promise of sugar, Gemma raced inside without a second glance at the snow-encrusted brothers.
Lorelai put her hands on her hips. When she was the elite parental combination of mad and disappointed, she looked exactly like their mother.
“Great example, guys. Top-tier.”
“He started it!” Austin shouted. Grant shoved the handful of snow that had been melting between his fingers down Austin’s shirt in retaliation. Austin yelped.
Lorelai shouldered Gemma’s Bluey backpack and her own tote-size purse and started for the house, but paused at the section of walkway closest to her brothers.
“What is this about?” she asked.
Austin pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Did you know Grant is in love with Ivy?”
“Yeah, no shit. Where have you been?”
“How was I supposed to know?” Austin protested, gesturing wildly with one hand.
“By paying attention for once.” She continued up the porch steps.
“Gemma’s going to want to build a snowman later.
I brought some charcoal briquettes for the eyes because she’s obsessed with them being coal, but if either one of you fuckwits lets her put her fingers in her mouth after she’s touched them, I’ll let Jodie kill you. ”
Grant got off Austin and sat next to him in the snow. They both flinched when Lorelai shut the door roughly behind her.
“So, you love her, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told her that?”
Grant shook his head, creating his own personal flurry.
“Does she know you have feelings for her?”
Grant frowned. “Yes. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because you have the emotional transparency of a brick wall.” Austin brushed snow off his jacket. “How long have you felt this way?”
Grant sighed. He was freezing, wet, and having an emotionally revealing conversation with his brother in broad daylight. This was his frozen hell.
“Since the summer we worked together at the movie theater.”
Austin nodded sagely, then grinned. “Is that why she never came home? You told her you loved her and she ran away?”
It was tempting to shove Austin’s smug face into the snow, but since he’d already started sharing, he might as well finish.
“No, she actually told me she had feelings for you and I…did not handle that with grace and maturity.” His hand ached along the healed cracks of his bones.
“Did you pull a Dad and yell at her?” Austin asked gleefully, because he could see where this story was headed and schadenfreude was universally prized among siblings.
“Shut up,” Grant mumbled.
A car pulled into the Weavers’ driveway, and Ivy and her dad got out. Ivy barely looked at them before taking a bag of groceries from the trunk and going inside. Paul gave them a jaunty wave and a wide smile.
“Having fun, boys?”
“Hi, Mr. Weaver,” they said in semi-embarrassed unison.
“Whose van is that?”
“Lorelai’s,” Grant answered. “She just got here with Gemma.”
“You know, I need to check with Sophie, but I think we have some of Ivy’s old dresses and things we wanted to pass along for Gemma.”
“I’m sure she’d love that, Mr. Weaver,” Grant said.
Paul took the remaining grocery bags and went inside his house. The second the door closed, Austin started laughing.
“What is so funny?”
“I don’t know what you did, but that was a cold shoulder.” Austin cackled.
“How do you know she wasn’t giving you the cold shoulder?” Grant snapped.
“Because Ivy and I have reached a point in our relationship—friendship—where she feels comfortable calling me out on my shit in real time. For instance, she texted me this morning to ask if I got home safe from Curly’s and to say she hoped I had a wicked hangover.
” Austin bumped his shoulder against Grant’s. “So what did you do?”
“I got jealous you were hanging out with her,” Grant mumbled.
“What was that?”
“I’m a jealous asshole!” Grant shouted, arms flying up in exasperation.
“Did you fuck up your apology, too?”
Grant pursed his lips and sighed. “I haven’t apologized yet.”
Austin let out a low whistle. “Okay then.” He hopped to his feet and held out a hand to help Grant up. “That might work in our favor, because it means you can grovel. How did she leave things?”
Grant took his brother’s hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. “She said not to talk to her until I figured out exactly how far up my ass my head was.”
“Well, fuck. We’re going to have to get one of those deep-sea sonar things they used to find the Titanic.”
“This is why I don’t ask you for help.”
“Wait! No!” Austin pleaded. “I didn’t know you were asking for help. I can do this right, I promise.”
Grant eyed his brother skeptically while he shook snow out of his coat. “What experience do you have groveling?”
Austin swept his hands up and down his body, gesturing at the whole of him. “I’m apologizing all the time, because I am a little dense. I am a master apologizer.”
“Okay, Master Apologizer, how do I fix this?”
Austin grinned in a way that made Grant nervous.
“With radical honesty and a grand romantic ges—” Austin shot into the air like someone had lit him on fire. “Shit! Snow down my crack! Snow down my crack! Ah! By the balls! Cold nuts, cold nuts!”
Grant started to laugh, and the sound grew and grew as Austin jumped and wiggled, trying to get the snow out of his pants and away from his undercarriage.
Before long, Grant had his hands on his knees and was gasping for breath, then he lost his balance and toppled onto his side in the flattened snow.
That only made him laugh harder. He laughed until his stomach ached and his eyes were filled with tears.
And then while he tried to take a breath, he heard Austin laughing, too.
When was the last time they’d laughed together?
Really laughed. Not at a movie, or a show, or at the other’s expense, but because something funny had happened and they’d experienced it together?
He couldn’t remember. But just like the scene from Mary Poppins where the characters get stuck floating near the ceiling when they can’t stop laughing, the solution to uncontrollable mirth was to think of something a little bit sad.
“Hey, Austin?”
“Yeah?” he panted.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t been a very good brother.”
A soft smile lifted the corners of Austin’s mouth. “It’s fine. I’m not a very good brother, either.”
Their dad’s truck rumbled into the driveway. Tim was clearly fuming when he got out.
“I said to shovel the driveway, not make snow angels.”
Austin raised a hand. “My bad. We’ll get it done.”
Tim rolled his eyes but went into the house without another word.
“See?” Austin said, hauling Grant to his feet for the second time. “Like I said—master apologizer.”