20. Grant
Grant
I’m stuck in a long line at The Grind, as everyone in town seems to want their Saturday morning coffee at the same time.
I’m standing behind Annabelle, who hasn’t noticed me yet, since she’s too absorbed in the euchre game she’s playing on her phone.
I watch her lose a trick that should have been hers, costing her the game. She sighs and resets the program.
“I knew it,” I say. “You suck at euchre. Give me back my shirt.”
She turns and frowns at me. “I know how to play. I’m just reminding myself of the rules.”
“Everyone knows the rules. You learn them at your mama’s knee and keep playing your whole—” I stop myself when I remember the reason Annabelle’s in Echo Creek. She doesn’t have a mom. Or a dad. Or any family. I duck my head. “Sorry.”
“Next,” the teenage barista calls out.
Annabelle rattles off an order that sounds more like a magic spell than a drink. I order mine plain black. There’s one table left and we grab it.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I say. “When I brought up parents, I mean. I was just—”
“It’s okay. They died before I had memories of them.” Annabelle says it matter-of-factly, as if she’s talking about someone else. “Cancer doesn’t play favorites.”
“Is that how they died? Both of them?”
Annabelle nods, too quickly, too urgently. It doesn’t match her tone of voice. “About six months apart,” she says. “Lungs for my mom. Pancreas for my Dad.”
I turn my coffee cup around and around on the table. My God, this is horrible. The world shouldn’t be this cruel. Not to anyone.
Especially not to Annabelle.
She lifts the lid of her cup to reveal mounds of white foam. She frowns down at it. “In life? It happens. Bad luck. Bad timing. Maybe bad karma. Who knows?”
“You believe in karma?”
“Not really. But strange coincidences happen. Like your family with the holiday babies. That’s a good coincidence.” She lifts her head to look at me, her eyes dry. “I got the bad one.”
I stare at her across the table. Her soft features.
Her unbothered expression. The way she sips her sweet coffee.
I think about her goofy greeting cards and the way she instantly became the darling of Echo Creek, simply by being herself.
I marvel at the way she can be dealt such a shitty hand and still think the world is a kind place.
Her phone sits open on the table, the card game still in progress. I nudge it toward her. “You can put that away. I’m going to teach you everything I know about euchre.”
She tilts her head and gives me an amused smile. “Does that mean you don’t want your shirt back?”
“Oh, I still want it back.” Maybe. Truth is, I kind of liked how she looked in my shirt, even though she was only wearing it to mess with me, and my sister thought it was hilarious.
It wasn’t hilarious. It was hot. Lately, I’ve been having vivid fantasies of Annabelle wearing my t-shirt to sleep in, right after we have mind-blowing sex. The fantasies are of things I shouldn’t want and can’t have. They’re also persistent. I use every bit of willpower I have to squash them.
“I’m going to win my shirt back fair and square.” I drink some more coffee. “The day I let a troll beat me at euchre is the day I turn in my Yooper card.”