42. Grant
Grant
This is the right address. I fought through snarled traffic and confusing one-way streets to find the place where Annabelle is staying.
It’s a small ranch on Ann Arbor’s west side, across the street from an elementary school.
There’s a crack on the cement slab that serves as the front porch.
The door is painted dark green. Annabelle’s on the other side of that door. All I need to do is knock.
But before I can, the door flings open, and she’s there. All five foot two, blue-eyed wonderfulness of her. She’s changed her hair. It’s shorter and also brighter. Her expression is bright too, like she’s happy to see me, and my heart tries to flutter out of my chest. Maybe this will work.
This has to work.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “Are you…chasing me?”
“Hi neighbor,” I say, because I’m stupid like that.
She brings her hands to her mouth. “You are,” she says through her fingers. “I thought Grant Neverly doesn’t chase.”
“I can explain,” I say.
“Please do.”
She’s standing on the door’s threshold, a step above me, so we’re almost the same height, and she’s so beautiful it almost hurts to look at her.
“I’m really broken.” My throat is pinched and it’s hard to get the words out. “But I’ve finally broken…open.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Grant I know.” She touches a finger to my chest. “You’ve got things locked up pretty tight in there.”
“In my defense, I was deeply repressed.”
“You don’t say.”
“I’ve been closed off for a long time. So long that it felt normal to me. I told myself that love was bullshit because if it wasn’t real, then I couldn’t fail at it.”
Annabelle’s eyes are patient. She’s giving me space and daring me to fill it. I scrub a hand over my face and pace the small rectangle of porch. I practiced my speech all the way to Ann Arbor. I had six hours to rehearse it. But now that I’m here, I can’t remember a single word.
I stop in front of Annabelle. I don’t need a prepared speech. I only need to tell her what’s in my heart.
“You came to town,” I say. “And moved right in. To my building. To my life. To my heart. You didn’t even try. You were just yourself. And suddenly I felt…feelings. A lot of them. It scared the hell out of me.”
Annabelle shifts her feet. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
I take a step closer to her. “After you left, I took a turn in the rage room. For two hours. Which is apparently a medical emergency.”
She huffs out a breath. “I can imagine.”
“It was worse than you can imagine. Everyone showed up. Half the town was there. I thought they were there to make fun of me.”
“They would never,” Annabelle says quietly.
I swallow. “They were there because they love me.”
She swats my shoulder. “You’re just figuring that out now?”
I catch her hand. Hold it. She lets me. My heart soars. “I figured out more than that,” I say. “If people love me, then I deserve love. And if I’m lovable, then I can give love too. I can give it to you.”
Silence settles between us, thick and warm, like a blanket. At this moment, standing on this cracked porch in Ann Arbor, we’re the only two people in the world.
“I chased you across the state because I want to be with you. With feelings. And discussions. I want to make plans for our future.” I show her the paper bag I brought. “I have something for you.”
Her eyes dart to it. “If you’re about to hold speakers over your head while a love song plays, I swear to—”
“It’s not a love song.” I reach into the bag and lift out the tiered tray. The cracks are still there if you know where to look, but I like that. The once-broken parts aren’t erased. They’re honored.
Annabelle’s breath stalls. She starts to speak. Stops. Covers her mouth then lowers her hands. “You fixed my tray? But I smashed it.”
“I know.”
“I smashed it so hard. It was in pieces.”
“It was.”
“That must have taken forever,” she says.
“It was a project,” I admit. “I thought about you the whole time. How you loved that tray, but you broke it because you were hurting, and how I let you walk away with that hurt.”
Annabelle reaches out a single finger and brushes the edge of the top plate. Her gesture is familiar. I remember her art ritual, and the way she touches all her supplies. Her eyes are filling now, but they seem to be happy tears. She unzips her jacket and fans her face. “That is a love song.”
“True.”
“Put that down so I can kiss you properly.”
We draw closer, magnetic and inevitable.
Her lips brush mine, tentative at first. Her lips are an offering.
Or maybe a promise. The world dissolves in a haze of rose-tinted light and the scent of spring.
I’m utterly suspended, drowning in the sweet warmth of her mouth.
I want to linger, to memorize this fragile bridge between us.
When we part, the air between us shivers, as if the universe itself is waiting for us to decide what comes next. We’re still standing on the porch, still nearly the same height. She presses her forehead to mine. “You’re really here.”
“I want to be wherever you are.”
“Can we go home?”
“Home?” I love the sound of that.
She turns to shout into the house. “Kat?”
A tall woman with a messy bun appears behind her. “I take it you don’t need a ride?”
“Just my suitcase.” Annabelle pulls on the handle of her wheeled luggage.
I blink. “You’re already packed?”
“I was on my way to you.”
I take a step back and nearly fall off the porch. “And you let me go on and on? With the tiered tray? And the speech? You let me say all of that.”
“Why would I stop you? This is the best day of my life.”
I throw my head back and laugh. Okay, fair. I needed to tell her how I feel. She needed to hear it. She needed to believe me. She does. I know she does. I especially know it when I see what she’s wearing. “Is that my euchre shirt?”
Annabelle looks down at herself and takes a fistful of the fabric. It bunches up in her hand, covering the word euchre so now it says, world’s best partner.
“I love you, Annabelle.”
“And I love you, Grant.”
We kiss again for a very long time before she introduces me to Kat, who says I’d better take care of Annabelle or she’ll drive straight across the bridge and hunt me down. I promise to do everything in my power to make Annabelle happy. It’s the easiest promise I’ve ever made.
Annabelle holds up a finger for me to wait. I do. I’ll wait for her forever. But she taps out a quick message on her phone and then smiles at me. “Damn, that felt good.”
“What did?”
“Telling Ender to stick a cactus up his rectum.”
I put Annabelle’s suitcase in my truck and help her into the cab. She isn’t telling me what she’d planned on saying to me when she got back to Echo Creek, but I have six hours to get it out of her. No, better than that. I have the rest of our lives.
“My mom says to invite you to the next family dinner,” I say when we’re finally out of downtown traffic and merging onto the highway.
“I’ll brush up on my euchre.”
“It’s not about euchre. Well, it is, but it’s also because the whole family wants you there.”
“Told you this was the best day ever.” Annabelle’s hand is on my knee. Her voice is soft. The truck is filling with the fruity beach scent that always clings to her. It’s the scent of warmer days to come. The scent of new beginnings.