Chapter 19 #2
“She’s a little scared to be in front of all the people,” Gavin fills in. “Aren’t ya, Ads?”
Addie nods. “All the grown-ups.”
“But if you practice, you’ll have no problem,” I encourage. “Your Uncle Gav doesn’t know about that though. It’s why all his jokes are bad.”
Gavin plays the part of offended, and she laughs.
“That’s why I told her you’d help,” Mom says.
“You what?”
“You said yourself you’ve been bored.” I want to claw my mother’s smile right off her face. “It’ll be fun. And good practice should you want kids of your own someday.”
We have an entire conversation of narrowed eyes and mouthed swears.
“That’s . . .”
Addie and my mom both smile: Mom’s like a threat, Addie’s hope filled.
“Gavin probably has . . .”
I look at him, wondering what I’m supposed to do here and hoping he’ll say he already has a plan because mine is to fully avoid him. And this. I might be here to have a kid, but I don’t know how to be around one yet.
“. . . something.”
“Nope.” He shakes his head. To Addie: “We’d love Miss Reese’s help, wouldn’t we, Ads?”
She nods eagerly.
“Excuse us,” I say to Addie and Mom. I grab Gavin’s elbow and turn our backs to them. “What are you doing?”
“Agreeing with your mom,” he says. “If you want to help, I think it would be good for her.”
“Why?” The angle of his mouth when he’s starting to speak lets me know he’s about to tell a stupid joke. “No jokes. I’m serious.”
“You’re funny.”
I scoff. “That’s not a reason to invite me to help your niece chase her dreams. I don’t have kids. I don’t know how to help.”
He laughs. “Sure you do. You helped me when I was a kid. And seven-year-old Gavin would never forgive thirty-year-old Gavin for not taking advantage of you living next door.”
“I’m not living there,” I snap. “I’m visiting.”
He shrugs. “Living there today.”
I ignore the urge to lecture him on his today mindset.
“This is different,” I insist. “You were a kid who couldn’t read, she’s—” I cut myself off, unsure how to explain why this feels different. “I don’t know how.”
“Sure you do.”
“We aren’t dating,” I tell him, because I need us both to hear it. “If I say yes, you can’t keep doing”—I gesture to the length of him—“this.”
He laughs. “What’s this?”
“Being charming and young and all confusing in your muscly arms in your T-shirts and jeans and long looks. Just . . .” I huff out a frustrated breath. “We aren’t right for each other, and I decided last night I never wanted to see you again.”
“That why you asked me to keep helping at the vineyard?”
“That’s a business strategy, and I’m serious.
I’m here to help my mom and for work.” And a baby.
I swallow. “And now the vineyard.” I glance back at Addie, my toes tapping in my sandals.
I have no idea how to do any of this. Why I’m feeling so many things.
Why an eight-year-old girl is making me nervous, and her uncle is making me sweat.
“And I don’t want to make things more complicated. ”
“Here’s the problem,” he whispers, leaning in close. “I don’t know how to stop being charming.”
I slap his chest with the back of my hand, and he grunts. “I’m serious, Gavin. We can’t be whatever you’re thinking we can be. I’m going back to Chicago and you’re . . .” I let my thoughts jump around to all the words I’d use to describe him before shaking myself out of them. “No.”
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll shorten the looks.”
“Good.”
My gaze once again flicks to Addie—she’s so damn cute, yet I’m stricken with terror.
She and him and the whole potential mess of it.
How much I like being around them but how little control I have when I am.
This is exactly why I like keeping my idiotic feelings smothered—they’re disastrous. And unpredictable.
But also, she’s Amanda’s kid—what if I can’t help her?
Other than being around my nieces and nephew when I visit, I don’t know much about kids even though I’ll have one of my own less than a year from now.
A year. I rub my sternum. That’s a short timeline.
The Fizz Co deal might not even be done. I need kid practice.
This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard of. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Gavin echoes with a hitch of his lips. “But I can’t do anything about my muscles or clothes or age.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine.”
I’m mid-turn back toward Addie and Mom when he says, “And do your terms include thinking about you? Because I don’t know how to stop doing that either.”
My heart sputters to a near stop.
“And,” he continues, leaning in closer. Close enough I almost think I could dive right into his blue eyes and drown. “I’m not sure about the other thoughts either.”
I want him to shut up, so on a breath I say, “What other thoughts?”
“The ones where I imagine what you’ll say the next time I see you. Or—” He pauses, eyes searching mine. “That you drive me crazy, yet I can’t stay away from you. And that your mom having brain surgery feels like the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”
It’s the most morbidly romantic thing I’ve ever heard. “You need to stop that too.”
“Okay.” He rubs his jaw. “Then I’ll be sure to never tell you that I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out how I can be one of the people you let hug you.”
The world stops spinning right there. He is a foolish, foolish man to think we can ever be anything more than nothing, but damn if that line doesn’t make my heart take off on a hockey stick curve.
Gavin spins to face my mom and Addie, taking my breath right along with him. I must follow suit because when I blink, there they are. I wish he didn’t say that almost as much as I wish he would have written it down so I can reread it anytime I feel alone.
We’re close now, close enough his pinky brushes mine.
I hate that pinky so much I brush mine against his then say to Addie, “I’d love to help.”
She grins and charges me with a hug.
I do not look at Gavin nor wonder if this is the kind of hug he wants to give me.
“I’m still tacky,” Addie says, looking up at me with bright eyes and a joy that consumes her face.
Gavin chuckles. “It’s from Overboard.”
Right.
I take a step back, give my brain and body the space to think clearly, then we formulate a rehearsal plan.
Addie and I will work on the lines for the next few weeks—auditions are just over two weeks away.
She’ll go to Nancy’s after school like she always does, then I’ll take her back to Mom’s when I’m done working at the vineyard, and Gavin will get her when he’s done with work.
The play is in early December—I’ll be in Chicago by then. If I do a terrible job at helping her, at least I won’t be here to bear witness.
“That was a fun surprise,” Mom says, nonchalant as I fumble to unlock the front door.
My heart is in my throat and my temples and my toes. I don’t need to look at her to know what her face is doing. “Shut up, Mother.”
“I didn’t say anything,” she says in a singsong. “Just fun is all.”
An hour on my Peloton puts no distance between me and every word Gavin said.