Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Piper
Here is what the last several days have looked like.
A roadside diner outside San Luis Obispo, where the coffee was burnt and the pie was not. We stayed for two hours, talking and laughing about everything and nothing at all.
We went to a night market in a town I’d never heard of, where I bought a pair of earrings from a woman who told my fortune without being asked and told Griffin he had unfinished business in a tone that made him stare at his beer for ten minutes.
Two more swimming spots—one planned, one not, one involving a slight miscommunication about how deep the drop from the rocks was, which I am choosing not to document in detail.
A car breakdown where Griffin did something confident and mechanical under the hood, while I contributed moral support and a granola bar.
A farmer’s market at six in the morning because we were up anyway, and it was there.
And a couple of amazing sunsets.
Gerald has been to all of these places. The penguin is accruing more life experiences than most domestic house pets.
We stopped making plans. It turns out that no plans are either hectic or perfect, depending on the day, and most days have been closer to perfect than I know what to do with.
Here is the other thing the last several days have looked like: Griffin.
Specifically, the ongoing and increasingly difficult project of not noticing Griffin.
I notice things constantly. I’ve been noticing things since the beach—the way he takes his coffee, the way he sits with his back to the wall like he’s performing a structural assessment of every room he enters.
The real laugh, the one I’ve been collecting and keeping safe.
The way his tattoos catch the light when he drives.
I’m nine days out of the relationship I was supposed to spend my life in. I have zero business noticing the way he wrung out his shirt after the beach and stood in the sun, and ugh, I’m getting more beer.
The bar is called Terry’s, I think. The motel is across the road. It’s a Monday night, the place is full, and the food is barbecue. All of it is excellent. I’ve been eating ribs until I can hardly move.
I have sauce on my face, but I don’t care. This is who I am now.
“You’ve got something—” Griffin starts, pointing at his mouth.
“I know. I don’t care.”
He looks at me for a second, then picks up a napkin and wipes the corner of my mouth.
I freeze for a beat before I finish the job, but my hand is shaky and I only succeed in smearing the sauce across my cheek.
“You’re making it worse,” he says, his voice lower than it was a minute ago.
He doesn’t wait for me to try again. Instead, he leans in, his other hand steadying my jaw, and uses a clean corner of the napkin to wipe the rest away. His thumb catches the edge of my lip for a second. It’s practical. It’s quick. It’s the most intense thing that has happened to me all year.
He pulls his hand away. “There you go.”
My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else when I mumble, “Thanks.”
We’re three beers in, which for me is sitting in the warm, pleasant place between relaxed and saying things I’ll regret later. Griffin, who is bigger and has more mass to metabolize these things, is probably where I was after one. We’re a good tipsy.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I say.
He considers it. “I learned to read music before I learned to read words.”
I put my drink down. “What?”
“My great-aunt played piano. She taught me note names before I started school.” He shrugs. “I have no memory of her face. I remember the piano and the way she’d put my fingers on the keys.”
My mouth falls open.
“I’m not musical,” he says quickly. “I can’t actually play anything. I just remember the notes. That’s all.”
“Griffin, I had no idea.”
“It’s a weird fact.”
My mouth curves. “It’s not a weird fact. It’s a beautiful fact.”
He picks up his beer. “Your turn.”
“I wanted to be a marine biologist until I was twelve.”
“What changed?”
“I watched a documentary about the deep ocean. The deep, deep ocean. The part with no light. I realized that the ocean is, in fact, terrifying at its core, and I’d been operating under a false sense of its benevolence this whole time.”
“So you gave up marine biology because the ocean is scary?”
“The deep ocean specifically. The surface ocean is fine. The surface ocean is a friend.”
“Hence the beach.”
“Hence the beach,” I agree as we clink our bottles together.
He’s smiling, which means I’m looking at his mouth and telling myself I’m not.
The band slips into another song. A few people near the back have started moving.
“Do you dance?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“I’ve seen you dance.” I click my fingers, trying to remember. “My parents’ anniversary thing. When I was seventeen. You danced with my mother.”
Something warm moves across his face. “That was a waltz. Betty made me learn. She said a man who can’t waltz is only half a man. It was an anxiety of hers that I never fully got to the bottom of.”
“She was ahead of her time. That’s a very progressive stance.”
“She’d be offended that you called it progressive.”
I rest my chin on my hand. “What else did she make you learn?”
“How to cook four things properly. How to iron a shirt, which I still do badly. How to write a handwritten letter, which is apparently a dying art.” He ticks them off.
“How to sit through a meal without checking my phone, how to apologize without caveats, and how to leave a room better than you found it.”
My eyes widen.
“What?”
“She was raising someone’s husband,” I say
He blinks.
“She was absolutely raising a husband,” I cut in before he can object. “She knew exactly what she was doing. The waltz, the letter-writing, no caveats in apologies.”
“She’d say she was raising a person.”
“She was raising a very specific kind of person.” I point at him. “A husband.”
Something happens on his face that I’m going to pretend I didn’t see.
The band changes songs. The opening acoustic notes of Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd begin to fill the bar.
I take a breath, the sound hitting me right in the center of my chest. “I love this song.”
My heart does a flip when I watch him get to his feet.
Oh God.
Moving around the table, he holds out his hand to me.
I look at his palm, then up at him. “What are you doing?”
“Come on, runaway.” He doesn’t look like he’s joking. “You never got a first dance.”
The air in my lungs feels thin. “Griffin, we’re in a barbecue joint on a Monday.”
“And there’s a band playing a song you love,” he counters. “Don’t overthink it, Pipes. It’s a dance.”
I look at his hand again and think of all the reasons I shouldn’t take it.
I come up with zero, so I rest my hand in his.
His grip is warm and firm as he guides me to the small, cleared space near the back where a few other couples sway.
He pulls me close enough that I can smell the cedar, the beer, and the man.
He places his hand on the small of my back as I rest mine on his shoulder, feeling the muscle move beneath his shirt.
The song is slow and haunting, and the room is full of people, but I feel like we’re the only two things in focus right now.
“She was raising a husband,” I repeat, leaning my head against his shoulder.
I feel him go still for a heartbeat. Then he rests his cheek against the top of my head.
“She was raising a person, Piper,” he says quietly.
The music carries us. Outside, the motel is waiting, and tomorrow, the road is waiting. But right now, there is just the guitar and the heat of his hand on my back, and for the first time in nine days, the noise in my head is gone.
I’m not fine. I’m something else entirely.