Davis

Grace’s fingernails rake across my shoulders as I plunge deep again. I search her face for signs she’s close, but she tells me with words instead.

“Almost there.”

Her panted words are paired with her beautiful tits bouncing as I continue working us closer and closer to bliss.

“Yes,” she hisses, clutching me tightly with her thighs and clawing at my back. Then I’m rewarded with my name, again and again—“Davis, oh God. Oh, Davis. Yes!”—as I follow her into oblivion.

In the middle of catching my breath, I kiss her neck, breathing her in and still connected where it counts.

“Worth the Ferris wheel,” I joke.

Her rich-as-chocolate-mousse laughter coats the room. “You’re too much.”

So are you.

I don’t say it out loud because there’s some truth there I’m not sure I want to acknowledge. I’ve arrived at a conclusion about Grace and me. It’s against my better judgment and sense of self-preservation, but I’m telling her tonight.

“Are you staying?” I pace to the bathroom to toss the condom. I check my reflection to find scratch marks down my back and grin. Is there anything better than a sex injury?

“Do you want me to stay?”

I poke my head around the corner of the en suite to find Grace draped on my charcoal gray sheets, her curves still tempting, though I sampled each and every one of them.

“Do you want to stay?” I lob back.

She smiles, tugs the sheet over her breasts—bummer—and nods. “I guess. I wasn’t sure if we were picking up where we left off before California or…”

When she doesn’t finish her thought, I go to her and sit on the edge of the bed.

“What would my going to California have changed?” I’m honestly curious.

“Distance can make things clearer,” she answers cryptically.

Distance made things clearer for me, but not in the way she’s implying. I push a rogue curl out of her eye—the one I’m going to nickname “Jyn” after the character from the new Star Wars movie. Such a rebel.

Another thought occurs, and it’s not a good one.

“What became clear to you, Gracie?”

I can take it. Even if she wants to back off—I can take it. Hanna didn’t clue me in at all, which left me eager to know the score sooner rather than later.

“Wasn’t that obvious when you surprised me at the bar?” Grace asks.

I think back to catching her against me in a hug—her arms choking my neck.

“You’re wondering where I stand,” I say.

She nods, uncertain. It’s cute that she’s uncertain, but only because I can ease her worries.

“I was going to invite you out with me Wednesday. If you’re free?”

“Wednesday is my day off,” she says. “What’s the occasion?”

This is a big step. Huge. I won’t be deterred from what I decided in San Francisco.

“It’s my grandmother’s eighty-fourth birthday. She lives south of Dayton, so I figured we could go hang out with her during the day and then get a nice hotel for overnight. I’ll have you home in time for your Thursday shift at noon.”

Her mouth drops open. “You know my schedule.”

“Dax told me.”

Her shock fades to hesitation. Meeting the family is a big ask. Then Grace does that thing where she surprises me—though I shouldn’t be surprised by her responses any longer.

“I’d love to meet your grandmother—especially if she’s the one who raised you.”

“One and the same,” I say, thinking, She’s going to love you.

“I hope she has a few old photo albums with pictures of you with buckteeth and bad haircuts.”

“Oh, she has those.” I slide into bed next to Grace. “She’s as sharp as a Ginsu knife too, so she’ll probably regale you with several unflattering stories about me.”

“Now I’m excited,” Grace says with a husky giggle.

“Yeah.” I give her a kiss. “So am I.”

Wednesday comes and Grace and I make the two-hour drive to the small town of Mysticburg. My grandmother raised me here until she peaced out when I turned nineteen. First she moved into a really cool condo, and then as her health started becoming a challenge and she needed more constant care, she moved to an assisted-living facility.

She’s as sharp as I promised Grace she is. I always suspected Grandma Rose moved to that tiny condo to force me out on my own. She didn’t want me beholden to her.

I am. But not in the way she thinks. I don’t feel obligated or inconvenienced by her. It’s an honor to help pay for her care. I’ve been doing her finances and making sure she has what she needs since I was twenty-one and beginning to excel in my field. She argued at first, but I was as clear about my wishes as she was about hers. I wanted to help. She honored me by allowing me to help.

“Facility” is a cold word for where Grandma Rose lives. The manicured grounds, even in the midst of autumn’s shedding leaves, are immaculate. The burnt auburn, golden yellow, russet brown, and even the festive orange of the porch pumpkins are movie-set perfect.

Black and orange balloons are tied around one of the porch’s columns, a Mylar skull-printed one reading: HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

I pull my grandmother’s wrapped gift from the backseat. From a shopping bag I remove a headband with red sequined devil horns and hand it to Grace.

“What?” She laughs as she puts it on, the horns poking up from her red hair. Just as devilish as I imagined her. My headgear is classic—the arrow-through-the-head bit that Steve Martin used to do onstage. Grandma loves him.

“You look ridiculous.” Grace is still laughing.

“That’s the idea.” I take her hand and walk with her to the porch. “Not only is her party on Halloween,” I tell Grace. “Halloween is her actual birthday.”

“Your grandma has a Halloween birthday. I’m so jealous!”

“It suits her,” I say as we enter.

The place is modern and clean, the nursing staff friendly and smiley, but there’s no escaping that beef-broth scent of an old folks’ home. The good news is that this place is only for the firm of mind. I’m glad Grandma Rose isn’t suffering from memory loss.

In the common room, a Bose speaker pipes “Monster Mash” into the air, and a few couples sway and shake their hips as much as Mother Nature allows. My grandmother is among them. I smile the moment I spot her.

“Which one is she?” Grace leans in to whisper.

“The one wearing a halo.” A white pipe-cleaner ring attached to a headband pokes out of my grandmother’s short, white hair. “Don’t buy that lie for a second.”

Before I can issue more of a warning than that, my grandmother throws both arms into the air, nearly opening the white silky bathrobe acting as her angel garb in the process.

“Davis!” She bursts through the crowd and one older gentleman wobbles dangerously before a nurse catches him by the arm and stands him upright.

“Breakin’ hips and takin’ names,” I say as I bend at the waist to envelop my diminutive grandmother in a hug. She doesn’t smell like beef soup. She smells like Chanel No. 5, the classy broad.

“Steve Martin,” she tuts, tapping the pointy end of the arrow headband I’m wearing.

“Rose Price, Davis’s grandmother.” She offers a hand—one tipped in orange and black manicured nails, and Grace shakes it. “I like those horns.”

“Thank you.” The wonderment on my girl’s face is priceless.

“Well? Introduce yourself!” Grandma Rose demands.

“Sorry. I’m Grace Buchanan.”

“Oh, sounds regal.” My grandmother tips her head in my direction. “What are you doing with this louse?”

Grace laughs, probably unsure how to respond.

“Be nice.” I hold up my grandmother’s gift. “Where does this go?”

“To my room!” she announces, arthritic finger pointing into the air.

“What about the party?” I ask as I follow her down the hallway. She may be eighty-four, but she moves fast.

“Eh, it’s dead in there. That’s a dangerous joke to tell in a place like this.” She winks over her shoulder at Grace but doesn’t stop her forward movement. “Said that at a party two weeks ago and I was right. Maybelline Wolf dropped dead on the spot.”

Grace covers her mouth, smothering a laugh that’s likely a combination of shock and amusement. I give her a quick lift of my eyebrows as if to say, I warned you.

She squeezes my hand in hers and we follow my grandmother into her room.

Grace

What a cool lady.

No kidding, just the coolest.

If I’m fortunate enough to reach my eighties, I hope to do so with the class, fortitude, and mindfulness of Rose Price.

Take right now, for instance. She’s bent over her new birthday gift—an Apple laptop with an extra-large screen—while Davis shows her the ins and outs of FaceTime. He’s talking to her from his phone about three feet away, which is adorable.

She’s scrawled a few notes on a pad of paper labeled “scratch pad” that features a cartoon drawing of a naked backside and a cat clawing its way down one of the thighs.

What a character.

Davis excuses himself to fetch us ladies a glass of punch, and Rose promptly rolls her desk chair to the bed where I’ve been sitting.

“Okay, gorgeous. Out with it. How hot is this relationship? You two are positively decadent together. I can only imagine how much heat there is in the bedroom.”

My mouth goes dry with shock. I hope Davis returns to save me soon. I’m not sure how to handle this much eye contact and genuine interest from someone older than me. My parents are infamous for their narcissism.

“Uh…” I say, but nothing follows it.

“What do you do for a living, dear?”

Much easier question. “I bartend.”

“Do you love it?”

“I love it,” I say.

“Good. You should spend as much of your life as possible doing what you love. Even if you have a family telling you not to because they want you to do something different.”

“You mean like a mother who wants me to be a lawyer?”

Rose pats my hand. She nods her head, the pipe-cleaner halo waving to and fro in her cotton-ball hairdo. “That’s exactly what I mean. Don’t do it.”

“No worries. My degree is in communications anyway.”

“What do you love about being behind the bar? I’ve never been much of a bargoer. I like my whiskey now and again, but I drink at home while watching Jeopardy!”

That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.

“I like people. I like interacting with them. Even the ones that are pains in the ass.”

Rose lets out a chortle. “That’s most of them, isn’t it?”

“Are you kidding me?” I banter back. “How do you think I met Davis? He sat at my bar and wouldn’t leave me alone. Nothing shocked me more than when he asked me out.”

“I’ll bet.” She studies me, her eyes trained on my hair.

“He’s not fond of redheads, I hear.” I remove my headband and fiddle with the sequined horns. She may as well know that I know.

“He was quite fond of a redhead at one time, but she did him wrong. She left a scar. A deep one.”

That’s one way of putting it.

“Almost as deep as when my Bartram died.”

“Your husband?” I guess.

She shakes her head. “My son. Davis’s father.”

“Right. I’m so sorry.”

“You know about him too?” Her white eyebrows lift into her whiter hair, her surprise evident.

“Davis told me about the accident, the coma, and his mother leaving. My dad’s…sick. I just found out.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Rose smiles—her warmth and tenderness reminiscent of her grandson’s. She takes my hand in both of hers. “Davis likes you, Grace Buchanan.”

“I like him too.” I beam, feeling special because being liked by Davis is singularly thrilling.

“Grace?”

“Yes, Grandma Rose?”

She lives up to her reputation and draws an amused laugh from me when she says, “Don’t fuck it up.”