Roll your eyes all you want, but I’m breaking the rules again. Have a good day. – Grant
I look at the card in my hand again and then back to the arrangement of dahlias that were just delivered to Blue Skies. It’s strange and sweet and crazy that he’s sending me flowers on the day of his interview. Shouldn’t it be me who is taking care of him today?
I smell them again. I want to be mad and say they’re ridiculous, but I find it hard to stop staring at them. My cheeks actually hurt from smiling, and I know by the side-glances Leo keeps giving me, he’s noticed.
“Did someone die?”
I look up to see Travis standing in the open doorway, ball cap in hand and eyes curious.
“Seems to me someone has taken a liking to Em,” Leo says.
“Humph.” Travis looks at the flowers again, then to the card in my hand, and then back to me with obvious curiosity. “When you get my age, you look at every flower like it’s waiting to adorn your casket . . . so don’t bring no flowers around me and jinx me.”
“I won’t.” I laugh. “I promise.”
“Well, you enjoy those then.” He nods and offers a smile before leaving the office.
Leo and I both watch him retreat across the tarmac to the Skies’ hangar. It takes a while at the pace he walks.
“What’s going on with the loan and the prick?” he asks as he rubs his hands together in mock anticipation of when I own this place. “It feels like it’s taking forever. When will you know?”
I blow the hairs that have fallen out of my ponytail away from my face and shrug. “Two, three more weeks? Your guess is as good as mine. We had to file an extension and get approval from the Skies family to do so because some paper had to be resubmitted or something like that. Honestly, I have this sick feeling that he’s holding out, thinking the more desperate I get to have this close and fund, the more willing I will be to sleep with him.” I roll my shoulders. “I’ll never be that desperate,” I say with a laugh as I look back down to the card in my hand and smile. “Thanks again for not telling Grant who the loan company was when he was in the other day.”
“It isn’t my business to tell.” He shrugs. “Although, I’d gladly watch him go all badass cop on the fucker, if for no other reason than to prevent him from doing it to someone else. I know you can handle yourself, but you’re a badass in your own right.”
I look at him for a beat, his words striking me. Here I stand, always a mix of uncertainty beneath the surface, and yet, Leo is telling me he sees anything but.
His words remind me of something my mom might say to me and it makes me smile at the thought.
“You know what, Leo?” I ask, turning the card over in my hand again.
“Huh?” he says without looking up from whatever he’s doing on his laptop.
“Can you cover my classes today?”
“Sure. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” My grin widens. “I’m going to take the day off.”
“You’re going to what?” He looks as if I just punched him.
“I’m going to take the day off,” I say as I grab my keys from my desk drawer.
“Take off or ‘take off’?” he asks considering I did just disappear for three days.
“Take off as in the afternoon. Life’s too short not to. I deserve it.”
“You do.” His laugh follows me all the way out of the office until I hit the stairs of my apartment.
I’m dialing my phone before I even take the first step up.
“Em?”
“Hey, wanna play hooky with me, Des? I need your help.”
There’s a chorus of barks in the background as she sputters. “Where is my friend and what have you done with her?”
“So, a week ago you were a wreck and now you’re a damn ray of sunshine. Let me guess, you found a great new sex toy that’s rocking your world and you haven’t told me about it yet? Hm? Or should I guess his name starts with G and ends in a T with a whole lotta hotness in between?”
“Shush,” I say as I laugh and lower my head as the elderly lady down the pasta aisle stares disapprovingly our way.
“She’ll get over it.” Desi waves a hand her way. “Well? The answer, please.”
“What if they are one in the same?”
“God. Damn.” She hoots throwing her arms up in a touchdown sign as we push the cart toward the end cap. “I knew he was packing. He is packing, right?”
“You’re perverted.”
“And there’s a problem with that why?”
“Because you’re supposed to be helping me shop for food, not getting me kicked out of the grocery store for offending the customers.”
“Sorry. Not sorry.” She shrugs unapologetically. “Grab that beef consommé there. We’ll use that with the roast.”
I follow her pointing finger and put the can into the cart. “You sure I’ll be able to cook this by myself?
She stares at me like a mother does a child. “Is that your way of asking me to come over and make it for you and then leave so you can pass it off as your own?”
“I’m not saying the idea hasn’t crossed my mind, but no. I want to do this for Grant on my own.”
“Okay. Now we need vegetables.” I scrunch my nose up in disgust. “It adds flavor. And while you may hate them, he may like them. He can’t have all those rippling muscles eating crappy food all the time.”
She grabs a plastic bag and begins putting some potatoes in it.
“So are you going to tell me why the sudden about face? I mean you went from running away from him, to struggling for control, to being a wreck last week, to being a giddy female when you’re not a giddy female. I’m getting whiplash here, Em . . . but hell, I’ll take it.”
I want to argue with her and tell her there hasn’t been a huge about face but realize she’s right. I’ve been all of the above.
“This isn’t like me, is it?” I ask but know I wouldn’t change it for the world because it feels liberating.
“No, it’s not.” She holds up a rather large cucumber and giggles like a schoolgirl when she wraps her fingers around it and strokes it.
“Put that down!” I glance around, mortified that someone might be watching her.
“Can’t blame a girl for liking a little girth.” She sets it down. “I like this new you, though. I like the smile that’s plastered on your face. I like the laugh on your lips. I love the confidence that’s back with a vengeance but is still different. Care to explain?”
“I just feel like things are falling into place,” I say over a mountain of apples.
“Okay.” She draws the word out to let me know I’m making zero sense.
“I’m feeling confident about getting approved for the loan. I went and spent some time with my mom when I was a wreck, and it kind of cleared my head and helped me focus. I let Grant break every single one of my rules and—”
“Every single one?” she asks, voice incredulous, eyes wide.
“Yep.” I flash her a huge grin.
“What prompted this?”
I contemplate how to answer her. While she knows I had a screwed-up past, she has no clue just how screwed up. I’ve let her assume what she wants to assume to avoid her putting a label on me like anyone else who has ever found out has. So, without giving her the correct context, there’s only one explanation I can give her that she’ll buy.
“You were right.”
She accidentally drops the onion in her hands onto the floor. “Excuse me? Did I hear you correctly?”
I nod and let her have her moment of glory. “I let him in, Des. Instead of pushing him away, I let him in.”
“You trust him,” she whispers as if she’s just unearthed the damn Rosetta Stone. She understands how huge this is for me.
“Yeah, I do.” It feels so good to say it. It feels even better to think back over the past two weeks and remember all of the laughter Grant and I have shared. Whether it be taking his nephew, Luke, to an extra innings baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Austin Aces, or strolling hand in hand at the mall while eating ice cream, or snuggling up next to him while he prepares for his oral interview while I try to make sense of the Blue Skies financials to see where I can cut and expand once it’s mine. Dare I say, we’ve felt normal?
And with the normal has come the cessation of more memories breaking through. It’s almost as if the more I fought them, the harder they tried to make themselves known, and then when I decided to own whatever ones came my way, they stopped.
“Earth to Emerson,” she says breaking through my own self-realization. “You were saying before you drifted off to thoughts of Grant and what he’s packing . . .”
I scramble to remember exactly what I was saying so I ad-hoc. “I’ve been so busy trying to hide who I was and Grant wouldn’t allow it. Instead he stepped in and told me that it didn’t matter who I was—what had made me who I was—because I was who mattered. The moment was what mattered. Not the past.” I groan and roll my eyes. “That’s not right . . . it’s hard to explain.”
“I think I get it.” She shrugs and laughs. “Basically, Grant is me, but with balls.”
I laugh so hard I snort. “Can we scrub that visual from my mind with bleach and finish getting the ingredients I need?” I glance at the time on my phone. “I need to make sure I have plenty of time in case I screw this meal up.”