by L. D. Davis
“Last night was the ‘family’ dinner.” I sighed.
Kyle snorted. “Did you have to piss into a cup and give them a vile of blood?”
“And I gave them a snip of my hair.”
I told him about the brief visit to my mother’s house. When I got to the part about my cousins coming to the state for a week, I almost missed Kyle’s reaction. If I had blinked, I would have missed it for sure. He winced as if I had just lanced him with a wickedly sharp and long needle. It only lasted about two seconds, and if I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
Just like his casual use of her name, his reaction made me feel a little uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t quite explain. I didn’t ask him about it, though. Emmy was Kyle’s one memory that he didn’t want to necessarily remember.
“I guess I should go back to my desk and pretend to work for the next half hour,” I said, getting to my feet.
“And what are you going to do tomorrow?”
“About Grant? I’m going to pretend he’s not there.”
He gave me a look of doubt. “You sure about that?”
Speaking with an unshakeable confidence, I squared my shoulders and said, “Absolutely.”
I walked down the street with a bold stride. I was one hundred percent confident about my decision regarding Grant Alexander. I spent most of yesterday and all morning thinking of reasons why I shouldn’t follow through, but in the end, I came to the same conclusion. I had to put a stop to the early morning surprise coffee shop visits and take back some of my control.
I spotted him before he saw me. He was talking on his phone, awkwardly trying to write something down on a small notepad while holding the coffee and croissant that no doubt was purchased for me. By the time he put his phone and notepad away, I was almost upon him. I felt his eyes on me, but I didn’t look directly at him.
I took a step past him, and then I stopped.
I didn’t feel doubt about what I was doing, but I did feel anxiety. I harbored very hard feelings for Grant’s desertion of me all those years ago. I could not simply pretend that I had not been hurt or that the subsequent events that had followed never happened. To further complicate matters, we no longer knew each other. Under normal circumstances, I didn’t make friends easily. Letting Grant back into my life, even on a minor level, would be challenging.
The truth was…I was petrified.
I did the best I could to hide my emotions and turned to face him. I skipped the pussyfooting and spoke directly.
“How long have you been watching me?” I asked with conviction.
Grant skipped the pussyfooting as well. He didn’t blink, nor did his emotionless face portray any signs of surprise or discomposure as he passed me my breakfast. “About three weeks. How did you know?”
Kyle had been the one who’d put the notion in my head just before I walked out of his office the day before. He had stalked Emmy before pretending to stumble upon her in a bar the night their “relationship” began. He had stalked Lily when she started working for him and he started having feelings for her. In his book, stalking equaled caring.
“Just remember,” Kyle had said distractedly as I stood in the open door to his office. “There are rarely actual coincidences in real life. It probably won’t be the last time you see him.”
I knew he was most likely right. I was convinced that Grant had not just bumped into me, and there was no use in pretending otherwise.
“Philly is the fifth largest city in the United States,” I said to him. “It’s the third largest city on the east coast. You don’t just run into someone you haven’t seen for thirteen years in a city of over one and a half million people.”
“It’s possible.”
“Possible, but unlikely. Why did you pretend that the other day was the first day you saw me?”
Gently, he took my elbow and gestured for us to walk. I pulled my arm away from him but walked beside him as I waited for his response.
“I didn’t pretend,” he said. “I just didn’t advertise the fact that I had been watching you.”
“You lied. You said you had been thinking about me since the first time you saw me in the coffee shop.”
“I did not lie. I had been thinking about you since the first time I saw you in the coffee shop. I just didn’t mention when that was.”
I could have picked that apart and made it clear that lying by omission was still lying, but that would take us off track. There were still answers that I wanted before we had to part ways.
“How did you know I would be at that coffee shop when you first saw me?”
“I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I had your address and your place of employment. It took me a couple weeks to figure out your morning route.” He looked down at me curiously. “You don’t take the same route to go home.”
My skin crawled with the knowledge that someone had been following me without my knowledge for weeks. He knew what time I left for work, the path my feet took to get me there, where I stopped for breakfast, and even what I ordered. He knew that I walked home a different way, though I doubted that he knew why I did that…
I wouldn’t have been surprised if he knew about my Tuesday night meetings with Kyle, and the takeout places I ordered from. If Grant could do it, anyone could do it. Who else could be following me around as I walked about oblivious and stupid?
“Why did you do all that?” I asked angrily. “Why not just call me or send me a letter? My email is on the company website. You could have sent me an email. Why go through all that trouble and do something so creepy and psychotic?”
Distracted by our conversation and my emotions, I started to step into the street without looking. Grant reacted quickly, binding his arms around my waist and pulling me back onto the curb just as a car entered the space I had been occupying only two seconds before.
I had been surprised, but not frightened by the possibility of death by car. There were worse ways to die, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t died before. The irregular beating of my heart had nothing to do with my near folly, and everything to do with the man whose arms were still tight around me, pressing my back into his body.
He let out a heavy breath before bending slightly to whisper into my ear.
“I really want to get you to work in one piece, Baby Girl.”
I shivered—not just a little bit, no. It was a full body shiver that left me slightly breathless. I was angry that he had that effect on me after so much elapsed time, but what made matters worse was that I knew he had felt it. My suspicions were confirmed when he chuckled softly just before releasing me.
“Do not call me that,” I snapped.
Then, with as much dignity as I could muster, I safely crossed the street without waiting to see if he followed. Of course, he did, but we didn’t speak again until we were standing in front of Sterling Corp.
“You didn’t spill any of your coffee, did you?” he asked, looking at the cup still clutched in my hand.
“Not very much, no.” I checked my watch, noting I only had a few minutes to spare before I’d run into The Mommies.
Seeing my impatience grow, Grant cleared his throat and finished explaining himself. All his earlier humor was gone and was replaced with a quiet solemnity.
“I have looked you up many times over the years,” he admitted. “After a while, I was able to do it without feeling anything. It was you, but it was just you on paper. You can’t really know a person like that. It’s impossible for me to know that you drop all your spare change into the same homeless guy’s cup every morning before you leave your block. It’s impossible for me to know that you avoid walking on the grates in the sidewalk so that your heels don’t get stuck. I can’t know that you order a coffee and chocolate croissant every morning or the satisfied look on your face when you step out of the coffee shop. Looking at plain facts on paper, I can’t see you.”
He looked away briefly as he gathered his thoughts, but I couldn’t stop staring at him.
I knew the minutes were ticking away, but I wanted to hear what else he had to say. I could not possibly move on my own before hearing it all.
Finally, he turned back to me.
“After I moved back to the east coast, I waited until I was settled to look you up again. By that time, you had moved out of New Jersey and into the city. When I saw that you didn’t live too far from me, I started looking for your face in every crowd. I began to imagine scenarios where I’d bump into you on the street. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. The Sterling building isn’t too far away from my place, and I have to walk in the general direction of your apartment to get to work. But you’re right; we could have gone on that way forever and never run into each other in a city this size.”
“But you sought me out,” I said impatiently. “You’re killing me here, Grant. I’m riveted by your heartfelt story, I truly am, but there are only so many hours in the day. I don’t know what you do for a living or where you work because I didn’t stalk you, you see, but I have to get into this building.” I pointed to the skyscraper. “You’ve totally disrupted my entire schedule over the past few days. I would like to get inside my office, avoid the clusterfuck of mommies that want to show me pictures and videos of their snot-nosed children, and enjoy my croissant and hot coffee. So, can you please just tell me why you shadowed me for three weeks like a fruitcake before revealing yourself so dramatically?”
Grant laughed hard. It was one of those laughs that started belly deep and left a person trying to catch their breath. I didn’t see what was so damn funny, but I had to clamp down on the fleshy inside of my bottom lip to keep myself from smiling. The sight and sound were so familiar and comfortable, but I had to remember that as familiar as it was, things were different.
We were different.
Straightening my back, I gave him a reproachful look and started to walk away, but he caught my arm and gently pulled me back.
“Okay,” he said, as his laughter faded. He licked his lips and I reflexively licked mine, which drew his eyes to my mouth. When he met my eyes again, his laughter had gone entirely, though his eyes were still bright with mirth. They also burned with I could only categorize as desire.
My heart thumped out of tune for several beats, taking my voice and breath with it. When I found myself able to breathe and speak again, I tried to look solemn.
“Okay what?” I demanded. “Get on with it.”
“I only meant to see you once and to be done,” he finally confessed. “But once wasn’t enough. I couldn’t stop after that.”
We were already standing very close, but Grant moved so much closer. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, and smell that scent that was so…him.
“When I called your name outside the coffee shop, I only meant to talk to you that once and to be done,” he murmured. “But once wasn’t enough. I couldn’t stop.”
Breathing regularly was so overrated. I struggled to take in a breath so I could ask my next question.
“What if I would have kept on walking today?”
I was proud that my voice was still steady and unwavering, even though the rest of me trembled slightly.
“The fact is that you didn’t keep walking.” He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “And now I can’t stop.”
He lingered for a few seconds, and then he was gone.
I let out a loud breath and turned to watch him go.
When I turned back around, I almost walked right into Kyle. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at me with a rare grin. It was an attractive and playful grin that sometimes made me mildly empathetic to both Emmy’s and Lily’s tenderness for the guy, but I wasn’t feeling that empathy just then.
I didn’t know how much he saw between Grant and me, but he had evidently seen enough to know that I didn’t do what I told him I was going to do. He most likely had even seen my dithering response to the man.
“Stop grinning at me,” I snapped.
He held his hands up in defense but didn’t stop smiling. In fact, the smile grew wider and more amused.
“You know what, Kyle? Why don’t you tie a couple of cement blocks to your feet and go jump into the river?”
“I’m sorry, but,” he started, though he was clearly unapologetic, “I can’t stop.”
Chapter Seven
“Emily thinks my nipples are chew toys for her two new teeth,” Donya said.
“That’s nothing,” Emmy cut in. “Gracie has significantly more teeth and she thinks it’s hilarious when I screech after she bites me.”
Not to be outdone, my cousin Tabitha said, “I never had a problem with Len and Adri, but with Nicolo, breastfeeding hurts. Neither of us can just enjoy mommy-baby time because I can’t wait to unlatch the kid.”
That was met by sympathetic noises and comments by the other mommies. I wanted to throw myself out of a window.
I interrupted my cousins, staring at my phone with disgust. “I thought we were supposed to be talking about our beach vacation. I really don’t need to know about anyone else’s nipples but my own.”
“When you have kids of your own, you’ll understand,” Tabitha said with a soft chuckle.
“My vagina—with the exception of a few days a month—is an entrance and not an exit. I don’t want anything growing inside me like some tumor and I don’t want aching, chewed up nipples. Can we please move on with the planning before one of your offsprings wakes up?”
It took a couple more minutes for them to pull it together. Then we were able to carry on with planning, but I was beginning to have some regrets. I truly loved my cousins’ kids, but I’d be the only childless, single person in our group.
Emmy and her husband, Luke, had three children. Donya and Emmet, Emmy’s older brother, had four kids—one each from previous marriages and two they spawned together. Tabby and her husband, Leo, had three children. The last time I visited them in Miami, Leo had told me that he planned to keep his wife barefoot and pregnant. How barbaric!
Emmy, Donya, and Tabitha must have had a pregnancy pact because each of them popped out a baby three months apart. Emmy’s baby was first, followed by Donya, and then Tabitha. Even Tack, who is Tabby’s brother, had a child only a couple months older than baby Nic. I was convinced that breeding was contagious, which made me happy that I was not in a position to procreate.
I was happy for my cousins, although I didn’t see why anyone would want to have more than one kid. They were often like The Mommies in the office. Emmy and Tabitha were convinced that I’d be a happier person if I only settled down with a guy and had a kid.
“When Nina got pregnant, Tack’s whole life changed,” Tabitha always pointed out. “He’s been happy and healthy ever since.”
“When I was younger, I didn’t think I was mommy and wife material, either,” Emmy often shared. “But I wasn’t giving myself enough credit. I love being a mom, even when they’re driving me up a wall, and I love being married to Luke, even when he’s driving me up a wall.”
Donya was the only one who never pushed me. She had settled down with a seemingly perfect guy and had a kid, but her fairytale had an unexpected and violent ending for her and her daughter. Emmet later adopted Rosa, and Donya had become a very happy woman. She believed me when I said that I didn’t want to have children. She hadn’t believed her ex when he had said it, not until it was too late.
I knew Donya wouldn’t harass me while we were on vacation, but Emmy and Tabitha would more than likely drive me a little insane, but not nearly as much as Emmy’s mom, Sam. She called me often to ask if I’d found a man yet.
“Your vagina was meant to be used,” she told me once in her southern lilt. “Sex toys and self-manipulation don’t count. It should be used by a husband, but at this point, honey, even just a friend with benefits would benefit you.”
I had responded with, “Does he have to be my husband, or can he be someone else’s?”
She had hung up on me.
Since I had no man and my v
agina was not in use, I had to share one of the bedrooms at the shore house with three little girls. The youngest still wore diapers. I was so not thrilled. All the parents had to share a room with their youngest children, but they were all babies and would be sleeping in a crib or some kind of contraption. The chances of them kicking and peeing all over their parents wasn’t very high. The adults would feel free to copulate once those children were asleep, whereas I would not be free for even self-manipulation with three kids in my bed.
As we nailed out the details about who’d sleep where, I wondered how everyone would react if I showed up with Grant. Their shock would probably only last for about three seconds before they started planning a wedding and telling me I had good hips for breeding.
At the thought of Grant, my mind wandered away from the conversation entirely. I was only vaguely aware of my cousins’ voices over the line.
He had called me on my office phone yesterday afternoon. Obviously, he knew where I worked, but I was still surprised to hear his voice.
After I had recovered, though, I felt rather grouchy. “You’re calling me at work now?”
“Yes, now that we have an open line of communication.” His tone had seemed casual and unhurried as if stalking me and calling me at work were everyday occurrences. “Listen, I have to work early tomorrow, so I won’t be able to see you in the morning. Let’s have lunch Saturday.”
My nose wrinkled. “Why?”
“Because I want to see you and talk to you.”
“You can see me and speak to me Monday morning, can’t you?” Then. I’d hastily added, “Not that I’m encouraging you to screw up my day again.”
He’d laughed lightly, grudgingly causing me to smile a little bit.
“You have already proven to me today that you can’t walk and talk at the same time,” he’d teased. “I want to talk to you without rushing, in a setting where you are very unlikely to get hit by a car.”