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“I don’t think you’re boring,” I say. It probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but it’s the truth. This girl has me driving to Santa Cruz on a second’s notice, after all. She’s anything but boring.
My focus is on the road ahead as I switch lanes, but I feel Gracie’s eyes fixed on me. “Thank you, Weston,” she says with weight, and I become painfully aware of my pulse.
I don’t like the way my body tenses every time she says my name. I don’t like the way it makes me feel, because it makes me feelsomething.
“So last night with Luca .?.?.” I say, clearing my throat. “Are you okay?”
Gracie sits up a little, her demeanor shifting to the defensive. “What do you mean?”
“You said things were bad,” I remind her, recalling our fleeting phone conversation earlier this morning. I raise an eyebrow at her reaction and shoot her a look full of concern. “How bad? Because your face right now tells me that it wasreallybad.”
Gracie shakes her head, relaxing her tight expression. “We had an argument. I kicked him out.”
“Probably not a great idea to let your wasted ex back into your apartment in the first place.”
“I realized that a little too late,” she mumbles, right before she goes awfully quiet. She stares down at her sneakers, her hands together in her lap, and I know there’s more she isn’t telling me. She’s lost inside of her own head.
The silence stretches and stretches as I drive. I glance repeatedly between the road and Gracie. I watch the downturn of her mouth, her soft blinks, the way she twists her fingers together. I glance over at her one time too many before I finally build the courage to think,Fuck it.
I reach over the center console and take one of her hands in mine. Her skin is warm and, softly, she squeezes my hand back. We leave them fused together in her lap, and I don’t say anything at all. Neither does she. We don’t need to.
We head south out of San Francisco and it’s a route I’m all too familiar with. I took this freeway all the time to visit Charlotte in San Jose, but that’s not where I’m headed today. It’s not where I’ll be heading ever again, but in this exact moment, I feel okay with that. I wasn’t ready for Charlotte yet, and I don’t think that makes me a bad person. I still have so much time to figure things out.
Gracie angles further toward me. With her free hand, she touches my arm, tracing the linework of my tattoos as I drive. Her touch is so feathery and comforting, the hairs on my arm stand upright. She starts at the back of my hand, tracing every detail of the wolf I have tattooed there, then works her way slowly up the rest of my arm. She doesn’t miss a single spot.
And when I can’t take it anymore, I throw her a teasing smile and give her a sidelong look. “Yes, Gracie?”
“Sorry,” she says, blushing. Her hand pauses just above my elbow. “I never really looked at your tattoos properly before. What are these for?”
I glance down. She strokes the pair of dog tags I have inked there, one filled with the US flag, the other reading Peyton’s date of birth.
“My sister. She’s in the army,” I say.
Gracie’s fingers slide over my skin. “And the Air Force wings?”
“My brother.”
“This one is obvious, except it’s not.” She taps the SFPD police badge that’s on the back of my bicep, gesturing to the date of birth incorporated into the tattoo that is clearly too long ago to be mine.
“For my dad. He was a deputy chief before he retired.”
Gracie says, “Ahh.” Maybe it makes sense to her now, why I chose the career I did. Her hand travels further up my bicep, stopping on the tattoo that disappears beneath the sleeve of my T-shirt. She pulls my sleeve back to see the full picture. It’s a pair of hands cupped together, holding flowers. “And this?”
I swallow hard. “My mom.”
Gracie meets my gaze, intense and focused. She says, “Because teachers are nurturing.” It’s not a question. She knows exactly what that tattoo represents, and my smile tells her she’s right. “Your theme is family.”
“Yes,” I say, and I feel a little fuzzy inside.
She runs her hand back down my arm, over all of the other tattoos that relate to my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my niece. “I love that. What’s this one for, though?” She’s down to the back of my hand again, to the wolf.
I shrug as I fight my grin. “Oh, that one? I only got that because it looks sick.”
Gracie laughs now and relaxes back into her seat. Our hands are still tightly locked, and they remain like that all the way to Santa Cruz. She even catches my eye every once in a while, and my pulse quickens each and every time.
GRACIE
Weston isn’t massively familiar with Santa Cruz, so I guide him down the freeway to the correct exit and along the streets I rode my bike down when I was a kid. My childhood home is still the same house my mother lives in now, tucked down a quiet residential street in the Eastside. As much as I’ll always consider Santa Cruz home, I’ll never move back. I’m a San Francisco gal at heart.
