My eyes widen. “Every?”
“Every,” he confirms. “It’s one of my favorite places. You’ll see why soon.”
He gets out of his truck, and while he’s walking around the front, he removes his blue ball cap and puts it back on backward.
He opens my door. I swivel on the seat and take his outstretched hand to help me down. His hand is rough around mine, blistered from lumber and tools.
“In case I forgot to tell you, you look amazing.”
“You’ve told me four times now,” I say with a laugh that lifts my lips into a wide grin.
“Only that many?” he teases. “That’s not nearly enough.”
He shuts the door behind me and then retrieves a red cooler and a blanket from the back seat.
I arch a brow. “What’s that?”
“A surprise,” he answers as he begins to walk toward the pond. “Coming?”
My boots follow his, treading through the wispy grass until we reach a clearing where the grasses are pressed firmly into the ground, well-worn from Sunday after Sunday of Grant being here.
He spreads the navy plaid blanket on the spot and then sits down, legs outstretched.
He looks at ease, his skin golden from the sun that’s beginning to slip down the sky toward the horizon. I study him for a moment, his T-shirt tugged tight at his biceps, arms marked with faint white scars, and green eyes brighter than shoots of new spring grass.
“What are you looking at?” His green eyes sprout faint lines around them as he smiles at me.
I settle down on the blanket beside him, pulling my legs up to my side. “The boy who was in my sister’s class. The one who drewbuilding plans and spent more time in woodshop than the football field. Quite the feat in Dusty Hollow.”
He laughs. “I was still on that field. If you don’t play football, you aren’t Texan.”
“Not true,” I say swiftly. “You just aren’t celebrated.”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It was high school.”
“Do you miss it?” I ask.
“No,” he answers quickly. “Do you?”
I purse my lips, gazing at the pond as it glitters. “Parts of it. Mainly the part where I was naïve to how the real world worked.”
“And how’s that?” he asks.
“As if it has a plan for you,” I say quietly. “And you just have to be patient enough to wait for it.”
Grant places his hand over mine on the blanket softly. “I don’t think God rushes much,” he says. “People do.”
Faith has been a thread in my life for as long as I can remember—sometimes woven through obedience and routine, other times knotted with pain and resentment. And there were seasons where God was the only thing that made sense at all.
“Well, I don’t like it,” I admit.
Grant grins. “I don’t think many do.”
“So, what’s in the cooler?” I ask, my gaze drifting to the surprise.
Grant takes his hand off mine as he pushes up to his knees, retrieving the cooler. He opens it up and starts taking out every color and kind of soda.
“I was only going to bring root beer for floats, but then I thought about the pepperoni, and I wondered if Sadie Summers even likes root beer or if she just drinks it because that’s what everyone else seems to like,” he says with a spark in his expression. “So I brought you every choice from the store.”
