Page 94 of Love Felt Like This

That’s my one shot.

I don’t have time to consider the freaking Grammys.

But yet…

Yet yet yet…

Could I go to the Grammys?

What if I screw up? Say something wrong in an interview or fall down on the red carpet? What if Beau says something to someone? That I’m a star chaser. A user. A gold digger. Would the internet deep dive into it and assume he’s right? What evidence do I have that I’m not those things, other than knowing myself? Would Griffin believe any rumors?

Would it hurt my chances with Connection?

No. They don’t care. They just want a good children’s show. I’d have to kill a person for drama to matter. I hope.

I tongue my cheek. My knee bounces.

“Beverly?”

I come to, and Nana’s nodding toward the phone.

“Sorry. Yes, Finch?”

“Bevvy, I gotta go,” he says. I hear a door shutting. “I have to get the mail, and you know it takes me all day to trek to the end of my driveway.”

“You gotta watch those hips,” I joke. “Slip and fall and you won’t get up.”

“Exactly. Busy afternoon. Booked solid. But we’ll talk later.”

“Okay.”

“And relax.”

“No promises.”

We say our goodbyes—Nana telling another dark joke about hopefully seeing him in the afterlife one day—then I tap my phone to end the call.

With a heavy exhale, I lean back against the couch, stretching out my feet on the floor.

Nana pats my shoulder. “Such a lovely man.”

I smile and tease, “I like him well enough.”

We sit in companionable silence before she adds, “So…no Starlet, huh?”

I side-eye her. “You were eavesdropping?”

“Oh, impossible,” she says, waving a hand toward me. “I’m hard of hearing, remember?” She points to her hearing aid, and I roll my eyes with a smirk.

“You should take a break,” she says. “Go to the Grammys and forget about this for a bit.”

“I’m not going.”

Her eyes widen. “What? Why?”

“I don’t have time.”

“You have time,” she says with a scoff, as if that settles the matter, which it absolutely does not. “Be with a hot man for an evening.”