Page 51 of Never Your Valentine

Especially not to Annabelle.

She lifts the lid of her cup to reveal mounds of white foam. She frowns down at it. “In life? It happens. Bad luck. Bad timing. Maybe bad karma. Who knows?”

“You believe in karma?”

“Not really. But strange coincidences happen. Like your family with the holiday babies. That’s a good coincidence.” She lifts her head to look at me, her eyes dry. “I got the bad one.”

I stare at her across the table. Her soft features. Her unbothered expression. The way she sips her sweet coffee. I think about her goofy greeting cards and the way she instantly became the darling of Echo Creek, simply by being herself. I marvel at the way she can be dealt such a shitty hand and still think the world is a kind place.

Her phone sits open on the table, the card game still in progress. I nudge it toward her. “You can put that away. I’m going to teach you everything I know about euchre.”

She tilts her head and gives me an amused smile. “Does that mean you don’t want your shirt back?”

“Oh, I still want it back.” Maybe. Truth is, I kind of liked how she looked in my shirt, even though she was only wearing it to mess with me, and my sister thought it was hilarious.

It wasn’t hilarious. It was hot. Lately, I’ve been having vivid fantasies of Annabelle wearing my t-shirt to sleep in, right after we have mind-blowing sex. The fantasies are of things I shouldn’t want and can’t have. They’re also persistent. I use every bit of willpower I have to squash them.

“I’m going to win my shirt back fair and square.” I drink some more coffee. “The day I let a troll beat me at euchre is the day I turn in my Yooper card.”

Chapter 21

Annabelle

“This is where you grew up?” I ask when we arrive at the house. Grant and I have carpooled, since we’re coming from the same place and going to the same place. As he parks among his siblings’ vehicles, all I can do is stare.

We’re fifteen minutes outside of town, where the yards are big and the driveways long. His parents’ house is a small bungalow with a steep roof and a row of icicles dangling from the gutters. Warm light glows from the windows, turning the frost on the glass into halos and tinting the yard a buttery yellow. Pines crowd the house, their branches heavy with snow. A path has been shoveled to the front porch, leading to steps worn down at the center. A wreath formed from puffy hearts hangs on the door.

“Are we Hansel and Gretel?” I ask when I get out of the truck. “Because that is one hundred percent a fairytale cottage.”

“When you say stuff like that, I can’t tell if it’s good or bad.” Grant grabs his dish to pass as well as the case of Vernors I brought.

“It’s darling,” I say. “But how did you fit seven people in there?”

“Felix and I had a bedroom in the basement.” Grant walks toward the house and I follow. “June and the little boys slept upstairs.”

“The little boys? Blake and Cole?”

“I still call them that sometimes.”

“Making you and Felix the big boys?”

“Unless something was broken or on fire,” Grant says as we step onto the porch. “Then we got our full government names.”

“I’m guessing Felix got full government a lot.”

Grant nods. “So you’ve met.”

He opens the door to life at full volume. There’s hockey on TV and a dog running around and at least three conversations going on. By the time I take my shoes off, someone’s already hung up my coat and June’s handing me a glass of wine.

I meet Grant’s mom, Tammy, who tries to wish him a happy birthday before he cuts her off. She goes back to arranging cupcakes that she explains are leftovers from the Valentine’s party in her kindergarten class. “But I swear, no kids breathed on them,” she says.

I tell her that my Nana was a teacher too. “She taught art to sixth and seventh graders.”

“Middle school.” Tammy inhales sharply. “I could never. Your Nana was doing the Lord’s work.”

Grant’s dad, Scott, teaches high school science. He’s unfolding a six-foot banquet table and complaining about serving spoons going missing, but he stops to shake my hand and welcome me to dinner. “June told us all about you.”

For a brief second, I wonder why Grant hasn’t mentioned me to his parents. But that’s ridiculous. I’m not here as his date. And if June told them all about me, then he didn’t have to.