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“I need a drink,” Sinclair announces.
Normally, I’d scramble to my feet and get her a glass of wine, but I’m intent on rifling through that box of memories she pulled the card out of. I stay sitting. “Can you get me a beer? There’s a bottle opener in one of the drawers in the kitchen. It’s the one closest to the sink.”
There’s not, but I need her to go hunting for it so I can figure out what other embarrassing mementos my grandmother held onto.
“Yeah, sure.” Sinclair skims a hand over her hair, still holding tightly to the Valentine’s Day card. “I’m going to have a glass of water.”
I should do the same, but that won’t afford me enough time to go through that box. “Beer for me.”
She shrugs. “All right. I’ll drop this card off in my room first.”
I smile at that because obviously, it’s a keeper. I get that. It’s a piece of her past. I don’t know if her folks kept anything from when she was a kid. Maybe this is filling that void.
She sets off toward the hallway with her dog on her heel.
He glances back at me but still chooses her over me. I don’t blame him.
As soon as she’s out of sight, I tug the box closer and dig a hand into it. I find some birthday cards that Holden gave our grandmother and a couple of handmade ones from me. There’s a glass Christmas decoration commemorating the holiday season before my granddad died.
When I spot a piece of folded light blue paper, my heart thunders in my chest.
I reach for it. “It can’t be.”
As soon as I unfold it, I realize it’s exactly what I thought it was, and thank fuck that I found it before Sinclair got her hands on it.
I glance at the message written in green ink. It was Sin’s favorite color at the time. She’d come to school dressed from head to toe in various shades of green. All the other kids called her ‘green bean’ as a nickname. I punched one boy in the nose because of it. I thought she looked beautiful in her green jeans, T-shirts, and hoodies.
I read my simplistic handwriting. I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine when I wrote this out.
The message is simple.
Sinclair.
Will you marry me when we grow up?
Circle your answer and pass it back to me.
Written beneath that are two words.
YES. Next to it, in the same bold green letters, is the answer I feared. NO.
I never passed it to her. Instead, I shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans, where it stayed the entire day. I didn’t have the courage to accept that she might reject me.
When I got home from school that day, I tossed the note in the trash in our kitchen.
Denia must have seen it and saved it from the incinerator.
I should have kept better watch on my grandmother when she’d pop by unexpectedly to visit us or the days she’d stop in for dinner with my grandfather by her side.
I shove the paper in my pocket and get back to hunting for more proof of that crush I’ve always had on Sinclair.
I hear a drawer slam shut, then another. “I can’t find the bottle opener!”
I ignore Sin and flip through everything else in the box. With a sigh of relief, I push it back to where it was before she left the room.
I hear her footsteps approaching. “The beer had a screw cap, Jameson. There isn’t a bottle opener anywhere.”
“My mistake.” I flash her a smile as I reach for the chilled bottle. “Thanks, Sin.”
“Sure.” She sets a tall glass of water on the coffee table. “Why do you look guilty?”
I laugh that off. “What?”
She tilts her head. “You look guilty. You had the same look on your face the day you let Molly’s hamster out of its cage.”
“I was eleven,” I point out. “Her birthday party was boring as hell. Someone needed to do something to add some excitement to the mix.”
Her hand rubs her chin. “It did make it a lot more exciting. Her mom was scared to death of that thing.”
“I saved the party,” I proudly claim. “You can admit it.”
“I admit it was funny,” she acquiesces. “We should get back to work.”
She sits back on the floor, crossing her legs before she slides the box that had the Valentine’s Day card and marriage proposal closer to her. “I hope I find another treasure.”
I hope to hell she doesn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sinclair
As soon as I wake up, my eyes pop open to see the red heart-shaped card. I must have spent fifteen minutes studying it before I fell asleep last night.
I don’t know why it touched me as profoundly as it has.
After Jameson and I finished going through the cardboard boxes last night, I told him I was tired and needed to get to bed.
