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“Tate, no. We just talked, I promise. And most of it wasn’t even about you and me. We were just shooting the shit in there after a while. He’s a good guy.”
“Shooting the—” I exclaim, only half-serious. “I was sweating in that kitchen! I mean, I was really losing my head in there!”
“Oh yeah? You have a little chocolate on your lip.”
Dammit. I wipe it away.
“So…what’d you tell him?”
Grant shrugs.
My jaw drops. “Are you serious? You aren’t going to tell me?”
He narrows his eyes and looks off into the distance like he’s trying to recall. “You know? It eludes me. It all happened so fast.”
I jostle his arm. “Grant!”
He laughs and shakes his head. “It was nothing, Tate. I just wanted to smooth the path forward for us.”
“So…what does that mean?”
He turns and levels me with a sincere, heart-clenching look. “It means I’m going to ask you to be my girlfriend.”
THE G WORD.
“Seriously?”
He nods, taking my hand and squeezing it with reassurance.
“Like right now?”
I’m just trying to prepare myself for it. Practice my facial expressions, my cool-calm-and-collected sure, okay, whatever.
He shakes his head. “Nah, when you least expect it.”
His mischievous smile tells me I’m really in for it. As we keep walking and slip into conversation about other stuff—his game schedule later this week, the desserts they had at the engagement party—he really lets me have it.
We turn the corner toward my apartment building and we’re about to pass a magazine stand.
Grant cuts in front of me and takes my hands. “Hold on.”
My mouth immediately goes dry. This is it! It’s happening!
“Tate, do you want to…” He pauses for dramatic effect. I’m already imagining calling him my boyfriend for the first time. I’m going to work it into every conversation I can for the next three months. Then he drops the axe. “…pick out some gum before we head up?”
I growl and cut past him toward my apartment. He laughs and chases after me, but the torture’s not done.
When we reach the elevators in my building, he stops and looks at me with a completely earnest and reverent expression. “Tate, do you—” Heavy pause. Soaring hope. Racing heart. Then he points beside me. “Want to press the button for the elevator?”
“I hate you,” I say once the doors sweep open.
He laughs and grabs my hips, tugging me back against his chest.
“No, no,” I tell him. “You go stand over there, in timeout.”
He relegates himself to the opposite corner of the elevator, the whole time fighting back his self-satisfied smile.
Then just before the doors open at my floor, he says, “Be my girlfriend.”
Just like that!
Is he joking!?
“No!”
He laughs, completely blindsided by my response.
“Absolutely not.”
My voice has a lot of heat, but it’s for dramatic effect only. I want him to suffer.
He follows me toward my apartment, right on my heels, but he doesn’t touch me. Knowing he wants to is half the fun.
“Be my girlfriend,” he pleads, grabbing my hips while I’m unlocking the door.
I push it open and shimmy out of his hold. “No.”
Another laugh, but then we’re inside the apartment, sliding off our shoes. He takes my hospital bag into the kitchen so he can empty my lunchbox and start to clean it out. INFURIATING!
While he busies himself with that, I go into my room to shower. It’s been a long day and I feel like I still smell like the hospital.
I drop my clothes on the floor like a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail. My dress gets tossed here, a high heel there. I turn the water on and listen to him moving around in the kitchen.
I leave the bathroom door open on purpose. I step inside the shower and start my usual routine as the glass turns foggy. I hear my bedroom door close and my nerves skyrocket. I try to play nonchalant when in fact I am chock-full of chalant. I reach for my shampoo and squirt some into my hand, lathering it up into foamy suds. Like I’m being watched by unblinking lust-filled eyes, I try to apply it as seductively as possible, only to realize once I’m done that Grant isn’t even in the bathroom.
I rub a little circle to clear the glass at my eye level, and dammit, he’s over on my bed, flipping through the book on my nightstand, Klara and the Sun. It’s not a big deal that he’s found my current read except for when he catches the bookmark tucked inside it.
For the Pinstripes home games, they print photos of the players on the tickets. Each fan gets a different player. Sometimes you might get Luke, sometimes Nick, etc. It’s a nod to baseball trading cards, and fans really go crazy over them. When I went to the game with Michael a few months ago, I happened to get a ticket with Grant’s picture on it. I kept it, and now he’s looking down at it.
