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“Go on,” Grammy says to Owen. “Give her a try.”
“Ah, sure. Okay.” Owen goes in for the Mason jar, but his hand just touches the glass when he pulls it away, hissing and shaking out his fingers. “It’s hot.”
“Of course it’s hot,” Grammy barks. “You can’t serve butter syrup cold.” She twists the lid off the jar, and her indestructible fingers lift the jar over Owen’s plate, dumping a healthy portion onto his six stacked cakes. “Let me watch you try it.”
“Grammy,” I mutter, but it’s a quiet plea. One nobody hears. I don’t want to get smacked upside the head.
“Um.” He lifts one brow, his eyes darting from his stack back to my grammy’s wrinkled, serious face. Pancakes are a pretty seriousbusiness in our family. “Okay.” Fork at the ready, he cuts into his stack, lifting a triangle of fluffy homemade hot cakes to his lips. He’s got one eye on my Grammy, who won’t take her beady blue eyes from him. Slowly, he moves the bite to his mouth.
I’m not worried. Would Grammy be offended if he didn’t love the bite? Of course. But it’s butter syrup and her fluffy homemade cakes. Hewilllove it. No doubt. Only psychos don’t love Grammy’s cooking. And Owen is no psycho.
Owen’s eyes flutter closed, and he lets out a small audible moan.
Grammy grins. Wrinkles form around her mouth and eyes. “That’s a good boy. Now tell me about your girl trouble.”
His eyes flick open, and he stops chewing altogether.
“Oh, Grammy, you don’t need to listen to Owen’s troubles. That’s what I’m for. You can go get ready to open the shop. I know you’re busy.”
“No,” she says, her gray brows furrowing. She smacks my hand and I refrain from shaking out the sting. “Don’t tell me what to do. I have time. Four minutes. ”
Owen forks another triangle of pancake and shoves it into his mouth.
“Well?” Grammy says. But Owen has stuffed his cheeks like a starving squirrel getting ready for the winter season.
I clear my throat. “You see, Owen has been dating this girl—with a really stupid last name, by the way.”
“Don’t judge.” Grammy shakes a finger, first at me, then at Owen. Then she snatches up my fork and cuts into Owen’s pancakes, nodding towards them. And Owen follows suit, stuffing the freshly Grammy-cut bite into his already full mouth.
“Right, well, that isn’t why he broke up with her.” I stare at my stack, my eyes going wide. “Just a fact.Buttmanis a pretty lame name.”
“Buttman? That isn’t a name.” Grammy’s lips curl, and she shakes her head no.
“Okay, well, thisgirl, she wanted to talk to Owen about thefuture. Like the wedding bells kind of future.” I don’t mention the old hat-type glances—because that’s my inner turmoil to mull over and nobody else’s. Yep, I get to keep that gem all to myself.
Joy.
Owen suddenly coughs and sputters. Small chunks of pancake fly out onto the table.
Grammy smacks him on the back over and over, like she’s Rocky Balboa beating a punching bag; all the while, her eyes are on me. “Continue.”
I press my lips together, watching the pair of them. I cough once too, choking down a laugh. “It was just too soon. They’d only been seeing each other casually for a couple months.”
“A couple months? I was married after two months of courting,” Grammy says with one more hard smack to Owen’s surely bruised back.
I purse my lips. “Right. That’s right. But that was different. It was… serious.”
“How many times has she met your family?” Grammy asks, looking at a red-faced Owen. He’s chugging water, trying to get everything down just right.
“None!” I spit, tripping over my words. “None times.”
“She’s never met your mother?” she says to Owen.
Owen shakes his head, eyes sliding from me—for confirmation—back to Grammy.
“She never met your brothers?”
I translate that to James never having met Kayla. My sister would not have approved—although she does know about Mr. Buttman.
