He shrugs.
“She’s hot, too,” I add, and his grin turns a certain shade of naughty.
“And tastes delicious even after devouring my spicy guacamole.”
I push him away and stand up. “Ew, Miles! That’s just…I don’t need to picture you and Paige like that yet, okay?”
He stands, too, his broad shoulders shaking with laughter.
“You’re going to see him again, right?” he asks, backing out of the room.
I shrug. “We still haven’t exchanged phone numbers.”
“You’re not pulling that serendipity bullshit, are you?” he asks, and I push him out my bedroom door and toward the main door of the apartment.
“He knows where I work, and he knows I hang at the library on Monday afternoons. So no. No serendipity.”
Just hope, I think. And want. I want to see Griffin again.
Chapter Fifteen
Maggie
I give up hope at four-fifteen Monday afternoon. With my classes done, any and all studying complete, I take ten minutes to unwind, to remind myself we had no plans to meet at the library today. Just because he came looking for me last Monday doesn’t mean we have some sort of standing arrangement.
I take my sketchbook out of my bag, opening to the bowl of fruit from Griffin’s parents’ house. On the opposite page is my unfinished portrait of Griffin’s niece, Vi. My finger traces over the letters, V-I, and the same relief floods through me as it did yesterday when she asked if I would draw her, and I asked her to sign her name to the unfinished piece when I was done. I can differentiate between all of them now, Griffin’s sisters, his mother, and his niece. Despite the similarities in genetic makeup—I’ve never seen so many women look so much alike—a couple hours with this family was enough for me to distinguish, to pick up on some of their nuances once the overstimulation of such an unfamiliar environment subsided.
I tell myself it’s all part of the continued healing process, but that’s not the only reason. It was Griffin, too. Being there with him helped drown out the extra noise, the parts of a strange experience that would normally distract me. It’s these thoughts distracting me now, easing the anxiety brought on by false hope. So when the chair across from me slides out with a hasty scrape across the wood floor, I startle to see Griffin, wide-eyed and out of breath, sitting across from me.
“Are you okay?” I ask, forgetting my disappointment at almost being stood up for a date that didn’t exist.
His fists clench and unclench on the table in front of him, and then he slaps both palms down with a crack, much to the annoyance of patrons surrounding us. Griffin Reed was not made for library subtlety.
“I’m gonna need your number,” he says. One of his hands leaves the table only to return with his cell phone and with it a folded-up piece of paper. He slides the phone across to where my hand rests on Vi’s name in my book.
“What?” I ask, his urgency still a mystery.
“Your phone number. And I mean your number. Not the coffeehouse number, and not a landline, if for some crazy reason you still have one. Type your mobile number into my phone. Please. I’ll wait.”
I do as he says, stunned by the turn of events. I don’t ask what brought this on until I hand the phone back to him.
“I’m gonna ask again, now,” I say. “Are you okay?”
He eyes the screen, and his breathing slows, the frantic nature of his entrance morphing into calm. He breathes out a silent laugh, and when he looks up from the screen, there it is—the grin that threatens to melt me into a puddle.
“Pippi,” he says. “You fucking wrote Pippi.”
The unmasked joy in his voice startles me more than his entrance does. While I wouldn’t trade having him show up when I feared he wouldn’t, now I fear something even bigger. A phone number. Such a small thing, a tiny gift to give. But what does it mean?
“My Poli-Sci professor ambushed me after class, no doubt set up by my father, and I’ve spent the past two hours having phone and Skype interviews with three different business schools—interviews I wasn’t prepared for and interviews I had no intention of ever setting up in the first place.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask. “Why set you up to fail?”
He shakes his head. “That’s the thing. I’m a master bullshit artist, especially under pressure. Learned from the best. He knew I’d pull it off rather than make him, or me, look like an asshole.”
I still don’t understand, and the expression on my face must tell him this.
“I’ve been dragging my ass in terms of what I’m going to do next year, and my father has apparently had enough of it. To quote him, ‘It’s time I start giving back.’ Because I guess I owe my parents for my easy upbringing.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why are you dragging your ass?”