Chapter 6

W e were pulling over again. “Why? Why is he stopping?” my sister Nicola fumed.

“Something’s wrong with Mom,” Juliet answered. She sounded sleepy and it was probably because she’d been out for the whole night before. She’d told us about it as we battled through Friday afternoon traffic to leave the city and go north, but then she’d fallen asleep for a few hours, missing her turn to drive.

“Convenient,” our biggest sister Nicola had stated when we hadn’t been able to shake JuJu awake. Sophie, who was stuck in the car with us even though she and Nicola were not getting along, had started to mutter angrily under her breath and I’d gone into placating mode.

We were almost there now, but we all watched as our mom emerged from the passenger side onto the gravel shoulder at the edge of the trees. She hopped up and down on one foot, shaking her head to the side.

Sophie forgot that she wasn’t speaking to some of us in her amazement. “How in the world would she have gotten water in her ear? We’ve been in the car for more than three hours, nowhere near a pool or a lake.”

“She has an ear infection,” Juliet explained groggily, and that made Nicola answer that no, she didn’t, our mother was a hypochondriac and the ear infection was mythical, just like her self-diagnoses of Kimura’s Disease and athlete’s foot.

“Why don’t we keep all the medical information to ourselves,” I suggested, because I didn’t want Juliet and Nicola to fight, not now. Nicola already wasn’t speaking to Sophie or Brenna; Brenna wasn’t speaking to Grace or Nicola; Juliet wasn’t speaking to Brenna but Brenna was insulting her constantly; Grace wasn’t talking to any of them, and that might have been from prior arguments but also might have been because she was just off in her own world.

The only one who definitely wasn’t holding a grudge was me. As the (almost) middle kid, it often fell on my shoulders to keep the peace.

“I can’t believe we’re going to this, anyway,” Nicola said. “It’s so weird.”

“It’s hard on Patrick,” Juliet agreed, and I had to shake my head at that.

“JuJu, he was the one who broke off his engagement to Liv with a text!” I reminded her. “She’s now free to marry whomever she choses. Maybe it’s a little quicker than normal—”

“They’ve been engaged for only a few months,” Sophie said. “Liv is crazy to marry him. She knows nothing about him.”

“She knows that she loves him,” I said. “We’re lucky we got invited at all, after what happened.”

Juliet was silent, because it was her twin who’d broken up with our friend Liv and I knew that she had wanted them to get back together. In fact, she and our mom had schemed about it some and tried to make it happen, but Liv had moved on. She’d moved on pretty fast, even I could acknowledge that, and now we were all driving up north to attend her wedding. They didn’t want to wait because they loved each other so much. They loved each other and it was beautiful to see. I was so happy for Liv.

“Addie!” Nicola burst out. “Are you crying again? It’s very dangerous for the driver—”

“Why can’t you shut up, Nicola!” Sophie interrupted. It was good that they were speaking again, but I didn’t want them to fight. “Why don’t ask why she’s crying instead of lecturing about it?”

Nicola swiveled in the passenger seat, where she had instead on placing herself if she wasn’t behind the wheel so that she could watch the directions carefully and make sure we weren’t making a mistake. She usually watched very, very carefully, except now she was furiously glaring at Sophie. “I know why she’s crying! It’s because of that jerk who called us all troglodytes.”

“Only you and Mom. You’re the only ones who like your steaks that well-done,” Sophie informed her.

“I don’t think she’s upset because of Briggs,” Juliet piped up, and the older two looked in her direction. “I think it’s the bear.”

“Addie, yes, there are bears in these woods, but you don’t need to worry about them,” Nicola told me, just like she’d reassured me about the snapping turtles years before.

“No, not bears in the woods! The bear man,” Juliet corrected, but then Nicola noticed that our mom had stopped hopping around and we were moving again, and she told me to pay attention and follow closely because dad was going to try to make up some time by speeding. She was right and he did, but I had wiped my eyes and I kept up.

We all piled into a motel, because this was how we did it in our family: my parents got a room for themselves, and the girls made do in another. It meant me and Brenna sharing a twin bed that night, because no one else would take her. “Addie, what shampoo do you use? Your head smells like gasoline,” she complained as we lay in it that night and tried to sleep.

“Maybe my hair smells bad because I was on the ground looking under the car to try to see what was making that noise,” I said. I hadn’t figured out what gotten stuck under there, and I took a piece of my hair and sniffed it. She was correct about the smell and I shifted my head away from Brenna’s vicinity. That was hard because a twin bed was small, but at least I wasn’t on the floor with Nicola. That looked a lot less comfortable, but she was already asleep. She worked too hard.

By the next morning, we were all in a mood. “We are much too old to behave this way,” Sophie grumbled as we followed our dad’s car through the tiny town, looking for somewhere to have breakfast. “Why didn’t we spring for another room with more beds? Why didn’t we stay in a nicer place?”

“It honestly didn’t occur to me,” Juliet said. “We always just squeeze in together and we always stay in some dump.” That had been my thinking, too; or really, I hadn’t been thinking. Yes, this was the way we’d always done it.

“That sucked,” Sophie said. She was in a snit because Grace had kicked her all night long as they’d shared a twin bed of their own. Grace had always been a jumpy sleeper, even when she was an infant. Our oldest sister had dealt with her then—they were ten years apart and Grace had basically been Nicola’s baby, but last night our big sister had said she’d prefer the ground.

“I’ll never travel with you guys, ever, ever, ever again,” Sophie threatened, and no one was awake enough to argue back that she probably would.

But we perked up once we were shoved into a booth and Dad ordered five carafes of coffee. Yes, there were still complaints from some members of the family (Brenna) about the quality of the brew and others (Nicola) criticized someone else (Juliet) for drinking decaf because the way it was processed was somehow not acceptable. We did get through breakfast, though. My mom was trying to figure out what to wear and was asking for all of our opinions. She’d brought three huge bags of clothes that had occupied most of their trunk space for this two-night excursion, and the conversation mostly revolved around her fashion choices until we had finished eating, taken up the bathroom for much too long because we all had to pee after so much coffee, and left the restaurant.

“What are we doing?” Grace asked.

“We’re here for the wedding. Liv is getting married, but not to our brother,” Nicola specified, because sometimes our youngest sister didn’t pay the best attention. “She has a new fiancé, Hunt something.”

“No, it’s Gabriel Hunt,” JuJu corrected. “He’s nice.” She’d sounded upset, though, just like she did every time she was confronted with the plain fact that our brother was not getting back together with Liv.

“I mean, what are we doing now?” Grace continued. “Why are we standing here? I’m cold.”

She was cold because she’d chosen to wear a cropped tank top and shorts. It was spring and getting to be summer, but it was early in the morning in northern Michigan, so it wasn’t warm.

But she did have a point besides her problem with the temperature, and we all looked at each other. There were several hours—many hours—until the marriage ceremony, which started in the evening and then was followed by dinner and dancing. This town was small, too, with only one street which ran through the middle and no stop lights to direct traffic, so how would we fill our day here? My dad had insisted on driving up last night because he was going to hang out with the father of the bride, since they’d been friends forever. My mom was supposed to be helping out somehow at Liv’s house, the venue. I had my doubts about that because she did struggle to give help without having a problem of her own. Like I remembered how she was supposed to have bought new shoes for Sophie to wear at her prom, but had gotten into what she’d called a massive traffic accident with possible fatalities…there had been a tiny dent in her bumper and no new shoes. Nicola had fixed everything.

At this moment, though, our oldest sister wasn’t interested in our problems. “I’m busy,” Nicola said, and she walked off.

“Nic?” JuJu called after her, but she only held up her hand and waved and then turned the corner. And was gone.

That left the rest of us and we stared at each other. What would she have been going? “We have one car between the four of us,” Brenna said, because she was more focused on her own concerns. “I’m so bored I’m going to die.”

“Let’s rock, paper, scissors to pick something to do,” Sophie said.

“Or, we could share our opinions and then vote on a destination, to make it fair for everyone,” I suggested, and no one liked that idea but they did eventually decide to drive into the nearest town, Traverse City, where there were shops and more restaurants and things to do.

“You’re coming, right, Addie?” Juliet asked me. “Shotgun!” She and Brenna had a dispute about that, and while they did, Sophie went and sat in the front seat anyway.

“I’m kind of tired,” I said. “I think I may take a nap and then another shower. I can still smell the stuff in my hair.”

“Motor oil,” Grace identified. She’d had a short stint of employment at a garage, so I figured that she would have the most educated guess of all of us.

Anyway, I didn’t care (much) if they took my car and they dropped me back at the motel. After I watched them drive it away, I went to my bag and got out some of the clothes I’d brought. I carefully locked the room door behind me as I left again because Sophie had (of course) brought her very expensive laptop, the one she couldn’t live without for two whole days. Then I took a deep breath of the clean air and started out.

In the time that had passed since my almost-split with Briggs, I’d decided to make at least one change, and it was exercising. I hated every sweaty, painful moment of it, but I was doing it. I’d brought my shoes and my extra-strength bra with me on this little trip and I set out walking for a bit, and then increased the pace until I was running.

Usually I listened to music as I went, but since I’d never been here before and was going along a narrow shoulder instead of a sidewalk, I went without. That meant I could hear cars coming but I could also hear my own labored breathing and the heavy clomp of my feet on the pavement, which I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t enjoy the actual running either, but it was a beautiful morning and this was a beautiful part of the state, so that was very nice. It was a hugely auspicious day for a wedding, and in terms of their birth charts, Liv and Hunt were so well matched. Juliet had wanted me to figure it out and despite her continued desire for Liv to marry our brother, she was happy to see the results. So were our other sisters, even the ones who announced that they didn’t care about “star stuff” (yes, I meant Nicola).

I was glad to be with them all for this short vacation, because although the twin bed hadn’t been fun, I did love them. I was lucky to be here and getting to go to a fun wedding, and I was not going to cry at it. Well, I would cry, but they would be happy tears because I was so glad for Liv. I was so glad that she found someone to love, and she’d done that in a very unexpected place. You just never knew when something would sneak up on you and—

“Addie?”

I jerked to a stop and Granger held out his hand, as if he might need to catch me. What was he doing here? I panted now in confusion and shock. In a town with no stoplights, Granger Moore had appeared?

“I thought that was you ahead of me,” he said. He was dressed in running clothes, too, but he didn’t seem overly hot or sweaty. He had a little glow to his skin, just as I probably did, but I was not bright red by any means—I might have been flushed, slightly. “I saw your hair bouncing,” he continued. “I didn’t know that you ran.”

“I do a lot of things,” I said, and finally pieced together that of course he would be here right now. Of course he had come for Liv’s wedding because he was friends with the groom, and that was how I’d known about his restaurant in the first place.

“You read,” he said. “That’s one thing you said that you do. You also plan gardens. You left a plant catalog in my office.” He paused. “I didn’t know you would be coming to this wedding.”

“My whole family drove up, except for my brother. We were neighbors with Liv and she and Juliet were really good friends.”

“I’m standing up with Hunt,” he said, referencing the groom. “I’ll head over and distract him when I finish my run.”

“Why does he need distracting? Doesn’t he want to marry her?”

“He wants that more than anything,” Granger answered. “But it’s a big day and anybody would get nervous.”

I wondered if he had been. I wondered if I would ever get the chance to be happy-nervous like that on my own wedding day—ugh, this kind of thinking was getting me upset and it was already hard to run. I certainly couldn’t do it if I was also crying. “Ok, I’ll see you later at the ceremony,” I said, and decided that now was the time to leave.

“Can I come along with you?” He started off running, too. “We’re going in the same direction.”

It wasn’t like I would be able to lose him. This was a long, straight road, so I’d have to bolt into the trees if I wanted to get away. And I had faith that he’d be able to keep up, given how he wasn’t fazed in the least by the pace I’d set. It was much faster than I usually went—not that I really had a “usual,” since this form of exercise was so new to me.

That was something he remarked on. “I don’t remember that you mentioned running as one of your hobbies.”

“Well, I didn’t mention every thing that I do,” I huffed. “You may not know that I like to make pottery, too.” I was pretty bad at it, but I’d always enjoyed working on a wheel. “I know the first thirty digits of pi. I was the manager of the boys’ hockey team in high school, I used to foster kittens, and I’m studying Portuguese.”

“No, I didn’t know any of that.”

And now that he’d humiliated me at his restaurant by thinking that I was somehow attached to him, he’d never get the chance to know! Except that now I’d told him, and anyway, this wasn’t a very nice way for me to act. Just because I wasn’t….just because he didn’t…it wasn’t his fault. I decided that I’d better clean up my act. “What about you?” I asked breathlessly. “You tell me.” I was brief because it was better to save my energy for trying to live instead of talking.

“What about me?” he echoed. “You mean, what are my weird hobbies?”

I didn’t consider any of my hobbies as weird, but we were running really fast. I didn’t have the breath control to argue that point.

“I think I told you that I mostly just work. That’s what I spend my time doing.”

I waved my hand in answer, by which I meant to convey that I wasn’t going to speak. But he took it as an invitation to add more information of his own.

“I guess I have a few skills,” he continued. He spoke as smoothly and normally as someone having a nice pancake breakfast, not someone toiling on the side of the road. I wished I was a person with pancakes right now, instead of doing this, but Granger kept talking. “You know that I can do basic electrical work and car repairs. I’m ok at coding, but only JavaScript, Python, and C++. I’m a good person to ask if you want to build a pontoon bridge.”

Why would I have wanted to do that? I didn’t have the air to ask, but I wondered.

“I can throw knives fairly well and that’s a good thing to know.”

What? Why would that have been a good thing to know? Now I turned to look at him and he shrugged.

“I’ve used it more than you’d think,” he told me, and kept talking in a very normal way even as we also kept up the bruising pace. “I speak some Italian but more Sicilian. I know Spanish and French. Some Farsi, more Dari. I do well in Arabic, better in Kurdish.”

“Really?” I gasped, because that was amazing. And that was it, no more words were going to come out of me unless I had an oxygen mask for assistance.

“Languages were helpful in my old job,” he explained. “Luckily for me, I’m not bad at picking them up.” We ran for a while in silence as I considered his old job, the one that had taken him out of the country frequently, necessitated multiple languages, and maybe involved knife throwing and building pontoon bridges. “Languages are easy for me but it turns out, I’m pretty shitty with knowing how to treat someone who just broke up with her boyfriend. Who almost just broke up with her boyfriend,” he corrected himself.

I looked at him again, hoping that he could intuit the phrase in my mind: go on, explain what you mean.

“I mean, when you told me you were thinking of leaving Skurwysyn, I acted…shitty,” he said, repeating the word. For someone good at languages, he appeared to be searching for what to say. “I made it sound like it had something to do with me, but really it was all about him being a jackoff that everyone hates.”

Not everyone, I thought. Not his mother—definitely not her. After I’d spoken to Briggs on that night and before I’d blocked her, I received some furious messages and texts, some that were threatening enough that I also started looking for her car following me while I checked for his. He must have run right over to her house and told her the whole, awful story, or at least the parts that made me look bad.

But she wasn’t the only one who liked him, because Mina did, too. My friend had been increasingly distant from me over the last few weeks and I knew that it was because she thought I wanted to ruin the good thing I had going. She was disappointed in me, even after I’d said that I wasn’t going to break up with him. “I changed my mind,” I explained.

I hadn’t told Mina or anyone else what was happening between me and Briggs, not even my sisters. I just didn’t want to talk about it, but it seemed like the friction between me and Mina was affecting the whole Campbell household. Some of the other members of the staff had picked up on our coolness and asked me about it and Mr. Campbell himself was more fractious than usual, which seemed hard to believe but was true. The day before, he’d actually thrown a copy of Little Dorrit at me. Luckily the book was heavy, and his arm strength and aim were poor.

I shrugged rather than conveying any of that information now. My issues with Briggs weren’t any of Granger’s business and he didn’t care about them, either. I was in no position to open my heart, unless it was because I was undergoing surgery on it for some kind of exertion injury. This run was lasting longer and moving faster than I had ever gone before. He didn’t seem affected at all, and if he was going to keep it up then I would, too. If I died trying, I was not going to quit.

“The way I acted the last time you came to the restaurant was really…shitty,” he said, repeating the word for a third time. He ran for a few more paces and then stopped, and I did as well, so grateful for the break that I could have kissed him.

“It wasn’t just shitty,” he said, “it was conceited for me to assume that your relationship has anything to do with me. I was oblivious, conceited and also…shitty.” He grimaced. “I keep saying that, but I was.”

Maybe he wasn’t as conceited and oblivious as he thought, but I was not up to answering due to being afraid of throwing up if I opened my mouth. I wouldn’t have told him the truth about the situation anyway, because the truth was so horribly humiliating. It was also confusing and hurtful, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I wasn’t able to talk anyway.

“I have to turn around,” Granger told me. “I need to get over to Hunt’s house—Hunt and Liv’s house,” he amended. “Are you going to keep running?”

No, no need for that. I shook my head to indicate the negative because I was also ready to turn around, more than ready. We started back but I set a slower pace and again, he matched it.

“I guess you’re still pissed off at me,” he commented, but I waved my hand to indicate that no, I wasn’t, and also to indicate that I appreciated his apology—well, he’d called himself names, but he hadn’t said that he was sorry.

And then he did. “I’m sorry,” he added, and I reached up and patted his shoulder slightly more violently than I’d meant to. I was losing control of my limbs a little bit, but I was also trying to say that I didn’t need him to apologize for something that he hadn’t actually done wrong. Maybe he could have been a little more sympathetic about the near-end of my relationship with Briggs, but I understood why he might have been freaked out by an emotionally unstable woman apparently throwing herself at him. But I was a lot more stable now, and I was solving my relationship problems. I was going to do it in my own way.

We ran back to my motel, which I signaled to by pointing and bobbing my head, and then I saw an unfortunate sight waiting for me there. Some of my sisters were back, apparently, because I saw four very familiar women with varying shades of red hair, from bright strawberry blonde to dark auburn. They stood around a car that was also very familiar. It was mine, and it was smoking. I didn’t mean that it was a really nice vehicle—no, I meant that literal smoke was wafting out of the cracks around the hood.

I found enough air to say, “No!” just as Granger remarked that it looked like my car.

“Something’s wrong with it, Addie,” Brenna announced as we arrived. “It seemed like it was going to set on fire, so we turned around. What’s wrong with you?” She turned to Sophie, who wasn’t talking to her, and asked, “Do you remember when we all had the slapped cheek thing? It looks like she has that again.”

“I was exercising,” I managed to pant. “I’m not sick.”

“I remember how Nicola said that mostly kids get the slapped cheek thing, and mostly in the winter,” Juliet put in, but she was staring at my companion and she obviously recognized him. She gradually got excited enough that she forgot that she wasn’t speaking to Grace and whispered to her loudly, “The bear!” But our youngest sister only seemed confused and turned to look over her shoulder for a wild animal.

Granger was already walking over to my car, and without me asking, he also carefully popped the hood and checked what was happening under it. Then, he appeared to be fixing it. Four of my sisters stood there watching and Nicola showed up, too, so that was everyone. He worked on it for a while as best he could without any tools besides his pocket knife and a manicure set that Brenna produced (that I promised I would replace for her), and he managed to get it to the point that the engine wasn’t actively smoking and it was safe to drive. Then he really did have to go because he was the best man, after all.

“I’ll see you at the wedding,” he told me, and gave a general wave to my sisters. They responded characteristically, like Nicola frowning and Grace staring at him as if she was unclear on the concept of farewells or gestures in general. Then he was gone, jogging off down the street.

“That’s the real Granger Moore? He looks different from the picture I found,” Sophie mused as we all watched his back. He was really muscular—his legs looked like they were carved out of something like wood or iron, if it was possible to carve iron. He wasn’t wearing tight clothes but we could all see perfectly well that nothing on him wobbled or bounced as he ran, as it might have on others’ bodies. His butt in particular looked firm. Very nicely rounded, very tight, not too small but not too big.

I fanned my face, feeling a slight flush starting again. It was so hot out here! It was no wonder that I was getting a gentle rosy color.

Juliet was focused on what our other sister had said instead of Granger’s retreating figure. “What picture are you talking about, Soph? Why were you looking at pictures of him?” she asked.

“Is that the man who owns the restaurant? Does he have permanent damage to his vocal cords? Why was he here?” Nicola asked suspiciously, and Brenna remarked that I still looked like I had the slapped cheek thing. Nicola started speaking to her long enough to get into an argument about whether or not I was ill (which I was not), and our big sister also warned Brenna that she better not mention anything about fifth disease to Mom, which made Juliet say that our mother wasn’t as hypochondriacal as Nicola always claimed, and the argument broadened with Brenna chiming in that Mom was probably over at Liv and Hunt’s house having hysterics, and Juliet saying that she wasn’t but Sophie agreeing that yes, she always was, and JuJu knew it but she was always sucking up and that was why she wouldn’t admit the truth.

I wasn’t taking part in any of that, because I was already moving toward the bathroom to take a shower. But Grace, the sneakiest of all of us, had already gotten in there first. And then we spent most of the afternoon arguing about why no one on the excursion had noticed that my car was on fire until they’d driven it for a few miles, why I’d been running and not told anyone, who would get to the mirror next, where Nicola had disappeared to (it turned out that she’d also been exercising, but no one bothered her about it like they were persecuting me), what was up with the bear guy, why Juliet was wearing something so fancy and mostly naked to a wedding in a house in the woods, and other topics of interest.

I really, really loved my sisters, but by the time I got into the shower (last) and by the time that Brenna had done my hair and then Nicola had bullied JuJu into putting on a sweater, by the time that we cobbled something together for Grace because she hadn’t brought anything appropriate and we’d gotten the wrinkles out of the dress that Sophie had brought (the one I’d borrowed from her and that she’d apparently thrown into a ball in the dry cleaning bag and then wadded into her suitcase)…by the time all that was done, I was pretty tired.

But we all perked up after we dislodged ourselves from my medium-sized car that didn’t really fit six people and walked into Hunt and Liv’s house, where they were holding the small ceremony and reception. It was beautiful, huge, and impressive enough that all of us had gotten quiet as we drove up, even Brenna. My parents were there, and my mom was being calm and actually helpful, but she’d always really loved Liv so it made sense that she’d have been on her best behavior. I knew that when Mom was crying during the ceremony, though, it was because she wished that it was her son standing up there in front of the retired judge and looking at his bride like he couldn’t believe his luck, like he was the happiest man in the world.

My brother had totally messed things up and there was obviously no going back now, even if we were still disappointed by his behavior. But then she turned and looked at the six of us girls, and I realized that her disappointment wasn’t only about how Patrick had behaved; she also felt that way about her daughters. None of us was close to a ceremony like this. She probably thought that I was the one who had the best chance of marriage and kids, but she didn’t know the truth about me and Briggs. Nicola was married to her job, Sophie had been hurt and tapped out of the game, Juliet liked everyone but only for five or so minutes, Brenna only liked herself, and Grace? She hadn’t been able to figure out what shoes to bring on this trip, so she hadn’t brought any. Luckily she and JuJu wore the same size, or she would have come to this wedding barefoot. How was she going to have a lifetime commitment?

Holy Mary.

I watched the scene in front of the wall of windows, with the sunset in the background. Liv and Hunt listened to the judge and swore out their vows, smiling and looking into each others’ eyes. I watched her brother Levi get choked up for what I thought was the first time in his life. Her sister Ava and her friend Thea were so beautiful standing next to her, her niece and nephew were adorable, and both her parents were crying a little but also were so happy. The person who seemed out of place up there was Granger. He didn’t appear pleased or emotional, just sort of stoic. No, more like stern, like the face you’d see on the principal when you had to go to his office because your sister had been caught in the gym, the one that was supposed to have been locked, in a compromising position on the folded up gymnastics mats in the corner with a boy. And their clothes had been disposed of by the janitor by mistake, so they were stark naked as well so you were supposed to get something for her to wear and she refused to put on anything out of the lost and found. I’d had to call Nicola to come from college to help deal with the situation.

I wasn’t sure why Granger would have had that expression. He seemed to think Liv was fine—he’d never voiced any objection about her to me, anyway—but maybe he just didn’t care for weddings in general. Maybe they reminded him of his own wife and what he’d lost, the poor man. And he’d said that he wouldn’t ever get married again and he wouldn’t have kids, either. No one could replace the beautiful woman in the picture on his desk, the one he looked at every time he went to work because he loved her so much.

And I had somehow believed that I could be…what had I been thinking? I closed my eyes in embarrassment, unable to look at him standing there, but I opened them when the judge said that by the powers invested in him by the state of Michigan, he pronounced the couple as husband and wife. There weren’t a lot of guests but we all went crazy, yelling and clapping and Liv’s mom could whistle with her two fingers really, really loudly. Hunt picked up his bride and kissed her for quite a while, and then we all ran to hug Liv and tell her congratulations. It was a relaxed kind of wedding, much more fun than our cousin’s where I’d worn the dress that Sophie had on right now. She looked better in it than I ever had. I told her that she looked beautiful and she said, “Oh, Addie,” but then she got a large smile.

The reception part of the wedding was just in the next room, but they’d done it up with a band, gorgeous flowers, a ton of catered food, and a huge, luscious-looking cake. I saw Brenna with her mouth open to criticize but Nicola did too and waved her index finger, and the Brat did manage to keep it in. We had a delicious dinner and then all of us got up to dance, and that was something we did a lot as a family. My dad had taught us how to do the formal ones, like the waltz, the foxtrot, and the rumba. We’d taken turns standing on his feet and it was one of my best memories with him. My mom, on the other hand, didn’t know the ballroom stuff very well but she went crazy dancing to any fast song, and I had other good memories of moving out the furniture, cranking the music, and all of us breaking it down in the living room.

It was after I’d done a quick step with Liv’s dad that I saw Granger by himself. He was watching the action from the next room and he started shaking his head as Liv pulled her giant husband onto the floor. Dancing was apparently was not his forte—not at all. It did seem like Hunt would do anything for her, though, and he was giving it his best shot. They were both laughing and having so much fun. Everyone was, except for the one guest who stood by himself, the guy wishing that his beautiful wife was here with him to celebrate.

I felt like I had to do something, so I sidled around the side of the bar table and over to where Granger stood. “Want to?” I asked him, and pointed to the dance floor.

“With you?”

“With everyone,” I answered. “Everyone’s out there dancing.”

“Hunt looks like he’s having back spasms.”

“I’m not sure what I’d call the move that he’s doing,” I said, looking at the groom. “He does seem to be in pain.”

“He’s hurting the rest of us by forcing us to see it.” But he finally smiled, which I hadn’t seen him do yet at this fun party.

“Come on,” I encouraged and a little grudgingly, he did follow me out there. As we arrived, though, the band switched over to a slow song. “Oh, well—”

“I watched you dance with your dad. You can dominate this song just like you dominate a bowling lane.” He held out his hands and I put mine into them, and then he stepped to me. We weren’t pressed together like Liv and Hunt, but we were dancing close. It was almost as if we were a couple, too.

“I'm making believe,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“This is an Ella Fitzgerald song, ‘I'm Making Believe,’” he explained. “I’ve always liked it.” And then, to my surprise, he executed a pivot turn and we spun across the floor. I looked up and smiled.

“You do things other than work on cars and speak seventeen different languages,” I said. “You can dance!”

“I can,” he agreed.

“You know about cool old music.”

“Some,” he hedged. “I’m no expert.”

“So you do things other than working,” I pointed out. “You like a lot of different things but maybe right now, you’re not getting the chance to enjoy them.” We continued to move and I focused on how his hand felt around mine, and how his other was supporting my back. It was very nice, actually, even if we weren’t pressed up together like Liv and—well, now they were also making out, which was their prerogative as the bride and groom, I supposed.

“I like different things,” Granger agreed. “And I guess I did do more than work, before I had the restaurant.”

“You must have.”

“That’s all I have time for now, though. It’s the only thing that’s on my mind tonight, for example. All I can think about is what’s happening at Amunì without me there. I’ve gotten so many messages from them today.”

“They’re—oh!”

We’d spun again and I laughed at how fast we’d gone. “But I do enjoy different things,” he went on. “One thing I’d enjoy is seeing you again. I didn’t like how it went the last time, how I left you in my office then insulted you by hinting that you were after me somehow.”

“Well, that was weeks ago. It’s water under the bridge,” I said quickly. “Are you—”

He was, in fact, dipping me, because the song was coming to an end, and then he swept me back up to stand. I laughed as he righted me.

“What do you think, Addie? Could we hang out again? If I promise not to leave you to sleep in an empty office, if I promise to talk and not make terrible conversation? What about if we eat meals at the times we’ve planned and I keep us out of my restaurant so you don’t have to reorganize my delivery schedule? That driver was asking about you the other day.”

The band had picked up into a fast song and Juliet and Grace had taken off their shoes (both pairs belonging to the former), signaling that this party was about to really start. But we still stood in the middle of the dance floor. He said something in his husky voice, and I had to lean closer to hear.

“Could you give me another chance?” he asked.

I nodded. I could definitely do that.

“Let’s go, Addie!” Sophie yelled, and grabbed my hands away from his. My sisters and I spent the rest of the night out on the floor, but I also watched Granger. Mostly, it seemed like he was watching me back.