8. Grayson

Chapter 8

Grayson

A smile is plastered to my face when I wake up the next morning. I will my lips into a frown, as though I'm tying weights to the corners, but it's useless.

I pull on black shorts, deciding against wearing a shirt in the morning heat. My black running sneakers are perfectly lined up beside my everyday sneakers. I step into the ones for running, the soles are chalky white from the bleached pebbles of my driveway.

The sun is usually still rising when I do my daily run. I never set an alarm, my body always wakes me up before the sun has even peaked above the horizon, but today I was surprised to see it was nine thirty when I first opened my eyes.

There are children building sandcastles and splashing around the beach. Adults are wearing floppy hats that shade them from the relentless sun. I ignore the static prickling the side of my face that's begging to glance at her house, to see if she's dancing behind those tiny windows.

I run so fast that sweat burns my eyes and my muscles strain to hold me upright, and then I push myself even farther, until all I can think about is pulling oxygen into my lungs and not the woman living next to me. The one I've mistakenly given a hundred reasons to dislike me.

Once I'm back on my street, I slow to a walking pace, with my chest heaving and sweat gleaming. There's an Amazon package at my front door, and I already know what it contains when I bring it inside. Three novels that Macy wrote. I flip through the pages. There are thousands of words all thought of by her.

I go out onto my back porch, not even bothering to clean myself up as I sit on the white wooden chair, perch my leg onto the other and read the dedication page.

To those who prefer a fictional man to a real one.

I laugh and flip to page one. By the time I'm thirty pages in and fully invested in the characters, a sound catches my attention.

Macy is shooing away a pelican that stands on her porch railing, only a foot from where she's sitting on a swinging bench, laptop resting on her thighs.

I clear my throat, knowing she'll hear it from the twenty feet that separates us. Her eyes flit to mine, then down to the book in my hand. I grin at her, then go back to reading. I feel her gaze on me, but I will my eyes to focus on the page, hardly able to focus with her staring.

In the span of four hours, I sneak a few glances at her focused expression. Her lips are moving like she's mouthing the words she types. Every so often she goes inside only to return a minute later with a mug of what I can only assume is coffee. I think she's on her third cup by the time I get two hundred pages in. My stomach is empty, no doubt hers is too. I call a delivery service on the island to pick up some food from The BARnacle.

I read twenty-six more pages by the time the delivery person is ringing my doorbell. I walk through the house, hand her some cash and retrieve the three heavy bags. Macy is concerningly unaware of her surroundings while she works. "You look hungry," I say.

She jolts and when her eyes set on me, an expression of pure disdain is my only greeting. I ignore the incredulous look she's giving me as I set the takeout bags on her little wooden table and start grabbing boxes out of them. I thought the airdrop thing would make her laugh, but now I'm starting to think I pissed her off even more than I already have. "I didn't know what you liked, so I got a little of everything."

She blinks up at me. "Why?"

"Because you've been out here for hours, and I haven't seen you eat once. And I'm starving too."

She sets her laptop aside and peeks in each box, settling on the order of shrimp tacos. "All this food is going to go to waste." She takes a bite, and a piece of grilled shrimp falls out of the taco.

A second later, the same pelican perches itself on her railing. I reach into Macy's box. "Don't," she says fiercely, pointing a finger at me. I toss the shrimp to the bird, who gobbles it down without chewing.

I feel myself smile as I take a seat on the chair across from her. "You don't like our friendly neighborhood pelican?"

"He stares at me as if I'm the one with the pea sized brain."

I want to laugh at that, but her expression is so serious that I think better of it. "Are you afraid he's right?"

She rolls her eyes and finishes her taco, moving onto the next one.

"How do you do it?" I ask, digging into my french fries. "Come up with an entire world with characters that seem so real." I shake my head. "Judith is my favorite, by the way."

She laughs. I would teach myself to be the best comedian if only I could hear it daily.

"Everyone else thinks she's bitchy."

I give her a long once over. "I think she's misunderstood. I like her fire."

Her eyes soften and she nods in agreement. She holds up her last taco. "Thank you."

I know she's referring to the food I bought, but I need to stretch that kernel of niceness she's given me, so I ask, "For?"

She shoots me a pointed look.

I grin.

"I feel like I should try to eat the seven remaining boxes, so it doesn't go to waste."

"You can," I say. "Tonight, for dinner."

She glances at the ensemble of food and then I clarify. "With me. At my house."

She shakes her head immediately.

I carefully place all the boxes of food back into the bags and step down her porch, calling over my shoulder. "See you at seven, Tato. Or else I'll have to throw away all this perfectly good food." I won't let the food go to waste, but I don't tell her that.