How to End a Love Story(39)

Grant releases her and she drops the phone with a clatter.

A middle-aged man strides toward them from the far end of the hallway. His walkie-talkie beeps from his belt and he points an accusing finger at them.

“How did you get in? I’m talking to you!”

Helen glances at Grant.

“Run,” he says, and grabs her hand, before sprinting for the closest door.



As it turns out, running wasn’t the smartest idea.

“You tripped a silent alarm,” Vice Principal Peters tells them in the parking lot, where he’s waiting with two security guards. “What were you doing in there?”

Grant watches Helen transform into a helpless female before his eyes.

“Oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing,” she says. “We graduated from here years ago, and we just wanted to come see the school.”

“By breaking and entering?”

“We didn’t break anything,” Helen says, and looks at Grant with wide, innocent eyes. “Did we? The side door was unlocked.”

“Yeah, I remember we used to sneak in through that door when I was a senior,” Grant says, pointing at the offending door. “The locks were broken even back then. You guys should probably get that fixed.”

“We’re not gonna get in trouble, are we?” Helen turns back to the vice principal anxiously. She looks at him as if he has their fate in his hands, which Grant thinks is laying it on a little thick. “I swear, we didn’t take anything. We just wanted to see where . . . where we first fell in love. Right, babe?”

She smacks Grant on the arm.

He clears his throat. “Yeah. Such a romantic, this one. I told her we’d get in trouble, but . . . you’re married, you get it.”

Grant nods at the ring on the vice principal’s left hand.

“Are you two married?” he asks, warming to them.

Helen looks to Grant wildly. “No. I don’t have a ring.”

Grant pulls her to his side. “Not yet, anyway. We keep arguing about how she wants me to propose. I’m still pitching football field at homecoming.”

Vice Principal Peters beams. “Well, that’d be a hell of a story, two Dunollie alums getting engaged at homecoming. I bet you’d even make the front page of the Ampersand.”

Helen huffs and Grant grins at her. “You hear that? We’d make the Ampersand front page.”

After exchanging email addresses with the vice principal (“in case you do decide to do something at homecoming”) and some thorough apologies for disturbing the peace on Christmas Eve, Grant and Helen walk silently back to the car in the north parking lot.

“Don’t laugh,” she says. “He’s still watching.”

“What do you think the headline of our engagement story would be in the Ampersand?” he asks as they approach the car.

Helen rolls her eyes. “I’d never have let a story like that on the front page. Maybe a blurb on the sports page.”

“‘Ex–Homecoming King Finally Finds His Queen,’” Grant pitches, hopping into the driver’s seat.

“‘Ampersand Standards Plummeting; A Former Editor-in-Chief Reports,’” Helen responds.

“‘Town Daughter to Wed Her Sister’s Slaughterer,’” Grant says.

A stunned silence follows this as Helen turns to look at him.

Grant freezes. “Sorry,” he says immediately. “Sorry—”

Then she bursts into laughter.

“Oh my god,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes. “You’re going to hell.”

“And you’re riding shotgun with me,” Grant says as he throws the car in reverse.



The sun is setting by the time he drives her back to her car at the top of Washington Rock.

“That was fun,” she says. It feels like giving something up when she says it—some part of her flutters anxiously, as if to say, What if he doesn’t agree?

“Yeah,” he says, smiling at her in a way that does funny things to her stomach. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Christmas? Helping my mom clean the house, then cooking for all the Chinese aunties and uncles coming over for dinner.”

“Sounds like a good Christmas,” he says.

If he were anyone else, she’d invite him over.

“You wanna do something the day after?” she asks instead.

He nods. “Sure. You pick the time and place.”

He’s leaning against the car door, his arms folded across his chest as he watches her face. It occurs to her that there’s something incredibly dear about him standing like this, and she’s aware of a sudden gladness that he’s here with her.

A thought bubbles into her mind, and it grows insistent.

“Would you . . . would you come with me to see my sister?”

He stills and she thinks maybe she’s made a mistake reading him. It’s too big an ask for so new and fragile a . . . friendship? What are they to each other?

He clears his throat, then nods.

“Sure,” he says finally. “If you want me there.”

She thinks about the day of Michelle’s funeral, of him showing up in a sweater and tie to the one room where his presence wasn’t just unwanted, it was firmly rejected. She wonders if he’s thinking about it now too, as his brown eyes seek out hers.