How to End a Love Story(55)

“I like everything,” he says instead, and picks up a beignet. She plucks up another one and clinks it against his in a whimsical move.

“Cheers,” she says, then pops it in her mouth and moans slightly. “Fuck, that’s good.”

He catalogues this moan as a new one, and picks out another beignet.

“What’d you talk about on your date?” he asks casually.

Helen looks up as she licks cinnamon-sugar from her fingers. She stretches out a smooth bare leg until it lands on his lap. His left hand slips down to squeeze her shin.

“The usual stuff,” she says. “Where are you from, what do you do for fun, where do you see yourself in the future.”

“Hm,” Grant says, massaging her calf. “Did you kiss him?”

“I don’t usually kiss on a first date,” she says, leaning back and dropping a second leg in his lap. She closes her eyes as she murmurs, “That feels good.”

Grant swallows. He pushes her legs off of him and stands. Helen opens her eyes and blinks up at him, looking like a cat who just got shoved to the floor from a perfectly acceptable lap.

“What?” she asks.

He frowns. “Nothing.”

She tilts her head. “You’re annoyed with me.”

“You kept me waiting,” he mutters, glancing at a clock. “Maybe I want to go to sleep.”

“Do you want me to leave?” she asks.

He lets out a short, dismissive breath. He grips the back of the chair, because his hands can’t be trusted around her. He has the terrible feeling that he’s played almost every card he has, and she’s barely even started.

“Why did you come?” he asks finally.

“I wanted to see where you lived,” Helen says. “I wasn’t sure when I’d get another invitation.”



Helen holds her breath, waiting for him to kick her out. She wouldn’t blame him—it’s late, and she’s committed the terrible sin of showing up to a meeting without first knowing what she wants from it. Suraya had warned her early on to always have an agenda in mind (“otherwise, it’s a waste of everyone’s time, and yes, they’ll remember”).

Why did you come? She hadn’t expected him to ask her so directly, not when she hadn’t even asked herself the question yet. Honesty seemed like the best move, but as she watches a muscle tick in his jaw, she thinks maybe it’s time to excuse herself and flee before the humiliation of him sending her away becomes inevitable.

Instead, he says, “Let’s play a game.”

This is how she finds herself sitting on an ottoman across from Grant on the couch, playing Connect 4 on his coffee table.

“I used to play this game in the basement of a church in Westfield,” she says as they build the frame of the grid, slotting polished wooden parts against each other because it’s a nice, adult version of Connect 4, just like everything else in his house feels like a quietly decadent combination of nice and adult. “My parents were always the last ones to pick me up from summer camp, and the nuns who ran the aftercare program only had three games—chess, checkers, and Connect 4.”

“I never got to go to a real summer camp,” he says, sorting the red and black chips out. “I was always in some kind of forced football training regime.”

“It wasn’t what I hoped it’d be, if that helps,” she says. “I always imagined camp being cabins in the woods, canoes, and crushes. This was more like school if the classes were all electives. I took pottery and band and a poetry workshop.”

Grant lifts a brow. “So there are poems, is what I’m hearing.”

“Pretty sure I burned them all,” Helen answers, then grabs her portion of red chips and drops one into the left side of the grid. “Your turn.”

Grant frowns at the game. “I wrote some poetry once. It was about you.”

She looks up at him, and he studiously drops a black chip on the opposite side.

“Liar,” she says, and drops a red chip.

“I’m serious,” he says, and she catches the ghost of a smile at the corners of his mouth as he drops a black chip. “‘All the Conversations I Want to Have with You.’ That was the title. It was a creative writing assignment, my freshman year of college. We were supposed to write poems addressed to someone we wanted to talk to, but couldn’t.”

“I don’t believe you,” she says, and drops another chip. “Can I read them?”

“No,” he says. “They’re on an old hard drive my laptop isn’t compatible with anymore.”

“I bet we could salvage them—the technology exists,” Helen muses.

“I’d rather just talk to you now,” Grant says, and her stomach does a funny flip when he looks up at her. He taps the frame. “I got this game as a wrap gift. They had a whole thing with Connect 4 on this show I worked on and they gave all the writers customized Connect 4 sets after production.”

Helen picks up one of her red chips and inspects it.

“The Guys,” she reads, and drops her chip to block his.

“It was my first big show as the number two,” he says, and drops another black chip nearby.

“Like you are on our show.”

“Kind of,” he says. He blocks a run of three of her red chips with a decisive drop, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been so attracted to someone while playing Connect 4. “It’s different on every show. That one was created by these two brothers, Dan and Chris. Good guys, good writers too. But I don’t think they were very good at handling the politics behind the scenes, and we got canceled pretty quick. Paid for the down payment on this house, though.”