How to End a Love Story(58)
She pulls at his shirt in response, and he lifts his arms so she can pull it off him.
Ah. Grant Shepard’s solid chest, in the flesh. Her hands return lightly to his shoulders and one adventurous finger drifts slowly down to explore the ridges of what looks like must have been hard work. She’s never been much fascinated by men’s built, naked torsos—she’s always preferred a certain bundled-up cozy sweater vibe that makes her feel like she’s living inside a men’s J.Crew catalogue. But as she feels every hard muscle of Grant Shepard’s perfect chest expand and contract to her touch, she thinks maybe that’s just because she never thought she’d encounter a body like his in the flesh, when she had permission to touch and explore and, as his labored breathing suggests, titillate.
She thinks vaguely she must have seen him shirtless before, running and passing her in gym class, maybe, and wants to shout back at herself, across the void, “Run faster!”
“How does something like this even happen?” she asks, as her hand runs down his abdomen, and he laughs.
“Working out clears my head,” he says. “Sometimes I think too much.”
She wants to lick every inch of him until he doesn’t have a thought left in his brain.
He must see some trace of it on her expression, because he swallows hard, then watches her face for a reaction as he lowers his hands to unbutton his jeans. Helen inhales, then turns around sharply. She hears his chuckle and the soft thwump of fabric hitting the floor.
“I’m trying to be polite,” she says. “Stop laughing at me.”
She hears drawers opening and shutting, then feels the mattress dip below her and the warm weight of his knee on the bed. She turns around and he’s wearing sweatpants. He settles so that they’re sitting up facing each other and hooks one leg behind her, pushing her closer into the frame of his body.
Suddenly the cold January air vanishes into radiating heat and she feels like a dumb bunny caught in a trap.
He brings up a hand to her hair, and his thumb brushes her temple.
“Sometimes,” he says softly, “I think you’re afraid of me. But you always have the upper hand.”
She doesn’t feel like that’s true at all. In the entire history of their knowing each other, he’s been the one everyone listens to, the one who seems to be comfortable everywhere she feels out of place. The one who can see right through her, all these years later.
If she had the upper hand, she’d have answers for his too-honest questions that continue pinging back and forth through her bones. Why did you come? She still isn’t sure, but she’s starting to forget it was ever an option not to.
“I’m not . . . I’m not trying to date anyone for real right now,” she says, in a rush. “Not when I’m going back to New York in a couple months.”
Grant makes a slight “hm” sound as he tucks her hair behind her ear. “So Greg the casting director wasn’t real, then.”
She feels certain he can see the rapid tattoo of her pulse trying to fly through her skin.
“Just a way to pass the time,” she agrees. “I thought I could use a distraction.”
“I could distract you,” Grant murmurs, as his knuckles run down her arms. “What do you need a distraction from?”
“I, um,” Helen exhales. “I can’t remember.”
“See,” he teases, and his words bring him tantalizingly closer, but not close enough. “It’s already working.”
She’s about to close the gap between them but Grant looks down instead and lets out an amused “huh” when he sees his address scrawled on her inner thigh.
“Sorry about that,” he says, his thumb brushing her flesh. “Went a little caveman there.”
“I didn’t mind it so much,” she murmurs, and the corner of his mouth kicks up.
“So.” His eyes flit to her lips and she licks them in anticipation. He swallows. “Wanna watch this forty-five-minute cabinet-building tutorial with me?”
As it turns out, woodworking tutorials on YouTube are a very cozy way to spend a Friday night. She sits beside him, not quite touching, as he explains the inside jokes being dropped by the dry-humored, grandfatherly woodworker on the screen.
“Ha,” she laughs, feeling sleep tugging at her senses as she sinks down into the pillow. “Never show me these videos again, please.”
Grant chuckles. “Okay,” he says, and captures her chin to brush a quick kiss to her mouth. “I’ll put in headphones.”
Some warm, unfamiliar feeling floods her chest, and she pushes it down as she nudges her way onto his shoulder, his right arm curving around her as his left reaches for the headphones on his nightstand.
She watches him watch the video for a while, one earbud trailing onto his chest, and she thinks of their time together on the plane, when he looked younger and less invincible, watching Babe. She thinks perhaps this is the only angle from which to catch a glimpse of this version of Grant, slightly off to the side and looking up toward him. It might be her favorite view of him.
“It’s a pretty good view for me too,” he says, and slowly she realizes she must have said it out loud before drifting off to sleep.
Eighteen
When Helen wakes up, the sun is streaming in through the windows and Grant’s arm is slung heavily across her, trapping her body against his. It’s a warm, welcome weight and she feels a kind of delirious relief that it’s still there, that she didn’t fever dream the last twenty-four hours. She stares at his far bedroom wall, registering the way it looks different in the daylight—less cozy and safe and more like a normal, everyday wall. She swallows and wonders what they could possibly say to each other this morning, after last night. Gradually, she senses his breathing go from slow and deep to shallower, and something hard nudges against her backside.