How to End a Love Story(71)
Helen has always been a good girl. She remembers her frustration watching Michelle move through the world and finding ways to upset everyone, all the time. She had envied it a little bit too—the idea of just not caring seemed so foreign to her, she sometimes couldn’t believe they had the same parents. She recognizes an uncharitable feeling of resentment rise against her little sister, even all these years later.
You had it so much easier than me, Helen thinks. You had me. And you still couldn’t stick it out?
Helen’s mom is in the middle of a monologue about the tragedy of having a daughter who claims to listen but doesn’t, really.
“It’s the natural order of life, Helen, your children are supposed to grow up and start a family and have children of their own,” Mom says. “You need someone in your life too, to take care of you when Mom and Dad aren’t here anymore.”
“I can take care of myself—I do take care of myself,” Helen reminds her. “I’m doing really well.”
“I know, I know,” Mom says. “Such a modern woman.”
Helen sighs. “If I ever meet someone who’s worth bringing home, I’ll let you know,” she says finally. “Just let me live my life in the meantime.”
“Hmph,” Mom says, as if that’s up for negotiation too, and Helen closes her eyes against the impending headache and wishes things were just a little bit easier.
Grant fiddles with his phone and tries not to interfere as Helen moves through her kitchen, looking slightly frazzled as she opens drawers looking for random tools.
It took them two weeks to get to the point of home-cooked meals, because they’d always become too preoccupied with other activities from the moment she stepped through his door and then it’d be too late and they’d be too exhausted to whip something up from scratch. Stop trying to distract me, he’d said this morning, heading straight for the kitchen. I bought eggs just to make you breakfast.
She insisted on returning the favor for dinner and he gets the distinct impression that she feels vaguely competitive about it.
“We’re doing salmon and rice, and green beans with a black-bean garlic sauce,” she announces. “I thought about doing this tomato-egg thing that’s really good, but it doesn’t work as a side dish for only two people. Maybe for breakfast, though.”
He thinks about suggesting they invite more people over then, but abandons the idea when she hands him a glass of white wine and kisses him on the corner of the mouth in a casually possessive way that tugs at some secret spot hiding just under his ribs.
“I’m linking to your Bluetooth system,” he says, and puts on a random playlist for cooking at home.
She looks up at him over her shoulder, with a sudden grin. “Is this the ‘cooking with friends’ playlist on Spotify?”
“Do you know it well?” he asks dryly, taking a sip of his wine and thinking she looks fucking adorable right now.
“I listen to it all the time when I’m cooking with friends,” she confirms. “I like looking up really specific vibes and then putting on someone else’s playlist for it. This is one of my favorites.”
He feels himself mentally tuck this information away, information that will be useless to him in a few months’ time but he’s fairly certain will stay lodged in his brain for much longer.
“What are you most looking forward to this week?” he asks, as she manages a beeping oven. “And what are you most dreading?”
“Meeting the pilot director in person,” she says. “Supposedly she’s really cool and young and Suraya convinced the studio to take a big swing on her. And dreading . . . the notes call with the studio on Thursday. They hate me.”
“They don’t hate you.”
“I’m like an extra limb they have to deal with—they never know what to say to me before Suraya gets on the call,” Helen says, spooning steaming rice into bowls. “It makes me feel like two inches tall.”
She drops a bowl of rice on the ground, then yelps.
“Hm,” he says, getting up from his seat to help her in the kitchen. “I thought maybe you would say you were most looking forward to seeing me back in the writers room.”
When he reaches the other side of the kitchen island, she grabs him by the collar to kiss him against the sink cabinets.
“You’re so fucking corny,” she murmurs against his lips, and he can feel her smile.
After dinner, they sit outside on the fake grass on the floor of her balcony. He leans against the wall and she drops between his long legs to lean back against his chest. His body seems to hum slightly with the contact and he bends to press his nose into her neck, a gesture he’s identified as one of her favorites by the way she always lets out a breathy little sigh as she nudges back with her cheek like a needy cat.
“You’d make a good boyfriend,” she says to the air.
He pulls back from her neck suddenly.
“Thanks,” he says, unable to keep the sharpness from his voice.
“What are you doing on this balcony with me instead of being all boyfriended up with some nice, appropriate girl out there?” She gestures vaguely at the street and the Santa Monica Pier ahead of them. She turns her face to look up at him shrewdly. “What’s your damage, Grant Shepard?”