My head lowers. Warner watches me, his eyes half-lidded. He looks the way I feel. Astonished disbelief.
“That’s how I kiss all my friends,” I joke weakly, mustering a smile even though it’s hard to call one up right now.
“Friends,” Warner echoes, the word turning over in his mouth as if it’s new to him. “It didn’t take us long to go back on that agreement.”
“True,” I concede.
He offers his hand. I stare down at it. “Is that for a handshake?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make sure we’re still friends.” His voice goes up at the end, like he’s asking a question.
“After that?” My eyebrows lift. “We’re still just friends?”
He has the decency to look embarrassed. “That kiss was probably a mistake.”
Something in my chest breaks, but I don’t want to show it, so I cover it up with a smile. I am, after all, a damn good actress. Placing my hand in his, I say playfully, “I should’ve known you’d be trouble from the second you pulled over to help me with Pearl.”
He holds fast to my hand and looks me straight in the eyes. “Make no mistake about it, Tenley.Youare trouble. Not me.”
But he’s wrong. He is so, so wrong.
13
Warner
“Where are you headed?”
I startle at the sound of Gramps’s voice. He’s sitting in his new front porch chair, the one Wes gave him for Christmas last year. A glass of iced tea rests on the table beside him, the ice half melted.
I step closer. Gramps’s hand trembles where it rests on his knee. I remember throwing a football around with him when I was ten, and thinking he was old. I had no idea what that word really meant. “Tenley has some photo shoot thing today and I told her I’d pick her up and take her to the archery range after. She needs to learn how to shoot a bow for the movie.”
Things have been awkward as hell between us after that kiss. Tenley tries not to let it show, but it’s impossible to ignore. A kiss that exceptional demands acknowledgment, and here we are trying to pretend it didn’t happen.
Truth be told, I can barely look her in the eye. At a moment’s notice I can recall the feel of her soft skin under my heated touch, how kissing her felt like sensory overload. Touch, sight, sound, smell. Like an avalanche of pleasure meant to bury me.
Being around her now is difficult, considering what I really want to do is drag her into my bed and get so lost in her that I never dig my way out. And it pains me to know I can’t. The timing and circumstances couldn’t be worse.
Gramps nods. “She’s a good one, that Tenley. A real good egg.”
I smile. “Yeah, she’s nice, Gramps.”Nice. Hah. How about funny, beautiful, interesting, and hardworking, to name a few? Also, a mind-blowing kisser. I swear to God I can still feel her fingernails dragging through my hair.
Gramps leans back. “Your mom told me you signed the divorce papers.”
I stifle a sigh. Divorce talk is one way to be jettisoned back to reality. “Can we not talk about that?”
Gramps frowns. “Don’t be like Wes. Keeping it all tucked inside is bad for you.” He waves his hand around. “Makes you angry and shit.”
“Is that right?” I can’t tamp down the sarcasm.
“Don’t sass me, boy. I know what I’m talking about.”
I sit down on the edge of a chair near him. “What do you want me to say, Gramps?”
He turns his face to me. Wrinkles pucker his skin, and age spots dot his forehead. His white undershirt peeks out from a missed button on his plaid work shirt. Suddenly, his age looks more pronounced than ever. I’ve been so busy these last two years, taking care of Peyton and Charlie mostly by myself, and in the years leading up to Anna leaving, I had to handle her. Gramps was there for every day of it, but I don’t know how much I’ve really looked at him. Sure, I’ve seen him, but my focus was inward. The aging process was continuing no matter what, but this is the first time I’m really seeing it. I feel awful, and it makes me wonder who and what else I’ve overlooked while I was busy managing the slow implosion of my marriage.
