“Plants are difficult because they can’t tell you if they’re hungry or cold or if you didn’t rotate them exactly thirty-seven degrees and feed them filtered rainwater collected by moonlight. Then they just keel over. What you need is a dog. Dogs always tell you they’re hungry or want to play. It’s hard to neglect a dog.”
“I can’t have a dog,” Grayson said. He seemed really hurt. “If I can’t be trusted with a plant, I certainly can’t have a dog.”
“You need a pet,” I argued. “You can’t just live here alone. It’s sexy when you’re in your twenties, and intriguing in your thirties, but you start pushing into the forties, people will talk. You’ll be a magnet for the neighborhood busybodies.”
“Can we just drop it,” he said, voice strained.
The rest of the meal was tense.
I decided I had definitely misread the tea leaves in thinking that Grayson might be interested in me. That didn’t mean I was kicking him to the curb. Oh no. Grayson was my new project. He was in need of many a good deed.
I texted McKenna when I left the penthouse to take a car service home, which Grayson had insisted on.
Lexi:Do you want to go to the pet store?
30
GRAYSON
After sleeping fitfully, curled up under the blanket that still smelled like smoke and Lexi, I woke up on the terrace in the cold morning, my breath fogging around me as the sun rose. I leaned back and stared up at the pink sky.
“Why do you have to ruin everything?”
Last night had been the first time I’d ever really felt somewhat close to normal, and I couldn’t let it go over a stupid fucking plant. And now it was Sunday, and I didn’t have the luxury of meetings, calls, or emails to distract me.
“This is one of a whole host of other reasons why your mother now doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.”
I shouldn’t have been so emotional about a plant. Lexi was right.
It was just that, when I had finally landed a job out of college, I had had this vision of how my life was going to go. I was going to be successful, with lots of money, a beautiful home, and a pretty, generically inoffensive, but also successful girlfriend who my mother would approve of. We would have a golden retriever and lots of friends. My mother was going to see that I was nothing like my father and want me back in her life.
But then my one shot at a relationship had flamed out, and the fern I had bought died.
Lexi thought my home looked like it belonged to a serial killer and I had no friends. The closest I had was Lexi, who was the exact opposite of what a good corporate girlfriend should be—not that she was ever going to be my girlfriend, and she sure as hell wasn’t my friend. My mother wouldn’t approve of Lexi at all. My mother liked nice things, fancy restaurants, and had an understated style. Her hair was always professionally styled, makeup just so. She would find Lexi with her Disney-inspired clothes and flyaway curls and incessant chatter to strangers distasteful.
Good thing you didn’t kiss her.
Except I wished I had.
Because while I lived my life by making choices I thought might finally earn my mother’s forgiveness or at least tolerance, with Lexi it was the first time in my life I even considered saying fuck it and doing what I wanted.
The doorbell rang.
I opened it to see Lexi grinning up at me maniacally.
She carried a glass terrarium in her arms that was partially concealed by a pink checkered cloth. There was a leash looped over one wrist, which was tethered to …
“Say hi, Gizzy!” she said in that high-pitched voice people used to talk to babies or small dogs, not five-foot-long iguanas.
The reptile lumbered into my penthouse.
“You’re not giving him another steam bath, are you?” I demanded.
“No, I’m going to do that when you’re out of town next week.” Lexi stuck her tongue out at me. And just like that my mood lifted, the sunshine of her filling the penthouse, warming my soul.
I prowled after her, not too closely—Gizzy seemed territorial—as she headed to the open living-and-kitchen space.
She set down the terrarium on the kitchen island and rubbed her hands together.
