“You’re such a sandbagger,” Crewgrumbles as Grace lays five different sets of cards down onto the tarp-covered floor of Crew’s tent.
Grace grins, carefully placing each one, fanning them out so there’s no confusion onhow manypoints she’s about to rack up. Crew holds only two cards, but he’s been holding on to them for the better part of fifteen minutes, itching to play them so he could use the large fan of cards she’d held in her hands against her with his win.
But Grace is no stranger to rummy tactics. In fact, she’s quite an expert.
“Don’t be a sour sport,” she volleys back. When she’s done laying out the riches of her hand, and only one card remains between her thumb and index finger, she looks at him, feigning innocence. “You’re up.”
He tilts his head, glaring at her. “I am aware.”
Grace’s smile widens. She’s growing fonder by the second of how cute he is when he isn’t getting his way. It must be something that doesn’t happen very often.
Scanning the cards in front of her for an out, Crew groans when he finds none. He reaches for the deck to pull a new card, peeks at it, then shakes his head in frustration. “You’ve riggedthis deck,” he proclaims, tucking the card into his hand. “I’m certain of it.”
Grace places a hand to her chest. “Are you calling me a cheater?”
“You heard me,” he says, then he nods toward her one card. “Go.”
“It’s not nice to call people cheaters. I, for one, am full of integrity when it comes to rummy. You’re just mad that I’m better at it.” Grace reaches for her own card from the pull pile. When she picks it up to reveal a king of diamonds, she keeps her poker face as neutral as possible. He doesn’tneedto know that unless he gets lucky this turn, she’s about to beat him.
He doesn’t get lucky. He just gets ornerier, in the most harmless, adorable way. He mutters under his breath and sneaks little glares in her direction when he thinks she isn’t looking. Grace tucks this information away for safekeeping: Crew Caldwell is a sore loser.
When she places her remaining cards down onto the victory-scape of her sets, she does so with gentle but purposeful force. And she doesn’t take her eyes away from him as she does it, clocking his expression as she lays the last one down and says, “Rummy.”
Instantly deflating, Crew hangs his head. “Jesus.”
“Look, you gave a valiant effort,” Grace says, sweeping up the cards. There’s no point in actually counting them—she was already beating him by a wide margin and definitely would’ve gotten past their agreed-upon two-hundred mark with this hand. “I just happen to be really, really good at this game. I used to play it with my grandma almost every day.”
Crew looks up at this, a glimmer of softness washing over him. “Yeah?”
Grace nods. “Yeah, she was the one who taught me the art of sandbagging. I used to get so pissed when she’d win after hoarding half the deck for the whole game.”
He chuckles. “Sounds like you were cut from the same cloth.”
“Yeah,” Grace says quietly. It surprises her, how casually she just brought up her family, how easy it was to tell him something about her life before. Pangs of wistfulness ache in her belly at the memory, but she doesn’t feel the urge to tamp it down, or shove it into a drawer in her brain and throw away the key. Instead, she wants to keep telling him about the woman who was once one of her favorite people in the universe.
“She died when I was still a kid. She was the best,” she adds.
Crew stares at her for a beat, and then leans back until he’s fully horizontal on his bedroll. He scoots over just enough for her to burrow in next to him, an offer he makes with his eyes as he settles in. When Grace hesitates, he gives her that painfully soft smile that she is very quickly beginning to love—beginning to understand on a molecular level. It means so much more than any other smile, carries so much more weight.
I’m with you,it says.I see you.
She lifts up onto her knees and crawls in next to him, and for a moment, it’s slightly awkward. She’s on her side, he’s on his back, and she doesn’t want to drape herself all over him the way she knows she should in order to be comfortable in such a tight space. But they haven’t—there’s been no realtouchingsince the previous day. Nothing as definitive as an all-out cuddle like this would be. Grace bites her lip, contemplating, holding herself still and stiff.
Crew makes the decision for her. Ever the steadfast, confident leader. He gives her no room for any further doubt when he slides his arm under her head, letting her use his bicep as a pillow. He takes one of her arms and wraps it around his torso, then sets his hand atop her elbow and begins to rub soothing lines up, down, up, down. It instantly puts her at ease, and it doesn’t feel odd or ill-fitting, the way they’ve tangled together so quickly. It feels like the shape of his body was carved specifically for her to fit against him.
He ducks his chin down and his lips are at her forehead; he presses a kiss there, lets it linger, and Grace’s eyes flutter shut. “Tell me more about her,” he says.
And so she does.
She tells him more than she’s ever told anyone. How her grandmother used to watch her on summer days when her mom was at work, and she’d lie on the couch and watch Mr. Rogers, and she can still smell the cup of coffee her grandmother perpetually drank—she took it with milk and cinnamon, and it was somehow always lukewarm.
She tells him about the hushed conversations her mom would have with her grandmother when she came to pick up Grace, the frustrated, animated way they’d talk to each other outside of the car, too muffled for Grace to know what they were saying. She’d figured it out eventually—it was about her father; it always was. Her grandmother had known from the start that it wasn’t a good match—that he was a sinking ship that would bring them down with him.
“ ‘Love makes you dumb,’ ” Grace says, quoting her. “ ‘Dumb and blind.’ ”
Crew stares down at her, wordless. His eyes search hers, andfor a moment, it seems almost as though he’ll argue. When he doesn’t, Grace looks away, and fills the space with more memories. Talking about the past, somehow, seems easier than addressing whatever look he was just giving her. Whatever declaration he may have been about to utter.
She tells him about falling asleep in her grandmother’s arms as she spun her around in a rickety chair at the dining room table, reciting a lullaby that wasn’t a lullaby but simply a string of proclamations said with the softest lilt of a melody:Mimi loves Grace; Mommy loves Grace; Papa in heaven loves Grace; Miss Winters loves Grace; Goose and Lulu love Grace.She’d always made sure to include Grace’s teacher and her two old, chubby cats because, of course, they all also loved Grace. Six-year-old Grace never doubted she was loved. She’d been told she was every single day.
