ONE
ELLIE
Grandpa Gus had been trying to marry me off to Daniel Costello for the better part of a decade.
He wasn’t subtle about it. Augustus Granger had never been subtle about anything in his seventy-three years on this earth, and he saw no reason to start now. Every Sunday dinner, without fail, he found some new angle. Some fresh piece of evidence that we were, as he put it,cosmically intended. Tonight’s exhibit was apparently the fact that Daniel had shown up with the same brand of sweet tea I’d brought, which Grandpa seemed to think was the kind of synchronicity that justified a church ceremony and a reception with a live band.
He waved his fork between us like a conductor cuing an orchestra. “You can’t tell me it’s not a sign.”
“It’s the only sweet tea brand the Piggly Wiggly carries since they stopped stocking Milo’s,” Daniel said.
“Details.”
I hid my smile behind my glass. Across the table, Daniel caught my eye, and the corner of his mouth pulled up like we were sharing a private joke the rest of the world wasn’t in on. Which, to be fair, we usually were.
That was the thing about Daniel and me. We’d been best friends since the third grade, when he’d appointed himself my personal defender after I’d dropped my lunch tray in the cafeteria and stood there frozen with humiliation while a circle of kids stared at the weird new kid in school who’d lost her parents. He’d picked up half the mess without a word, daring anyone to comment, and that had been that. I’d spent the rest of third grade teaching him to read a little better, and he’d spent it making sure nobody messed with me on the playground. Twenty-some years later, the basic dynamic hadn’t changed much.
We had history. We had shorthand. We had a lifetime of inside jokes and emergency phone calls and knowing exactly how the other one took their coffee.
What we did not have, and had mutually agreed we would never have, was whatever Grandpa kept insisting we were missing.
“You two would make beautiful babies,” Grandpa said, moving on without shame to his next point.
“Grandpa.”
“I’m just saying what I see.” He stabbed a green bean. “Two good-looking people. Good heads on their shoulders. Daniel’s got a steady job?—”
“I’m a firefighter, Gus, not a stockbroker.”
“Steady enough.” He waved his fork. “And Ellie, you’ve got that sweet little house, and you’re good with people, and Lord knows you can cook.” He gestured broadly at the roast on the table, which, yes, I had made, because I enjoyed cooking and not because I was auditioning for the role of Daniel Costello’s wife. “You’re wasting time is what you’re doing.”
“We’re not wasting anything.” I kept my voice gentle, because I’d learned a long time ago that arguing with my grandfather was like trying to reason with a golden retrieverwho’d spotted a squirrel. All energy, no yield. “We’re happy exactly how we are.”
He looked at Daniel. “You happy?”
Daniel leaned back in his chair with the easy confidence of a man who had also spent years navigating this exact conversation. “I’m happy, Gus.”
“You don’t look like a man who’s happy.”
“I’m eating a home-cooked roast on a Sunday. I’m thriving.”
Grandpa made a dismissive sound and reached for the bread basket. He wasn’t angry—he never was, not about this. It was more that he genuinely could not comprehend how two people who obviously cared about each other could be content to leave it at friendship, like we were willfully ignoring a door standing wide open.
Maybe from the outside it looked that way. I could admit it. Daniel was—objectively, as assessed by most of the women in Huckleberry Creek—extremely good-looking. Thick, glossy brown hair, square jaw, muscles from actually doing physical labor rather than performing it in a gym. He was funny and steady, the kind of person who showed up when things went sideways, no questions asked. I’d known all of this since we were eight years old.
I also knew he left his shoes directly in the path of maximum tripping hazard, that he thought “I’ll figure it out when I get there” was a legitimate life strategy, and that he had once talked me into driving two hours for a barbecue festival and then remembered halfway there that he’d gotten the date wrong by a full week. I knew him the way you know a person when you’ve let them see the messy parts of you and they’ve shown you theirs in return.
Such knowing was rare. It was worth more to me than any door Grandpa thought we should walk through.
And Daniel knew it too. We’d talked about it once, years ago, with the blunt honesty that only works between people who trust each other completely. We were better as friends. The friendship was the thing. We weren’t willing to risk it.
Grandpa had never accepted this reasoning, but he’d never stopped loving us either, so we mostly let him have his theories and kept showing up for Sunday dinners.
“All I’m saying,” Grandpa continued, the way he always wrapped up this particular sermon, “is life is short and love is not something to be careless with.”
“Nobody’s being careless,” I told him.
He pointed his fork at me one more time, softer now. “You make sure of that, sweetheart.”
