“Which I imagine was pretty low-budget to begin with,” I point out.
“Exactly.” For a moment, there’s a fond glimmer of nostalgia in his eyes, but it quickly fades. “My dad and I were just too different. I wasn’t cut out to be who he wanted me to be. But things didn’t get really bad between us until I told him I was going to grad school instead of joining him at the store.” He lets out a weighty breath. “That fucking store.”
“What happened?” I ask gently.
“Well, for background, it used to be called Hoffman and Sons,” he says. “Which is a lot to unpack, given that he named it that before any of us were born.Andthat he ended up having a daughter, too. But he expected us—me and Ted, specifically—to follow in his footsteps. In his eyes, you weren’t really a man unless you had a passion for knowing every kind of screwdriver and their full government names.”
“Well, that’s kind of ridiculous,” I say. “All you really need to know isthis is the flat one, this is the crisscrossy one.”
“Thank you,” he says. “Anyway, when I called to tell him about grad school, he was quiet for a minute. And then he said,All right, then, and hung up. The next time I went home, he’d painted over the sign to sayHoffman and Son.
“I mean, listen—it was fair. Hoffman and Son was a perfectly accurate description of who was running the store. But it felt like he was trying to prove a point. He was so chummy with Ted and just simmered with resentment whenever I tried to talk to him. I couldn’t stand it. So I stopped trying, but still hoped he’dchange his mind about me. I thought maybe he just needed time, that one day he’d call and say it was time we talked, or even just ask how I’d been. But then when the phone finally rang, it was my mom crying on the other end.” His expression has clouded over, a sharp line of pain etched in his brow.
“Oh, Grant,” I say, reaching for his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
He draws a deep breath. “I just hate that it ended that way. I always thought I’d get a chance to make things right somehow. I missed him, long before he was gone. Yeah, he could be stubborn and close-minded, but that wasn’tallhe was. He was also funny and smart, and he worked so hard to build something he could be proud of.Iwas proud of him. I wanted to tell him that. And I was angry, and I wanted to tell him that too. And then all of a sudden it was too late. It’s just …” He clears his throat, and when he speaks again his voice is rough. “It’s not the ending I would have wanted.”
My chest aches seeing him like this. In real life, sometimes shit happens and bad luck is just bad luck. But Grant’s life, and everything that happened in it, was by design. Someone did this to him on purpose, and for what? A good story? I wish more than anything that I could give him a different one.
“Maybe it’s not the ending,” I say.
“No, he’s definitely dead. He’d never have fit into his urn otherwise.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “I mean, he might not be around anymore, but that doesn’t mean the story of you two has to be over. Maybe the rest is just about how you remember him. Not as a villain or a hero, but just as your human father who could have been better and could have been worse. You can hold on to the things you loved about him even if there are memories that still hurt.”
He doesn’t speak for a moment, just nods quietly as he studies my hand in his, running his thumb over my knuckles. “Thank you.”
I squeeze his hand. “You know, a very wise dreamboat once told me the end of a relationship doesn’t have to negate the good things. Maybe that goes for fathers and sons too.” It’s advice I couldn’t really take to heart when he gave it to me, but now it clicks into place. Being here with him is so good that I can’t imagine anything spoiling it retroactively. “Maybe it even goes for storybook carjackers and carjackees who end up liking each other a lot.”
He’s looking at me in a way that I would have shrunk back from once, but now I want to sunbathe in it.
“A lot,” he whispers back.
It already hurts, knowing this is going to end. But if I get to replay those words whenever I want—remembering how he said them, solemn as a vow, his deep gaze holding mine and wrapping me up in warmth—then maybe it will even out somehow. Maybe I’ll be okay.
“In any case,” I say, pulling myself back to the present, “I hope you can be proud of your weird secret hobby now. It’s incredible, Grant. If your dad thought anything else, maybe that’s just because he never got the privilege of seeing you LARP a guy in the face.”
“YouLARPed the guy in the face,” Grant says, then acquiesces with a tilt of his head. “I did LARP the rest of him pretty well, though.”
“We’re a LARPin’ good team, you and I.”
He smiles and wraps an arm around my shoulders, and I settle in against him again. I want to memorize all of this, all of him. To tuck it away for safekeeping.
“It’s too bad you only asked for one book,” Grant says with a weak laugh. “Otherwise maybe we could have a sequel. Or a whole series.”
The bittersweet thought brings a smile to my face, and then it fades as my mind starts collecting fragments.
“I’m … not sure I did only ask for one book.”
Grant looks at me quizzically as I mentally journey back to the moment this all began—a street corner, a magic-maker, and an exasperated, tongue-in-cheek, secretly desperate wish. Something like hope is taking shape within me. “I wished to be the next Anna Matthews protagonist,” I recall.
“Which could mean more than one book,” he says, his face lighting. “More of this.”
“More of us,” I say, wanting to speak it into existence. But a snag of worry tugs at the back of my throat. “Would you really want that, though? I doubt she’d write a sequel about us vacationing uneventfully in the Bahamas. We’re crime-thriller characters, you know.”
“Crime-thriller-romance,” he corrects, lifting my hand to kiss it. Then he fixes me with such a heavy gaze that for a moment, I think I’ve made a mistake reminding him what the real story is—that it’s not all bedsheets and pillow talk. I brace myself to hear him say,Actually, never mind. I don’t want it. No one is worth that. But when he speaks, his voice is soft.
“If the only way we can be together is by chasing down serial killers, then I hope the world is full of them,” he says.
