Page 73 of Catching My Dreams

“What about me?” Ella asked, pouting to emphasize her feigned displeasure. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m your girlfriend, Warner.”

“Crazily enough, I haven’t forgotten,” he replied, turning to the previous page in his sketchbook. “Which is why you get this.”

It was a drawing of Archie, his tongue hanging out his mouth and his eyes wide and sparkling with joy, like he was about to be fed or go for a walk. Penny, Sophia, and her grandmother cooed over the picture, and Ella had to hold back the “aww” that desperately wanted to escape her throat.

“That will do,” she acknowledged with a nod of her head. She would show him her gratitude for the drawing later when they had some privacy, but for now, she sent him a grateful smile. “Some of your best work.”

He shrugged and flipped the page to continue his work in progress. “Definitely beats my Andy Warhol phase.” He shuddered. “So many soup cans.”

Ella laughed. “You could do a series of Archie sketches. Think Marilyn Monroe, but with a Yorkie.”

Noah shook his head. “Absolutely not. I respect his work, but Pop Art isn’t really my thing.”

She imagined a fifteen or sixteen-year-old Noah painting a series of soup cans, his eyebrows drawn together in intense concentration like they were now. “Anymore, you mean,” she reminded him with a grin.

“We all have things in our past we’d rather forget,” Noah retorted, lifting a challenging eyebrow. “Like the bangs you had at the start of sophomore year in high school.”

Ella covered her suddenly red face with the hand that Penny had already finished working on. “It’s not my fault the hairdresser cut them too short,” she grumbled.

“Oh no,” Penny groaned, sending her a sympathetic wince. “I’ve been there.”

“I remember that haircut. It was awful,” her gran contributed helpfully.

“Which is why I never have and never will have bangs ever again,” Ella said, dropping her hand and slumping her shoulders. “Do you know how cruel kids are? One boy told me I looked like Spock from Star Trek in front of the whole cafeteria.”

“What a little shit,” her gran said, making Ella chuckle.

“It was Travis Miller,” Noah said. “And yeah, he was a little shit, which is why I gave him a black eye the next day.”

Ella gaped at him. “That was you?”

Noah shrugged. “He deserved it.”

Ella’s teeth dug into her bottom lip, and she shook her head. Noah Warner was just full of surprises.

“See,” her gran said. “I told you he was a good one.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “He is.”

???

“Your gran is something else,” Noah said once they’d dropped her back at her room in the assisted living facility.

He and Ella were in his car, heading back to her place, and their hands were twined together and resting on the armrest between them.

“She can be a lot to handle,” she said, amusement tingeing her voice.

“She’s great.” He let go of her hand to indicate and turn at a traffic light, but then he linked their fingers together again. “Reminds me of my mom a bit. She’s just unapologetically herself.”

Ella hummed in agreement. “Thanks for coming with us. I hope it wasn’t too boring.”

“I had fun,” he assured her. “I just wish we could have taken her up on the lunch offer.”

The two of them needed to be on campus soon to prepare for the game, but otherwise, Ella would have also liked to have spent more time with her gran. “If you’re happy to, I’m sure she’d love to go out with us for dinner sometime,” she suggested.

“We should definitely organize that. Maybe my mom can come too?”

Ella’s chest warmed. It felt unbelievable to her that the two of them were at each other’s throats a week ago, and now they were talking about having a dinner with their families. It felt too good to be true, too surreal not to be a dream.

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