Page 22 of Happiness for Beginners

“Okay,” he said. “Here we go.” His lips were almost touching mine now. His breath literally tickled.

I closed my eyes. The air in my lungs seemed to flutter.

Then, just before the moment of impact, we heard the front door slam. Then GiGi’s voice, all singsongy: “Helen! You can’t possibly be asleep yet!”

We froze, noses almost touching, mouths barely an inch apart.

Then Jake said, “GiGi’s home.”

“You think?”

I had barely said the words when there was a knock at the bedroom door.

We jumped to opposite ends of the bed and were composing ourselves as GiGi walked in.

She wore an ice-blue mandarin-collared jacket, and her hair was back in a low bun, held in place with chopsticks. She had her leopard-print glasses on tonight, too. My favorites.

She beheld us, then, for a minute, with a smile that made it clear she knew exactly what we’d been up to. Or close enough. It would be just like her to comment on it, and I fully expected her to start teasing us, but she made a choice to go the other way.

“Darling girl,” she said then, swooping in for a kiss on the cheek. “You look delicious.”

She turned toward Jake and reached out to ruffle his hair. “Doesn’t she?”

Jake nodded without looking at me.

GiGi paused to look back and forth between the two of us. In that second, it felt like she’d figured everything out.

“Well,” she said then, turning for the door, “I’m making decaf. Come join me and I’ll tell you all about my X-rated book club.”

“You’re in an X-rated book club?” Jake asked.

GiGi paused at the door and gave us a naughty wink. “I’m the youngest member—at eighty-six. We’ve got to find some reason to stay alive.”

It was quite a shock to suddenly find ourselves in GiGi’s kitchen, getting her take on the naughty series they’d been reading—a bawdy romp through Chaucerian England.

Jake and I sat carefully at opposite ends of the kitchen table as GiGi weighed the pros and cons. “I’m very pro-sex, don’t get me wrong. At my age, I’ll take what I can get.”

Jake and I just nodded.

“And I can forgive the lack of historical accuracy during the Maypole orgy.”

Jake and I glanced sideways at each other.

“But the character development is lacking.”

“That’s what lost you?” I asked. “The character development?”

GiGi nodded. “And this probably makes me very old-fashioned, but I just don’t get the leather and the whips.”

“Your book club is reading a novel about S&M?” I asked.

“ChaucerianS&M?” Jake added.

GiGi nodded. “I’m the one who chose it! I admit I was curious. But now that I’ve read it, I feel stodgy. It just seems to me there’s enough pain in the world—and not nearly enough pleasure. I guess once you’ve had enough kidney stones, hot candle wax on the nipples seems less appealing.”

She wound up giving us the whole plot summary, and I can’t say it wasn’t gripping. Especially hearing words like “gag” and “bindings” from my highly refined grandmother. Before long, it was midnight. GiGi left us in the hallway as she turned off toward the master bedroom, saying, “Don’t wake me in the morning. I’m sleeping in.”

Jake followed me to my bedroom door—past the door to Duncan’s room, where he’d be sleeping. I put my hand on my doorknob and paused. Something about the moment, despite all the overly familiar time we’d spent together that day, made me nervous, like he’d just walked me home after a date.

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