Page 82 of Trip Me Up

He strained the milk into a jar and cleaned the equipment before he said the next thing. “She’s hiding something. Something big, by the looks of it. She married?”

I recoiled. “She’s only twenty-five. She’s still in school.”

“I was married, had your mom when I was twenty-five.”

“No, not Sam.” She wouldn’t have fucked me in the hayloft if she’d been married. Or would she? I’d assumed she kept her thoughts to herself because she was an introvert, but now that Grandpa mentioned it, I remembered she hadn’t told her brother about her book. Was there something she was holding back from me, too? Maybe Grandpa was right, and her silence was full of secrets like a beehive at dusk.

“Something else, then. The girl is smitten, but there’s something holding her back.”

“Smitten, huh?” A balloon of warmth inflated my chest.

“Son, you’re beyond smitten yourself.” He laid his rough hand on my shoulder. “Have a care.”

I laid my own callused, ink-stained hand over Grandpa’s. “I’ll try. But when I’m around her, I can’t help myself.”

Grandpa rolled his eyes up to the rafters. “You’re under her spell, eh? Like in one of your books.” He smiled crookedly. “Tell me, is Nieven going to end up with Lobelia at the end of the series?”

I stared at the wide planks of the floor. “I don’t know, Grandpa. You know I don’t plan before I write. The story comes to me. But—”

“But?”

“I don’t know how that’s possible. They’re friends, soul mates even, but Nieven’s an elf. And Lobelia’s”—I moved my palms about a foot apart—“a sprite. Tiny. And a princess. They’re pretty different.”

“Procreation would be a challenge, eh?”

“Yeah.” My eyes burned to check out the hayloft above us. It hadn’t been a problem for Sam and me. The opposite, in fact.

“We end the tour in San Francisco. I—I’m thinking about staying there. After the tour. I wrote some of my last book on the road. I can finish this one away from here.” Especially with Sam as inspiration.

“Did she ask you to go to California with her?” Grandpa checked the latch on the stall.

“Not yet.”

“D’you think that’s what she wants?”

“She said we’ll end things when the tour ends. But it’s what I want.” I’d ask her out on an actual date. We could go back to the beginning and build a relationship the way normal couples did.

When she was ready, she’d reveal what she was hiding.

Grandpa stopped in front of the barn door. “Careful with your feelings, son. After what happened with your dad, you can be sensitive to these things.”

He was right. If I were smart, I’d let her go before I fell any further.Or the hole that had gaped in my heart when my father left would reopen.

But I wasn’t smart. Not according to my father. And my heart had overpowered my brain again.

Grandpa led the way out of the barn. “Sounds like you have a week to change her mind.”

I latched the barn door and double-checked it. Changing Sam’s mind wouldn’t be easy. I wished I could will everything to fall neatly into place the way I did in my books.

But Sam was no fairy princess. She wrote her own dialogue. And I had to let her write the next scene.

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