Page 69 of I Did Something Bad
My embarrassment is replaced with a new heat when his fingers glide into the spaces between mine and his fingertips curl down into my palm.
“Can I… ask you something?” I drop my gaze to our laced hands.
His thumb starts making circles atop the knuckle of my own. “Don’t you always?”
“Why have you been telling people your grandparents are dead?”
“Because as far as I’m concerned, anyone who only wants to have a relationship with me and my parents because I’m now rich and successfulisdead to me. You know my mom’s parents kicked her out of the house when they found out she was engaged?”
The confession yanks my jaw downward. “Tyler—”
“And the thing is, my momknew. Sheknewthey’d react like that,so she only told them after she’d packed two duffel bags. I mean, who knowingly makes their own kid homeless?”
I remember what May said about how he used his first paycheck to buy his parents their dream home. “And your dad’s parents?” I ask. “Did they used to live here?”
He shakes his head. “Florida, I think. My dad called them from here to tell them about his engagement, and that was the last time they ever spoke. Well, until my first Oscar nomination,” he adds with a scornful snort. “Our parents never kept the story a secret from us, but it’s still weird as hell when your agent one day forwards you an email from someone claiming to be your grandfather.”
“I… can’t even imagine,” I say, processing all of it. My grandparents are all dead (actually dead), but I was their only grandchild, and while they were alive, they loved me like nothing I’d ever seen. Each set would literally try to bribe my parents into letting them babysit.
“They do this on and off. Guilt me with ‘blood is thicker than water’ shit,” Tyler says, rolling his eyes. “But truthfully, I feel like it’s only a matter of time before they strike up some deal with a shady tabloid and ‘spill’ stories about my childhood, which they never even saw. Or about how—” His voice starts shaking. I squeeze his hand to remind him that he’s okay, that whatever terrible memories he’s reliving right now can’t hurt him. He returns my squeeze, waits for his breath to stabilize, and continues, “—how I’m a terrible grandson who would turn his back on his own grandparents. How when they tried to instead reach out to my sister,theirgranddaughter, I told her to block them and had my lawyers threaten to take action for harassing a minor. How I told my parents that if they tried to bring their parents back into our lives, I would never speak to them again.”
“Tyler,” I say, not knowing what else to say. My own eyes start prickling.
“You know what the sad thing is?” he asks, biting down on histrembling lip as two new streams of tears race down his cheeks. I want to wipe them away, but I sense that what he needs—wants—the most right now is for me to justlisten. “Sometimes, I still find myself thinking that it’ssucha shame that they did what they did because I could’ve,would’ve,really, really loved them.”
And that is what breaks me, the final slash that splits me in half. On an autopilot mode I didn’t even know was programmed into me, I retract my hand from Tyler’s. I get to my feet and he looks up, dazed and eyes glimmering. “Wha—” he starts, then stops when I sit back down sideways on his lap. Taking him into my arms, I place my cheek on top of his head and run my hands up and down his back.
When he shifts, a jolt of embarrassment makes me lift my butt in the air a little. “Shit, am I too heavy? I can—” I begin to stand back up, hoping his tears will blur my mortified expression. Until I feel his arms lock on the small of my back and gently tug me back down.
“No, I just… wasn’t expecting that,” he says, resting his forehead into my collarbone. “You’re perfect. I, on the other hand, am a certified, clinical mess.”
“Oh, come on now,” I say, replacing my cheek on the crown of his head. “Why do you think we’d make the perfect Bonnie and Clyde? No fun having a partner in crime who’s got their shit together.”
“Youdo,” he says.
I laugh louder and more harshly than I mean to. “Tyler, I’m a murderer.”
“Self-defense.”
“I am a thirty-year-old divorcée. My marriage didn’t even last a year. Not even close. I went from a house with a green front lawn to a cold, empty apartment. I own precisely four mugs.”
His snort lands as a sharp blast of air on my skin. “Didn’t realize the number of mugs in one’s kitchen was an indication of their general stability.”
“Well, now you do,” I reply. “One of these days, more than three people are going to visit me and ask for a hot beverage at the same time, and I’m going to be utterly screwed. Humiliated. Disgraced. Discredited.”
“Okay,Oxford English Thesaurus. I knew journalism salaries were bad, but I didn’t know they were ‘can only afford four mugs’ bad.” I smile when I hear the teasing undercurrent start to return to his voice. It’s muffled, but it’s there.
Tyler pulls back and his eyes sweep across my face, his jaw flexing as he returns my smile. “Ugh,” I groan. “We havegotto stop doing this.”
“Doing what?” he asks with a hesitant laugh.
“This!” I gesture between us with widened eyes. “Spilling our worst secrets and fears to each other! It’s an emotional hazard! Ihatecrying in front of people, you know. Good lord, you conspire to cover uponemurder with someone and then before you know it, you’re—”
“Do you have any idea how much I want to kiss you right now?”
My mouth opens and closes without a sound. “Tyler,” I croak out with the grace of a toddler saying their first word. “You can’t just say shit like that. And to myface? Do you have no decency?”
His husky laugh makes me want to instantly cross my legs. “But it doesn’t matter, right? Because we’re not allowed to kiss.”
