Page 15 of The Best Wild Idea
Grant
PS If you’re still not convinced to board a plane with Silas in the morning, then know that I’ve dangled four carrots for you to chase at each location around the world. Every time you reach a new place, another letter will be there waiting for you.
PPS You and Silas are the only people allowed to pick up the letters. Short of Silas’ death certificate in hand (don’t even think about it), both of you will need to be present to retrieve the letters from me along the way.
PPPS Monica’s business card is in the envelope. She’s waiting for your call. I love you.
Chapter 5
Juliet
In a daze, I set Grant’s letter down on the counter and pull Monica’s card out of the envelope. I feel dizzy knowing that Grant placed that card inside this very envelope himself while imagining me reading it one whole year later.
I set her card down on the counter next before taking a step back, staring at the collection of papers, feeling like I’ve just seen a ghost.
My body breaks out in a cold sweat while my heart pounds in my ears. How did he set all this up? Especially without me knowing? Did Silas know this whole time? Did he know when he came over that night?
My eyes land on the business card.
Monica Braverman, Luxury Travel Agent
The swooping cobalt blue M of Monica’s name looks too cheerful for the way I feel right now. Too cheerful and too real.
She’s written,Looking forward to your call!with a smiley face just below her signature line, along with what I imagine to be her personal phone number. I’ll bet she’s never received a call quite like the one I’m supposed to make right now, and maybe she never will again.
I push my hands against the cold, stone countertop and drop my head, exhaling slowly while trying to catch my breath.
This is not what I had planned for tonight, and certainly not what I’d planned for the next few weeks of my life.
Reading Grant’s words feels like a balm laced with salt, poured right into my broken heart, slicing through a wound that had only just begun to heal — somehow both soothing and extraordinarily painful at the same time.
Getting the slightest taste of him without being able to fully indulge doesn’t feel fair, but I also wouldn’t trade it. Not for the world. And knowing that at least four more letters like this are waiting for me in different locations around the world makes me want to drop everything and sprint straight to the airport.
Which means? I have to go.
Even if Silas is my travel partner.
Of all the people . . .
Why would Grant do that? Why would he ensure that each letter will only be released to me if Silas is there? Why wouldn’t he just send me on my own?
I mean, he’s right. At one point, the three of us were an inseparable trio. Silas was the brother Grant never had, and in turn, he was my best friend, too. At one point, he was one of the best people I ever knew.
Long before college and before I ever met Grant and Silas that day in World Civ class, those two were a package deal. Best friends. Bros for life. Coming from two incredibly connected families, both of them had attended the same prestigious boarding school just outside of Boston. They graduated side by side at the top of their class, then roomed together at Harvard, while I was there on scholarship. Most of Grant’s boyhood stories involved tales of Silas and him doing outrageous things together, sometimes with the other kids they befriended along the way, usually Dax or Ryeson, but always with each other.
I’d seen Si and Grant gallivanting around campus together early on in my freshman year. Noticing how cute they both were, if not completely opposite of one another. Grant with his serious nature and classic prep school good looks. A mop of thick black hair giving way to wide-rimmed glasses and dark blue eyes you could get lost in forever if you weren’t careful. And then there was Silas: a Ralph Lauren model in another lifetime. Unnaturally attractive, if not overly cocky and charismatic ontop of it all, making him extremely popular with girls on campus. His dark brown hair naturally held on to traces of the sun, with streaks of amber tones bringing out the flecks of gold in his forest green eyes. You could hear his laugh around campus before you saw him, usually up to something loud and generally obnoxious with Grant. But in the best way.
When in World Civ I’d asked the pair of them for a pen, knowing full well that I had at least two spares in my backpack, I’d simply wanted to get to know them. Grant asked me out soon after, and the rest was our history. I might have fallen in love with both of them, if I hadn’t grown so attached to Grant shortly after he took me out. I told myself that Grant was the safer of the two. The mellow, down-to-earth one between them that made me feel secure and cared for. But they complemented each other, and I felt lucky to have thembothin my corner.
I’d set Silas up with a few of my girlfriends over the years who were always batting their eyes at him and asking me if he was single, but I stopped doing that after realizing he was never one to settle down into anything serious. Which meant he was always with Grant and I, hanging out between his own hookups and dates, entertaining us with his playboy antics.
I loved them. One as a friend, and the other as my everything.
But that was before.
And I’ll never forget the week everything changed.
Grant and I got engaged. Then less than one week after that, Silas’ father died.
