Page 67 of New Girl in Town
His eyes widened and he moved past Bianca so fast the smaller woman had to leap out of the way. “Aurora.”
I shook my head and moved toward the stairs. “I have to go. Have a nice night.”
“Aurora, wait!” Grant called after me, but I was already hurrying up my stairs in an outright run and slamming my door shut before he could come any closer. I wrapped my arms around my body and dropped my bag on the sofa.
“This sucks,” I whispered, hands going to tug at my hair. This was so much more than I had ever anticipated when I told Grant I needed time. Now there were cute blondes showing up looking for him? I was not prepared for this.
I sank down on a stool with a shaky sigh and avoided looking at the flowers still occupying prime real estate on my dinner table.
What kind of game was Grant playing?
My phone buzzed and I reached for it while I tried to stop the mortifying scenario that had just played out from flashing past me on repeat.
A text from Grant blinked on my phone and I almost shoved it back into my coat pocket, but because I was a glutton for punishment I opened it.
Bianca is Mrs. Reynolds’s granddaughter. I’m taking them both out tonight. This is not a date.
That stopped me in my tracks. She was what? Mrs. Reynold’s granddaughter? Sure enough, I heard the telltale sounds of them walking up the stairs to Mrs. Reynolds’s door.
“Grandma doesn’t have to come, you know.” I heard Bianca’s voice clear as a bell.
“That was kind of the point, Bianca.” Grant’s voice was gruffer, and I resisted the urge to look through my peephole and creep like I wanted to do. “Your grandmother wanted you to come tonight, and that’s why I texted you.”
Bianca grumbled something unintelligible, but then Mrs. Reynold’s higher voice joined them, and I couldn’t hear anything more than the tromping of their footsteps down the stairs and out the front door. I looked back down at the phone I still clutched and looked at the text he’d sent me.
This is not a date.
He knew what it looked like, and my dash upstairs hadn’t helped matters either. I groaned and dropped my head against the counter as I remembered how fast I had ran away. How was I even supposed to respond to his text message?
There was no emoji up to the task, so I put my phone down and slumped forward.
“Perfect. Just perfectly awkward,” I moaned into the countertop with my arms over my head. I must have looked crazy to him, so much so that the first thing he sent me in a week was a text to talk me down because a pretty girl had been at his door.
I was looking forward to my chat with Grant even less than I already had been. Now we had me sprinting away from him to add to our list of conversation topics.
Yippee.
I gave a deep sigh and pushed off from the counter. A good soak in the tub and a date with the leftovers I’d been thinking about all day were all I had left in me. I could think about the awkward conversation that awaited me when I came face-to-face with Grant tomorrow, but that was a problem for future Aurora, so I kicked off my shoes and relaxed.
* * *
“Hey.”
I looked up from getting my mail to see Grant standing a few feet away and regarding me with a cautious look.
“Hey,” I returned and gave him a quick smile that I prayed reached my eyes. After not talking to him for a solid week it was good to really look at him. The saying “sight for sore eyes” had never made more sense than it did while I took in the image he cut in front of me. Dark denim, work boots, a white henley pushed up to his elbows, his hair falling over his forehead in a way that made my fingers itch with the memory of running my hands through his it.
He was so damn pretty. I missed looking at him. Alright, I missed talking to him too.
If I didn’t say what I had to say then I would never say it. I sighed and shut my mailbox with a snap. “Hey, can—”
“Aurora, listen—”
Our voices filled the space and it didn’t take a genius to know we were both nervous as the words fell out of our mouths and tripped over the other’s. We both stopped speaking and looked at each other with wide eyes.
“You go first?” I offered, earning a weak smile from him as he rubbed his hands on his thighs and laughed.
“Yeah, I just...” His eyes slide away and he coughed. “Can we just spend some time together? I mean hang out.” He held up his hands and gave me a grimace. “I’m not saying like a date, but I just…” His voice trailed off in a sigh. “I don’t know.”
