Page 18 of Real Fake Husband

We pull up outside the diner, and she unbuckles her seatbelt. “I’ll be done late. I’ll just take the subway back.”

“What time? I’ll pick you up.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want you to go to the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, eyes narrowed with clear distrust. “Why are you being so…nice?”

“Do you want me to be mean?”

“It’s what I’m used to from you.”

“Come on, Josie, that was years ago. I’m not that person anymore.”

“Really? Because you’ve been a total dick since the second I walked through that door.”

I lower my voice. “And you’ve been Miss Good Manners?”

She purses her lips. “Fair point,” she concedes. “I guess I don’t know what to think when you’re nice. I want to know what’s going on in your head, Cal.”

I put the car in park.

Cal. She never called me that.

I turn my body in the seat to face her. “I’m trying to make light of the situation, not because I don’t take it seriously, but because there’s no point in making things harder on us than they already are, Josie. I want to respect my grandmother’s wish and make the best of it. That’s what she would’ve wanted.”

I see a shift in her expression.

“Give me your phone,” I say.

Her smile starts to fade. “Why?”

“Just do it.”

With a wary expression, she bends and grabs her phone from her back pocket. She unlocks and hands it to me. I quickly enter my number. “Just text me when you’re done, and I’ll swing by.”

She puts the phone back where it was. I can’t tell if she’ll take advantage of my offer or not.Probably not, I think. “Okay. Thanks. It probably won’t be until after seven.”

“Damn, woman, that’s a long time. Seriously, you need to talk to your boss about these shifts.”

“My boss is cool. I don’t mind it.”

“Maybe you should.”

She gives me a strange look, yet for once, doesn’t offer a retort. “I’ll see you later,” she says, and then she’s gone.

The traffic thins the farther away I drive. I notice a flower vendor and pull over to purchase a bouquet. “Don’t you dare show up on a woman’s doorstep empty-handed, Callum,” I remember her telling me whenever I went off to hang out with a girl.

She’ll probably haunt me if I don’t bring her something.

Flowers safely on the front seat, I drive to the place I haven’t seen in years.

There are flowers everywhere. Heaps of white and pink roses decorate the area around the tombstone. They’re still fresh and in full bloom, swaying in the light rain. Gran always loved to make a splash, and I made sure this was no different. It looks like Gramps’s grave has had a little TLC too. While not as ornate, his tombstone still shines as if it were erected yesterday. His also has flowers, but nowhere near as many as Gran’s.

“You always loved white roses,” I say, kneeling by Gran’s gravesite, leaving my bouquet right in the middle.

I glance over at Gramps’s grave.

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