Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 103102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103102 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
She looks at me, considering whether she buys my explanation. She doesn’t, but she doesn’t press the matter. “The girls next door haven’t talked up MeetCute yet? I know you were over there earlier.”
“Meet what?”
“A dating app they created.”
“Huh.” I always imagined they would be entrepreneurs, but a dating app? That doesn’t seem like Deanna’s style. And Lexi never really dated when I knew her before. But maybe she’s changed. Maybe that was just a teenage phase and she’s past it now, ready for something long-term. With me? Possibly…
Grandma nods. “Supposedly has the best matching algo in the world. You don’t even add a profile pic. It’ll find your perfect match based on nothing but cold, hard facts.” She holds her hands apart. “Do you believe that?”
“No.” If I was on that app, I doubt it would match me with Lexi. On paper, we’re too different. But love isn’t about what’s on paper. There’s a magic to it that can’t be calculated.
“Me neither,” she says.
Grandma is like me in some ways. She believes in magic. Only her idea of magic skews toward sex, not love. She writes erotica. That’s her full-time job.
My grandmother, the erotica author.
When I was a kid, she kept the mentions of the subject vague. Your grandma writes books about relationships for adults. Then, when I turned thirteen, she explained it to me—along with giving me “the talk.”
I already knew a lot from Fern and North, but I still wasn’t ready for Grandma to hand me a banana and a condom and say you’re old enough, you need to know how to use these.
She asked me to come to her if I ever had questions or concerns. She asked about who I was dating, if the relationship was physical, what I wanted.
Some people would find it intrusive or strange. And I suppose it is a little strange, compared to the average American family, but it’s normal, too.
We’re open about sex.
We don’t share lurid details, but we don’t shirk the subject, either. People have needs. They fill those needs. Nothing wrong with that, as long as everyone is safe and on the same page. Sure, casual sex isn’t my thing. I want an intimate experience. Something closer to making love.
But I don’t judge people who see the act another way.
“You’re thinking about sex,” she says.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “You think everyone is always thinking about sex.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Because they usually are. If not sex, then what’s on your mind? You’ve got a certain look— Oh.” She darts a quick glance in the direction of the house next door. “You’re thinking about Lexi.”
“I wasn’t.” At least not right at that moment. “But now that you mention it, yeah, I talked to her earlier. She invited me to her party tonight.”
“River.” She packs years of intention into my name. “She’s seeing someone. The same guy for a while now.”
A stone drops in my gut.
No… Lexi is a lot of things, but she’s not a cheater. Did I misread her?
I fight to keep my expression neutral. “And?”
“You like her. You’ve always liked her.”
“I’m going to a party, not a private hotel room.”
“She looks happy,” Grandma says. “The happiest I’ve ever seen her.”
Then why did she invite me to talk, alone?
My thoughts scatter as my heartbeat picks up. Lexi said she wanted to talk—I need to not get ahead of myself. Take this one step at a time. I assumed “talk” meant something else, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe talk just means talk, and she wants to be alone so we can catch up without distractions. Like her sister. There’s something going on between them and I don’t want to get in the middle of it.
“If she’s happy, she’s not going to go after anyone else,” I say. “And I’d never go after a woman in a relationship.”
Grandma returns to her usual firm-yet-loving tone. “Don’t be naive, sweetheart. The world isn’t that simple.”
She carefully pours the tea into two mugs, and I decide to keep my mouth shut. There’s nothing more to say—we silently agree to disagree. Grandma knows she can’t change my feelings for Lexi just because she’s with someone else. Even I can’t do that. So she’ll just have to trust me on this one. I’m not a cheater. Neither is Lexi.
But I am going to the party tonight. And I am going to talk to Lexi, alone.
At her Sweet Sixteen, all I wanted was to talk to her. To tell her how I feel. I’m not going to blow this opportunity now that I’ve got a second chance to do it.
I’ll tell Lexi how I feel, and that’s it. The next move is hers.
Chapter Five
Deanna
Thankfully, Jake arrives early. As usual, he and Lexi make a perfect Orange County couple. The flawless blonde in pink and the handsome, tall, dressed-to-kill, but casually of course, Vietnamese man in a suit. They even have matching California accents. (In college, I made great efforts to rid my vocabulary of the word “dude.” Lexi went the other way, leaned into her aural resemblance to noted Orange County girl Gwen Stefani).