Page 129 of What I Like About You

I nod. Pizza is good. I can do pizza.

Gramps says he’ll handle the food, so Ollie and I go search for a place to sit. It’s nice out, bright and sunny, and everything is crowded inside. Spring is here, so we snag a table outside, in view of the live performers scattered throughout the promenade.

In the open air, away from the claustrophobia that is Quincy Market, I canbreatheand enjoy this.

Three hundred One True Pastry cupcakes have already been successfully delivered to Central Square Books. In a few hours, people will be at the event, eating those cupcakes, tweeting thosecupcakes. I’ll meet Ariel Goldberg. Maybe, if I’m brave, I’ll tell her they’re mine,I’m Kels.I’ll finally say it out loud, own it. She’ll sign my collection of her books and the weight of carrying them around in my backpack all day will be worth it. Everything about this day will be a success.

You will be a success.

“Ready for tonight?” I ask Ollie.

He looks up from his phone, mid-Snapchat selfie. “I can’t wait. You’ll never be able to top this present. You peaked too soon. I’m sorry.”

I laugh. “Challenge accepted.”

“Areyouready?” Ollie asks.

“I think so. I just hope my cupcakes don’t suck.”

Ollie sticks his tongue out at his camera. “We both know your cupcakes don’t suck.”

“What if Nash hates me?” I ask.

Since I can’t tell him here, today, like I wanted to, I’m going to tell him when we hang out tomorrow. I’ll show him pictures from the event, pictures of the cupcakes, and have a leftover cupcake for him. It’s not a perfect plan, but I’ve accepted that there will never be a perfect plan or the right moment to tell Nash the truth. I can’t force things to stay the same. Honestly, I don’t want them to.

I want him to know. I want him to know me.

Ollie lowers his phone, placing it on the table. “I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear.”

“Great table, kiddos.”

Gramps appears with the food and I’m grateful for the distraction because I almost definitely don’t want to hear what Ollie was going to say. We dig in and I burn my tongue, biting into the gooey cheese pizza too fast. Ollie is obsessed with hischowdah, and I swear he’s going to saychowdahevery day for the rest of our lives, just so he can see me cringe when he does. Sometimes, Ollie says the smartest things and I forget he’s fifteen. Then he sayschowdah, chowdahhhhh,and I remember.

“Did Mir ever tell you about our first date?” Gramps asks.

We shake our heads and I lean forward, my elbows on the table, anxious for another Grams story. The best part of today, besidesnotdropping three hundred cupcakes during the delivery process, has been story time with Gramps.

Most of the stories begin with, “In college …”

It’s jarring at first, imagining a Gramps who is in college, a Gramps not too much older than me, exploring these same streets more than fifty years ago. He and Grams met when he was a senior at Boston University. She was an editorial intern at a small press.

“I surprised her at her first improv show—”

Excuse me? This is brand-new information.

“Improv?” Ollie asks.

“Grams?”I ask.

Gramps laughs.

“I didn’t know Grams was funny,” Ollie says.

“She’s not.” Gramps shakes his head. “Byfirst improv show, I meantonlyimprov show.”

Ollie snorts. “Aw, Grams.”

I wonder what else I don’t know about her.

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