Page 143 of What I Like About You

Gramps comes home from class a few hours later and I have to accept that cupcakes are hopeless.

Attempt number one ends in half a bag of powdered sugar spilled on the countertops. Attempt number two, I use special dark chocolate cocoa for the batter and it is bitter times a million, so I dump the batter in the trash. Attempt number three, I forget how to fill a piping bag and lose half my batch of semi-decent frosting to the kitchen sink.

This is not working.

My phone buzzes on the powdered sugar counters with a new Nash tweet.

Yes, I still have notifications turned on for him.

It’s just an #amreading tweet but I like it anyway. I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s desperate. But Twitter gives me the ability to interact with Nash in a way that I can’t IRL. It’s like reverting back to before all this started. With Twitter, I can say,I still see you.With Twitter, I can say,I’m still here,even if he doesn’t respond.

Nash knows this move. He did it himself, after all, when Kels tweeted about NYU.

So I like his tweets, I read every review he posts on Outside the Lines, and my graphic novel TBR has become as long as my YA TBR.

Forget the kissing and the falling and getting caught up in the fact that my life somehow became novel-perfect—I will never even think about kissing Nash again, about being anything more than his friend, if he’ll let me apologize. If it’s possible he’ll forgive me.

Every wrong choice was supposed to be in the name of not losing our friendship.

But that was never up to me.

And now, because of me, it’s all up to him.

My brain is a constant loop of cupcakes. BookCon. Nash. Cupcakes. BookCon. Nash. Cupcakes. BookCon. Nash. Cupcakes. BookCon—

“Hal?”

Hands wrap around my shoulders.

I drop the battered spatula in the sink.

“Halle.”

I turn around and, well, Gramps looks legitfreaked—kind of like the first time he caught me using Grams’s stuff to bake. But it’s been okay for a while, more than okay, so I don’t understand what is with the spooked face. I—

“Sorry, I’m—”

Gramps guides me to the table. “Sit.”

I sit.

“I want to talk to you—”

“How was class?” I blurt out, becauseI want to talkis the scariest combination of words.

“Um, that’s what I want to talk about.”

I frown, because I wasn’t expecting this. “Okay.”

“There is no class,” Gramps says.

My eyebrows scrunch together because I am so confused.

“I don’t have any classes this semester.” He scratches the back of his neck. “After Rosh Hashanah—well, I started going to abereavement group in New Haven. I wasn’t doing well, I know you know that, and Mrs. Jacobson suggested it.” Gramps coughs. “I wanted to be okay—or at least, uh, functional. For you kids.”

“Oh.” This is a lot to process.

“I had decided you should have her books, but building the bookshelves? It was an exercise, well, from my therapist.”

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