Page 165 of Built to Fall
Grant tucks a finger under my chin and tilts my face toward him. It’s not even flirtatious, really. It’s reverent. Like he wants to make sure I’m looking at him when he shares the good parts of his life.
His smile tells me before he says, “It’s a girl.”
He says it with that quiet kind of joy that creeps up on you, not the loud kind that takes over a room. It’s more the kind that tucks itself into your chest and stays there for as long as you’ll let it.
And I think that’s what Grant is like, really. He doesn’t overwhelm you. He just shows up. Until one day you realize he never left.
“A girl,” I repeat, quieter now.
He nods.
I try to imagine Grant holding her—this tiny, wrinkly, screaming creature with all those gorgeous Vandenberg features—and I know without a doubt, he’ll be the softest version of himself with her.
He’ll braid her hair and let her draw on his arms with glitter pens. He’ll carry her favorite stuffed animal in his coat pocket when she asks him to. I know this. I know it with the same certainty I know my own name.
Grant will hand her everything he never had. He’ll lose sleep over whether she feels safe. He’ll keep showing up, again and again, the way he does now.
And I know, too, that it’ll wreck him. In the best, most beautiful way.
“You’re going to be her favorite,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
Grant’s mouth twitches. “I better be.” Then, after a beat, “You’ll be her favorite too.”
I freeze.
I don’t know why it catches me off guard. Maybe because he says it so casually. Like it’s a given. Like there’s a version of our lives where I’m still around when that baby girl is old enough to know who I am. Like he doesn’t doubt that I’ll still be here.
But I do. I always do.
Because I haven’t trusted permanence. I’ve never trusted the idea of people staying.
Yet, everything about this conversation makes me want to.
Because Grant is my boyfriend. I know this because before we fell asleep, I yawned and looked over while we were watching a space documentary and asked,“Are we dating?”
He had given me a confused look at first, but then when he deciphered my question through the yawn, he countered with,“Was that not assumed?”
Of course, there was a bit more of a conversation, but it was all the confirmation I needed.
Grant Vandenberg is mine for the foreseeable future.
“Do they know what they’re naming her?”
He shakes his head. “They have a list, but Abby wants to have a baby naming party where everyone gets to vote on what name they like the best.”
“Well, make sure they know Gigi is already taken,” I joke.
Last Friday, during Grant’s weekly phone call with his sisters, I got to join in. The two of them wanted to hear about everything, and I’m pretty sure I ended up talking to them longer than their brother. Grant didn’t mind. In fact, he had held the phone for me while I lay across his lap, hearing all about their lives while also periodically filling them in on my own.
Growing up as an only child where my dad also wasn’t in the picture, I never really wondered what it would be like to have siblings. My mom and I were enough for me.
Now, I’m flooded with relationships that I can only describe assisterly.My roommates, Savannah, and Grant’s sisters.
They’ve all entered my life so suddenly and yet so seamlessly. I can’t keep from feeling a bit undeserving of it all.
As if I stumbled into this and have been completely knocked off my feet by the feeling of belonging.
“We’re all going to the lake house next week. The girls requested that you come,” Grant says, breaking me from my thoughts.
