Page 49 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
Sam knew objectively that she hadn’t stopped walking, yet it felt like Grant had hit pause on all her thoughts in the most painful way. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, he had a point. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest that if she managed to pull off all her mother’s requests, then she would magically be okay with Sam making her own choices. But how could she just stop doing all this? What would happen to their relationship if she tried to renegotiate the terms? She wasn’t ready to give up on her mother. The compromises were still better than letting her parents down and getting cut off again. She’d rather be spread too thin than not know if her dad went to the hospital or force Isaiah to speak on her behalf. The strain was just too much when a solution was at hand. A boundary might have helped Grant with his family, but Sam would have to take baby steps.
The feel of uneven pavement underneath her feet pulled Sam out of her reflective moment. She could sense Grant monitoring her. He wasn’t watching her, more reading her energy and giving her space to process his words and respond. She just wasn’t sure she was ready to be quite that vulnerable with him. After all, one ice cream didn’t make him a trusted confidant or anything. And like he’d said after the Anjo interview, he had a vested interest in her resolving things with her mother so she could focus on opening the center and keep crises off his desk.
“You are probably right.” Sam took another crunchy bite of ice cream cone to break the tension. “On the upside, Isaiah may be the favorite, but with the Lost Key, I’m gonna give him a run for his money.”
Grant chuckled under his breath, as if he could appreciate the joke but wasn’t quite ready to let his line of questioning go. As he took a bite out of his sugar cone, Sam focused on their surroundings. They were at the edge of a grassy park dotted with people lying on blankets, enjoying bottles of wine and lying out to catch a bit of sun. She heard kids shrieking as they rolled down the hill, sweaty from running as their parents pestered them about sunscreen and drinking water. A vendor was dragging a cooler and a basket of baked goods that Sam stronglysuspected contained more than just flour and sugar in them, occasionally stopping to offer people a cold drink or a cookie.
“Is that a weed man?” Sam asked the first question that came to her mind.
Grant’s laugh was full as he shook his head. “It’s Dolores Park. You have to have a weed man. Otherwise, you don’t know if you are in the right place.”
“Go figure. Dolores Park is good for weed.”
“It’s really more edibles. They run articles about the best ones in a couple of the alt newspapers,” Grant said, offhandedly, as if “The Best Edibles in the Park” were a normal newspaper story. After a beat, he grinned and added, “They also do movies in the park. I took my little cousins to watchFinding Nemoa couple of years ago. It was actually delightful.”
“Was it delightful because you ate an edible?” Sam teased.
“I’m a medical professional and won’t confirm or deny anything.” Grant snorted at his own joke. “Really, I was thinking more about how uncommonly warm it was. Usually, the little ones get cold, and you end up giving them all of your layers and carrying them to the car halfway through the movie when they pass out.”
“Well, that’s adorable,” Sam said, fighting to keep the look that accompanied cartoon hearts off her face. “I’ve always wanted to go to a movie in the park, but my friends and I could never get it together back in Ohio. The only time we managed to plan something, a freak summer storm rolled through and crushed the dream.”
“Whomp whomp.” Grant’s tone gently mocked.
“It was whomp whomp,” Sam said, laughter seeping into the edge of her voice. “Thank you for acknowledging that.”
“You’ll just have to go to movies in the park in California. The parks department is running them now, I think. I’ll text you the schedule. So not to change the subject, but Duke waving from the window,” Grant said, reaching out toward a trash can to throw out the napkin that hadonce been wrapped around his ice cream cone. “You said he had questions. Are you going to tell me what they were now?”
Sam’s panic alarm sprang to life as she tried to come up with an answer that wasn’tmy roommates will think this sounds suspiciously like a date.Although now that she thought about it, she could see how walking slowly around a park and eating ice cream might seem like she was on a date ...
Nope. Sam checked herself. They had independently paid for their own ice creams, for crying out loud. There was no earthly way she was going to tell Grant that her friends—and apparently her myth-based, completely fabricated, scientifically nonexistent lizard brain—thought they might be dating. She might be willing to be honest about her mother, but there was not a snowball’s chance in hell she would be honest about why Duke had been in the window.
“Ah, well, Duke wanted to know what kind of car you drove because I said it was nice, and he and Jehan said that only drug dealers or trust fund babies have fancy cars as fellows. I said your parents worked in the arts and nonprofits, so a trust seemed unlikely. I guess Duke wanted to see the car for himself.”
For a moment, Grant just blinked at her, a stunned look glued to his face. And then he started to laugh, that same glowing look from the Lost Key flooding over him. Sam felt her pulse slow down and her own smile return as she watched him grin.
“Sam, I hope you didn’t put money on me.”
“Why?” She narrowed her eyes. Using her best suspicious voice, she asked, “Are you the Dolores Park weed man?”
Grant laughed even harder and shook his head. “No. I do have a trust fund, though.”
“What?” Sam balked. Maybe she misunderstood how much money opera singers made. Google could be misleading.
“My biological father—his name is Gary—is a banker based in New York and Hong Kong. He is where the trust comes from.”
“Oh,” Sam said, letting silence fall between them for a minute before echoing Grant’s words from earlier. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I actually don’t mind.” Grant smiled over at her, then said, “My mom got pregnant when they were both in college. At the time Gary didn’t want to be a father. My mom met my dad, Wei, not long after I was born. They married when I was two, and he legally adopted me. As far as I am concerned, I only have one dad—Wei. He read me bedtime stories, came to my soccer games, took me to some god-awful piano lessons, and saw me graduate from medical school. My dad did the emotional work that dads do, so that title remains his.”
“Makes sense,” Sam said, watching Grant’s face soften again as he listed all the things his dad did for him.
“Anyhow, I guess when I was around ten, Gary got in touch with my mom. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but as far as I can tell, she worked it out so that whatever he would have wanted to pay in child support, he would put into a trust. To be honest, I don’t think she thought about how much money was actually on the table. I think she thought maybe a year or two of college and then he’d get over it and move on.” Grant laughed, then added, “To her credit, she never lied to me. When Gary was in town, she would give me the option to see him. Sometimes I did; sometimes I didn’t. Anyway, when I turned eighteen, Gary actually made good on his promise. I didn’t need all the money to get me through school, so my trust turned into my car and house fund.”
“That is better than college. Those car seats feel like a hug.”
“I know, right? I love those things. They make traffic a luxury experience.” Grant beamed over at her as they walked back toward where they had parked.
For a moment, Sam let herself war over whether to ask Grant any questions about his story. Part of her was afraid that if she asked the wrong thing, he might close up again, and she would get Business Grant back. But another part of her wanted to know more about him. Howhe spent his time outside of the hospital, basketball, and apparently, having the time of his life in traffic.
