Page 99 of Kiss the Girl
She leaned forward to take my knees again. “Noah. Come on. Do you really think if you and Grace commit to making this work that by the time you’ve done the long-distance thing for six months, you won’t both be dead certain about you moving there?”
“Grace needs some say in this too.” I still wasn’t sure the life I wanted for myself would be enough for a woman whose mother had raised her with high ambitions.
“Is she going to say no?” Her inflection said she already knew the answer. “Because watching you fake date Grace is the realest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“She already asked me to move to Charleston,” I said, a smile tugging at my lips, more hope exploding inside of me even as I tried to keep the safety brake on.
“Then what the heck are you waiting for?” Paige said with a whoop. “Go get your woman!”
I gave her a sheepish smile. “She may not be up for that. I’ve possibly definitely made it clear that I expected her to make all the compromises here.”
“I work a twelve-step program,” she told me. “And we are expert apologizers. I got you, Noah. Let’s figure this out.”
“Paige?”
“Yeah?”
“You are a total pain, but I love you.”
“I love you too, but you’d best be saying that to her. And don’t even try to deny it because I know it’s true.”
It was. It was as true as the laws of physics, the inevitability of Christmas, and the blue of Grace’s eyes.
Paige turned over one of the applications to its blank side and plucked a pencil from the cup on my counter.
“All right, big brother. Let’s make a plan.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Grace
Tabitha barreled into my apartment. “We’re on a mission, sis.”
I looked up from the laptop. “We are?”
“Yes. We need to go pick up Mom’s Christmas present.”
I turned back to my laptop. “I already got her one.”
“Like what? A sweater?”
I glared at her. “She likes sweaters.”
She snorted. “Trust me, what we’re about to go get for her will make her exceedingly happy and make our lives a little easier for the next twelve to sixteen years.”
“We’re getting her a giant bottle of tranquilizers?”
“Something better than a drug. Come on. What could you possibly be doing right now that’s more important than saving Christmas?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that for some of us—okay, me—Christmas couldn’t be salvaged. It was only the morning of Christmas Eve, and it was already the worst Christmas ever. Which was a bummer since I’d thought that about last Christmas when my dad had been so frail that he’d slept most of the day. This was supposed to be the Christmas to celebrate his return to health.
Instead, I was reading reviews for gyms and restaurants in Charleston to distract myself from how much I would miss Noah when I left. Maybe I could keep myself busy enough to fill up the space he’d taken, and I wouldn’t notice how much it hurt. Not that it helped at all so far.
I closed the laptop and got up. “What kind of mission is this? How do I need to dress?”
“You’re perfect as is. Drive out to Roanoke. I’ll tell you what we’re doing on the way.”
Roanoke was an hour away. “Tabitha…”
