Page 73 of Betting on the Boy Next Door
Chapter Twenty
Sami
Idon’tmeetJoshon the balcony.
I can’t. I need to cocoon my moth self after such an intense night. The adrenaline of performing. The dopamine of spotting Josh in the crowd. The serotonin that floods my system from being in his arms for a few seconds.
It’s too much. It’s a pinball machine of feeling, and even if they’re all good, the higher the score, the worse you feel when you eventually lose. I’m stretched too thin between band gigs and full-time work to lose at pinball.
I’m too tired to even make metaphors work. I’m too tired to write new music. I’m putting all my energy into my job and the band, and it leaves me with enough energy to sit on the balcony sometimes and, if I’m very lucky, muster the energy to half-heartedly write some lyrics while I hope for Josh to distract me.
But this is a shelter-in-place kind of night, like from a storm. A hormone storm. A hide-beneath-my-blanket, dive-into-sleep, stay-there-as-long-as-I-can kind of night.
Like I said: a cocoon.
It works out pretty well. I wake at nine, which means I’ve gotten a full eight hours of sleep, something I haven’t done in a couple of weeks. I might have gone even longer except my phone is buzzing.
I grope along my nightstand until I find it and squint and the screen. It’s my grandmother. I’m already smiling when I answer it. “Hey, Grandma.”
“Hey, honey.” I don’t think about Austin people having much of an accent, but Letty Hancock Webster is Hillsboro born and bred, and it’s in every syllable she speaks. “You finally taking my calls?”
I feel bad. A conversation with her is never less than half an hour, and I don’t have extra ones of those lying around. “I’m sorry, Grandma. Whenever I have time, it’s always late and I don’t want to wake you up.”
“You working?”
“No, I have Sundays off. I think I’m mostly going to try to recuperate from too much work this week.”
“So if I told you that I’m an hour out of Hillsboro and on my way to you, you’d say I ought to keep coming?” There’s a smile in her voice. She knows she’s always welcome.
“Yes! Yes, come, Grandma! I need a grandma day so bad!”
“You’re overdue for one, and since you plainly weren’t going to have time to drive home, I’m bringing it to you.”
“You are the best in the whole world!”
“You better believe it. See you in an hour. Don’t eat.” She hangs up.
I stumble to the top of the stairs and yell down, “Grandma Letty is coming!”
I hear the patter of feet and Ava appears at the bottom of the stairs. “She’s coming today?”
“Yes. In an hour.”
She whoops. “I was heading out to the lab, but now I’m sticking around.”
I grin at her before I disappear into my room to strip my bed and put the sheets in for a good washing before I jump in the shower.
My grandma is right on time, knocking on the door exactly an hour later, a flowery weekend bag slung over her arm, a light cloud of her gardenia perfume trailing her into the house. She hugs and squishes Ava and me, then holds me back and looks me over.
“Too skinny. Both of you. Where’s Ruby?”
“Out with Niles,” Ava says.
“I’m sure Madison’s still in bed too,” Grandma says. She knows us well. “I’ll see her this afternoon. Let’s go eat.”
“I’ll drive,” Ava says. “I have a bigger car.”
It’s true but it’s not why she’s offering. Grandma is a holy terror in her fifteen-year-old Malibu. We get into Ava’s Pilot, and I breathe a sigh of relief when I get my seatbelt buckled without seeing Josh. I don’t know what to say about why I stood him upagainfor our balcony chat.
