Page 121 of Heartbeat

“Is there a third option?”

“There is,” he said, smiling. “We can just stay in bed all day and wait for tomorrow to come.”

“Great!” I put my cup on the nightstand and got myself comfortably nestled on his chest. “Would you get in any trouble if you spent the night again?”

“Nah,” he said as he tucked my hair behind my ear. “My mom’s cool.”

“She is?”

“She probably won’t even notice.”

“Are you close to your mom? You hardly ever mention her.”

“She’s…complicated.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, she’s great. She’s a good mom. It’s just…she’s never been good with kids, especially hers.”

“Oh.”

“You see, my parents are good people. They’re just not very affectionate. I mean, they are. They’re great at talking about how much they love me. It’s showing it that has always been the problem.”

“Your dad too?”

“Pretty much. Yeah.”

“How come you’re like this, then?”

“Like what?” He chuckled.

“Like this,” I said, holding up the hand he’d been locking and unlocking fingers with. “Warm like this.”

“You think I’m warm?”

“I know you’re warm.” I looked up at him.

He was still smiling. “Well, that’s probably the work of Grandma Cooper.”

“The same Grandma Cooper that got you hooked on tomatoes?”

“Yeah, you can thank her for this, too, I think.” He lightly squeezed my hand.

“Tell me about Grandma Cooper,” I said as I started drawing shapes on his skin with my forefinger.

“Oh, she was…the finest human being who’s ever walked this earth. My parents always worked a lot, so it was always just me and her. We never had babysitters; she was always the one who took care of me—even after the divorce. She’d go to my mom’s or my dad’s and spend the day until they got home. But it was when I got to spend the night at her place that I really liked.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“She’d let me do anything I wanted. I’d build forts; she’d play Lego with me, creating these endless buildings that had no reason to stay up; she even played video games—she was vicious at GTA.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“We also did a lot of stuff she liked. She’d take me to museums; we went to the movies, like, all the time; I’d watch cooking shows with her, and she’d always bake a cake so I could have some of the batter. I never really liked frosting all that much, but the batter?”

“That’s sounds amazing.”

“It was,” he said, stroking my hair. “She used to read a lot too. My parents like to think I love books because of them, but it was really Grandma Cooper who got me into them. She’d read me Brothers Grimm fairy tales when I was little, every night—over the phone, even, when she couldn’t do it in person. As I got older, she started reading me Poe, Austin, Marlowe. Everyone, really, but mostly Marlowe.”

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