“So, you’re here delivering flowers…?”
Nan places the last one, stepping back to survey her work. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by.”
“And you have a key.”
“That little detail can stay between you and me, can’t it?”
“Nan! You sneak! Are you telling me Abbott doesn’t know you sneak in here?”
Nan shrugs. “She must know—how do you think she supposes flowers just appear?” She fluffs the arrangement. “Elves? Please, don’t be foolish.”
“How often do you pop in like this?”
Now she turns to face me. Narrows a set of brilliantly blue eyes. “Are you suggesting I pop in unannounced when I’m not welcome?”
“What? No!” I mean, kind of, yeah. “What if she’s—you know…getting busy and you walk in?”
Nan scoffs, hefting the full vase off the hutch. “My granddaughter does not get busy.”
“How do you know?”
“Please—I would know.” Her tone is offended as she pads across the room in heels, setting the flowers in the center of the small dining room table. “Besides, if she were getting busy, she wouldn’t need all those toys in her bedside table, would she?”
Did she just say Abbott has toys in her bedside table?
Like—as in, sex toys? Vibrators and dildos and shit? There is no way her grandmother would just let that fun fact slip, and she should definitely stop using terminology like ‘getting busy’ before my brain explodes from this entire conversation. It’s too much to hear the words coming from this woman’s mouth. But then…the rest of what she just divulged clicks in my brain. I stare, mouth gaping.
“Who do you think bought them?” She fluffs her coiffure, plopping down on one end of the sofa and crossing her legs. “I’m not just a regular nan. I’m a cool nan.”
Okay, now my jaw is dropping. She bought her granddaughter sex toys? What the hell kind of grandma is this?
Eyes stray down the hall, toward the bedroom… I want to know what’s in that bedside table.
“Sit,” she demands, pointing to the opposite end of the couch. “Let’s talk.”
Let’s not. Nan isn’t the boss of me. I do what I want.
“Sit,” she repeats.
I sit.
“So. Brooks.” Her fingers entwine, resting on her knees. “You live across the hall?”
“Yup, directly across—Abbott has the better view.” Ha ha.
Nan’s smile is slow. “Indeed.”
Um…
“What is it you do?” Her features are sharp and directed straight at me. “Please don’t tell me you’re a travel blogger, or in finance.”
My posture straightens. “I’m an architect.”
“Ah!” She’s delighted. “Residential or industrial or…”
“Mostly hotels, resorts. High-rise apartments. Some neighborhoods.” Why do I feel like I’m being interviewed?
“Any pets?”
“No.”
“How do you feel about cats?”
We both look at Desi. “They’re tolerable.” At best.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
This makes me laugh, and before I can stop it, a loud one bursts out of me. “Uh—no.”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Um…nothing?”
Nan sinks lower into the cushions of Abbott’s couch, taking me in. “Ah, I see. You’re one of those confirmed bachelors who has no intention of settling down.” She plucks an imaginary piece of lint from her expensive suit jacket. “Well.” She waves her manicured hand around dismissively, diamond ring sparkling, bracelets jingling. “No matter.”
No matter? What does that even mean?
Nan is a piece of work.
“I don’t want a girlfriend.” Been there, done that.
“No one really does, darling.” Nan smiles, but she’s patronizing me. “You young people and your ambitions. So admirable.”
Don’t get your hopes up, lady. I’m not a piece of meat dropped onto a plate for your precious granddaughter.
“I don’t want a girlfriend.” I cannot stress it enough. And, technically, I can’t have one. So even if I met someone right now, I couldn’t do it—I’d lose my inheritance. Er, Jags seats.
I change the subject. “What does Nan stand for?”
She stares at me like I have half a brain. “Nana. Grandma. Granny.” She’s listing off all the synonyms for grandmother, and a slow heat creeps up my neck, to my cheeks, because I should have known better than to ask. Now she must think I’m a fucking idiot. “Gram-Gram. Nanna Banana.”
Alright, alright. I get the point.
“When Abbott and her twin brother—did you know she’s a twin? Anyway, when they were toddlers, Abbott refused to call me Grandma. For whatever reason, she couldn’t say it. Glamma was also a big no, no matter how hard I tried to make that happen. So we came up with Nan.”
Nan is definitely a badass Glamma, that’s for damn sure.
The loud knock on my apartment door has me listening for another, the water from the sink in my bathroom almost drowning the sound out.
I cut the water and strain.
Another knock.
Wiping the toothpaste off my face with the back of my sleeve, I weave through the apartment and yank the door open without looking through the peephole to see who’s on the other side.
Abbott stands there, wearing the same pink yoga pants she had on this weekend, bottle of wine in one hand, glass in the other.
Whoa. I didn’t realize she was a lush.
I move so she can scoot through.
“So, this is where you live?” She strolls inside like the Queen of Sheba, head craning this way and that, giving all my dumb shit a once-over.
I bow with a dramatic flair. “Do come in.”
She ignores my over-the-top gesture, still glancing around. “What are you up to?”
“Watching the game.” Brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, snacking, scratching my balls—the usual.
“We should go to one.” Her comment is offhanded as she fingers a vintage baseball, signed by the championship-winning ’82 Jags.
“We should?”
“Yeah. I love watching baseball, especially at the ballpark. Don’t you?”
“Sign me up. I love the Jags stadium.”
I fail to reveal I have season tickets. I fail to mention the Bastard Bachelor Society bet, in which my season tickets are bounty, up for grabs. I fail to mention that my tickets are pretty decent seats, considering my humble roots.
“My company has a box suite I can probably get permission to use.”
Never in my life have I been invited to watch a baseball game from one of those fancy, company-owned suites you always see on TV when the games are being televised, and I’m not stupid enough to pooh-pooh Abbott’s offer to sit in one despite owning my own seats. Just once in my life, I want to know what it’s like to be in one of those sky boxes, from the vantage point where I can see everything inside the stadium. All the action. Each and every play.
“The kind of suite with food?”