Not wanting to think about it anymore, I gave in to my desire to know more about Griffin Windsor and grabbed my laptop, opening a web browser. It didn’t take long to discover that he was twenty-seven and a Gemini. I don’t know why I bothered looking that last part up; it wasn’t as if knowing his astrological sign would tell me anything about him. He’d gone to some fancy school and then Oxford and apparently had never had a relationship that had lasted longer than a week.
Since I liked only dysfunctional men, that had to be his thing. That he couldn’t commit.
Which I shouldn’t have cared about. I currently couldn’t commit to anything, either. As I’d already decided, there couldn’t be a relationship here.
Nobody is saying you have to date him. Just have some fun, a voice inside my head whispered to me. Maybe it was that proverbial devil on my shoulder that Griffin had asked about.
A short fling certainly had its merits. Who would be better at it than Griffin?
But I discovered that I didn’t like the idea of him being a womanizer. I preferred for him to be the kind of guy who wanted to adopt a golden retriever and then live happily ever after with me in his castle with a white picket fence.
Not that any of this actually mattered, because despite the temptation, I absolutely could not get involved with this man. I convinced myself that learning more about him was actually a good thing. Had to do my homework so that I knew what I was dealing with.
As I continued on my search, a link showed up that had his name and the word tragedy in the title. I read it and found out that Griffin’s parents had died in a car accident when he was just seven years old. It was so, so sad.
At that, I closed my laptop. I didn’t want to see any more. Picturing Griffin as a lonely little seven-year-old absolutely broke my heart.
I grabbed my phone, going to the gallery to look at the picture I’d taken of him. Yep, still scorching hot. I forwarded the picture to Alice. She really was going to need that heart transplant after she saw this.
At least one of us could be deliriously happy.
I woke up the next morning to a text block from Alice that was just a line of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEs and a bunch of emojis that I didn’t want to try to interpret because I got the general gist. Then she’d told me to call her ASAP to discuss everything.
Yawning, I texted back that I had to get up and work and would call when I got the chance. Some part of me thought it served her right to have to wait, what with her willing this whole situation into being and making the universe send him to me.
Then I felt bad about being petty when my sister deserved all the happiness in the world.
She quickly responded, asking, Up all night again?
I’ve had eight hours of sleep. It’s just taken me the last four days to do it.
I half expected her to write me back and tell me that my insomnia was the price of lying, but she just told me to have a good day and sent me a heart emoji. I texted the same one back to her and got up to start my day with Milo.
On my way to Milo’s room my phone buzzed. I was about to tell Alice I was serious about the whole I’d-talk-to-her-later thing, but it was a text from Sheila. She said that she was planning on being home that evening. So Milo and I spent the day learning about things he wanted to learn about, playing games, and it felt like he was more engaged in the stuff I was trying to teach him. I still felt completely unqualified to be doing any of this, but I kept trying my best.
After lunch we spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to be a friend, and how you should treat people with kindness and respect, and he soaked it all in like a tiny little sponge. We role-played and practiced having conversations with other kids and it was so cute how seriously he was taking it.
During all of this I couldn’t help myself—I kept checking my phone to see if Griffin had texted me. Not that I would have responded, because I was busy, but shouldn’t he have done what he said he was going to do? I was seriously miffed.
Milo and I decided to go down to the playground at about three o’clock to try out the friend thing. He put on a play hard hat and an orange vest over his shirt and sweats, and I couldn’t help but take note of the subtext of how he was trying to protect himself. I grabbed a couple of juice boxes and emptied the snack bin into a large tote bag. I didn’t know how much of an appetite Milo might work up and decided it was better to be safe than sorry.
He didn’t say much on the elevator ride down and when we arrived at the playground, Milo was nervous and hung back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do everything for him.
“Go out there and see if there’s a kid you’d like to meet. Then just do what we practiced. I know you can do this. I believe in you! I’ll be waiting right here for you.” I sat down on an empty bench that faced the playground. There were a lot of kids running around and screaming and Milo headed into their midst. I couldn’t believe how anxious I was for him. I made a wish that things would work out and I waited. If he was having a hard time, we’d talk about what went wrong and how we could try again tomorrow. He looked so small and lost on the playground that I nearly rushed out there to tell him it was okay, he didn’t have to do this.
“Diana?”
I turned to my right and saw Griffin. With a little blonde girl hanging on to his right leg. My heart did a happy jig at the sight of him.
My first thought was that he was even prettier in full sunlight than he had been in dim-room lighting.
My second was that he had a child and was obviously married and now I knew why I was attracted to him. He was a Cheating McCheater who also lied. Of course I liked him.
Karma was seriously going to smite me for flirting with (and lusting after) a married man.
I sat there for a moment, unable to process what I was seeing. “Griffin! You . . . have a daughter.” This changed everything I thought I knew about him. Married and a father. How could he not have even mentioned it to me?
“Not quite. This is Sophie, my niece. Sophie, say hello to Diana.”
My chest caved in with relief. “You’re not married?”
If he thought my question was strange, he didn’t show it. “Of course not.” His phone rang and he looked at the screen. “Pardon me for a moment.”
Sophie untangled herself from her uncle’s leg and ran over to me. She was wearing a pink sequined shirt with an orange tutu over purple tights. She should definitely be friends with Milo.
She cinched that belief for me when she held up her hand with all her fingers outstretched, her bubbly grin reminding me so much of Griffin. “My name is Sophie and I’m five years old.”
“Hello, Sophie, nice to meet you.”
“You’re Diana?” Her accent was part British, part something else that I couldn’t identify. “Uncle Griffin talked about you last night on our Zoom call with Papa. Papa laughed and said you weren’t a bird Uncle Griffin could easily pull and he understood the appeal because that’s how I happened. I don’t know what that meant.”
I figured bird must be like the American chick for a woman, and pull? Did her dad mean that Griffin couldn’t get me? That had to be the definition because even if Sophie didn’t understand the adult conversation, it was making sense to me. Apparently Sophie’s mom hadn’t given in to her dad’s charms until she did and then Sophie was born.