“You’re entitled after all you’ve been through,” I told her.
“Well, I hope you spend as much time as you can with that Griffin. Life is too short. I appreciate you running it past me, but it wasn’t necessary. You’re a grown woman, Diana. I trust your judgment.”
She shouldn’t have. I had terrible taste in men. “I didn’t know if you and John would be okay with me having a . . . friend.”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” She asked this like I was being totally unreasonable in my hesitation.
“I’m working,” was the only reason I could come up with.
“Eleven hours a day. What you do with those other thirteen hours are up to you. Have all the friends you want. Honestly, with as pretty, smart, and kind as you are, I’m surprised there haven’t been a line of suitors knocking on our door. Oh, excuse me, not suitors. Friends.” Her wink tempered her slightly sarcastic tone. “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Sheila turned off the light in the living room, plunging me into darkness. It suited me due to the kind of thoughts running around in my head.
I recalled her kind words with discomfort because I’d never been very good with compliments. My own mother had torn me down for so long that emotionally I was in a place where the things that Sheila said couldn’t be true because . . . they just weren’t. Like my brain couldn’t conceive how she might be right. Her words had made me uncomfortable, but I had to remind myself that it was just my own insecurities rearing their ugly heads.
I realized that this must be what it was like to have a normal mom. Someone who encouraged you and cared about your well-being. Who rooted for your success, who thought you were good at things and that of course other people wanted to be around you.
Milo was the luckiest kid in the whole world.
Thinking of Milo made me then think about our playdate tomorrow, which inevitably led my thoughts back to Griffin.
The last thing I needed was to get that kind of blanket permission from Sheila where Griffin was concerned. It was one of the things holding me back, telling myself I needed to focus on Milo and being a good employee.
Obviously, I still needed to do that, but she’d just made room for something more. I could practically feel my subconscious mind plotting ways to make this thing work out with Griffin.
This was . . . not good.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I needed to talk to someone about this. There was too much chaos in my brain to figure it out myself. Time to call Alice. I realized that I didn’t have my phone on me and looked around. I’d dropped it on the couch. I really had to be better about not leaving it behind.
When I picked it up, I saw that there was a text from Griffin that read Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. It was sweet. Simple. But it did make me melt a little inside.
As I walked to my room, my next thought was to wonder whether he’d gone through my phone. The Crawfords hadn’t password-protected it, and I hadn’t seen the point of doing it myself. I was going to now, obviously, but Griffin could have perused my apps and files. Not that there would have been anything for him to see. No pictures, no social media.
He could have seen my texts to Alice and those would be embarrassing (both for me and for her) but I knew, in a way I couldn’t have explained, that he hadn’t invaded my phone. He just wouldn’t do that. I was suspicious of everybody all the time, so this was a new feeling for me. To trust that somebody was exactly who they appeared to be and that they would behave in a moral way . . . outside of Alice, I’d never had that before.
I closed the door and sat on my bed, choosing Alice from my contacts list and pressing the button. I needed her opinion. Maybe other people were seeing things that I couldn’t.
“Are you married yet?” she asked when she picked up the phone.
“No. But I need to talk to you about that.”
She let out a loud, dramatic gasp but I stopped her. “It’s not like that. I just need to get your opinion. So let me tell you what’s been going on.”
Even though I’d previously been holding things back from her, this time I decided to lay all my cards on the table. I knew she wouldn’t be unbiased, but she was the only person who knew the entire truth about me, so she was the only one I could go to for help. Recognizing that the story would be long, I reached for my sketch pad and a pencil. Having my hands occupied helped keep my mind more focused.
When I finished telling her absolutely everything, including Sheila Crawford saying it was fine to date and hang out with Griffin and Sophie, this time Alice let out a happy sigh. “I just want you to know that I love everything about this guy already. Especially the stuff he says. He’s so romantic. I want you to give me his phone number.”
All the snow would have to melt off that mountain behind the hotel before I did that. “Why?”
“I want to leave him a voice mail that’s just three straight minutes of me applauding him.”
I had to laugh at that.
She added, “By the way, I knew you’d been editorializing when you talked to me. That there was more going on.”
What could I say? She was right. I made long strokes on the sheet of paper in front of me. “Maybe that was because I knew you’d jump to the wrong conclusion.”
“The one where you like him even though you’re trying to deny it? Oh honey, I’ve been there since the first night. I don’t need to jump because I’ve already hurtled out of an airplane ten thousand miles up and am currently plummeting to that conclusion.”
“Pull that rip cord because nothing is going on.”
“But you want it to.”
“I . . .” What was I supposed to say? We couldn’t be together. “That’s not . . . I don’t . . .”
“Oh, I see. We’ve entered the delusional part of the evening.”
“I’m not deluded,” I protested. “Just . . . unsure of what the right thing is to do here.”
“Well, regardless of what you’re telling yourself, this man is already deep in like with you.”
She wasn’t even here. How could she possibly know that? “It’s only been like, three days.”
“So? You’re living the Cinderella story here. The prince fell in love with her after one night. As far as I can tell, Griffin is within the right time frame.”
“As he keeps reminding me, he’s not a prince, so your analogy doesn’t work.”
I could almost hear her shrugging over the phone. “Close enough. What does he have to do? Hire a skywriter? He’s been very obvious with his intentions.”
Shaking my head, I briefly closed my eyes and took a big breath. “That fairy-tale story has absolutely no bearing on my reality. I wouldn’t want to date him unless I was being honest with him. And I am being so dishonest. The sheer magnitude of the lies! I mean, it’s not just a string quartet of lies. It’s not even a K-pop boy band of lies. No, this is the Vienna Boys Choir and accompanying orchestra of lies.”
She was silent for a moment before she said, “Again, so?”
My hand stilled. How could she not be taking this more seriously? “Last time I checked, and as you keep reminding me, lying is bad. Things never work out once you finally get caught.”