Page 48 of Teach Me
“She’s the kind of person who can juggle three wild kids, a part-time job, and still want to host a dinner party. She’s smart, funny, spontaneous, and incredibly kind. She eats chaos for breakfast.”
“Unlike you?” I teased, and a shadow inexplicably crossed his face.
“She’s much better at balance, that’s for sure.”
I leaned back in my seat, the mixture of nervousness and excitement knotting in my stomach and settling as uncertainty.
“You’re starting to fidget,” Grady observed. “They’ll like you, don’t worry.”
“Do they know I’m your student?”
Grady scratched his jawline and made a face. “I didn’t get to that part. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say, if I’m being honest. It was such a spur-of-the-moment thing…” He trailed off, and I didn’t know what to say either. I’d spent every moment since getting out of rehab focused on being honest, with myself and with everyone else, and now found myself in the position of carrying two secrets. But it was Paul’s request that weighed heavier on me.
“Cameron?” Grady’s voice broke through the storm cloud of my thoughts, and I shook my head.
“It’s fine, I trust you. We can say we met on an app or something. We don’t even have to say I go to the U.” I shrugged. Easy peasy.
“So give us the details,tell us all about how you met,” Sandra said when she finally sat down at the dining table later that evening. We’d arrived about an hour before dinner. Sandra, her husband Mike, and all the kids had swarmed out of the house en masse, surrounding the car like little hellions. Hugs and introductions had been exchanged. Just as Grady had promised, Sandra was warm and gracious, and the nieces and nephews were fucking adorable. Being an only child, the chaos of multiple young kids caught me off guard. The last time I’d been around it was Homecoming, when Sam’s entire family of eight had overtaken the house after the game. I’d fucking loved it, though, and got the same vibe at Sandra’s as soon as we’d walked through the door. I liked the noise and the distraction. Kept me from my own thoughts.
But of course, that was the first fucking question we got asked once everyone was finally in one place and relatively still, except for Hardin, Grady’s youngest nephew, who kept popping out of his chair to crawl under the table or go pester his brother or sister.
“It was a club, actually,” Grady said mildly, and Sandra’s brows shot up, though it was her husband, Mike, who chuckled and said, “There’s no way you’re going to convince me you two met on a dance floor.”
“It was like pulling teeth to get Grady to dance at my wedding,” Sandra explained.
“Hey, I dance to slow songs,” Grady protested. “I can’t keep up with whatever the dance trends du jour are.”
“Technically, you don’t have to in a club. A little shimmy or grind is all you need.” I laughed, trying to imagine Gradyshimmying. The man was a lot of things I fucking adored, but he wasn’t a shimmy-er, and the playful swat he gave me was enough to confirm. “It wasn’t on the dance floor, though,” I added, turning the conversation back to the topic at hand. “It was in the bathroom.”
Grady cut a sharp look my way, nostrils flaring at my shit-eating grin. I mean, technically, it was true.
“I was on a date with someone else. Possibly the worst date of my life.” Grady picked up where I left off. “I was going to the restroom for a moment of quiet to debate my life choices. He was coming out as I was going in.”
“We bumped into each other.” I grinned wider.
“So to speak, yes.”
“How…romantic?” Sandra ventured and then broke into a chuckle.
“It was something, that’s for sure.” Beneath the table, Grady squeezed my thigh and then let his hand linger.
I could feel the warmth seep through my jeans, and a shiver ricocheted up my spine. When I met his eyes, I felt the same heady excitement that had pulsed through me that night in the club. “It was definitely something,” I echoed, unable to suppress a small smirk.
“He intrigued me immediately,” Grady continued, expression softening. “A magnetic person I couldn’t help but to be drawn to is the best way I can explain it.”
“He forgot to mention how irresistibly handsome I am,” I joked, despite how his compliment fluttered around in my chest. I leaned closer, my shoulder brushing his as a ripple of laughter ran around the table.
Grady gave me a mock-stern look, then winked at me. “I was getting to that part.”
“Well, we’re so glad you joined us, Cameron,” Sandra said. “And maybe someday, you’ll get Grady on a dance floor.”
The conversation moved on to other topics soon after, thank goodness, filled with stories of the kids, updates from Sandra’s and Mike’s lives, and Grady’s upcoming book. The meal was delicious—Jesse would have approved. Despite my initial trepidation, I was having a good time, saturating myself in the pleasant sort of chaos, far removed from the frenzy of college life and…other things. Things that I pushed into the far reaches of my mind when they tried to invade.
“That was really nice, what you said at the dinner table,” I said later, once Grady and I were lying on the sofa bed in the basement, the warm yellow glow of a butterfly nightlight diffusing the thick darkness. We’d jokingly checked underneath the mattress for stray cars and Legos before we’d crawled beneath the covers, and had cracked up after discovering several of each.
Grady wrapped an arm around my waist and kissed the tip of my nose, then brushed one over my lips for good measure. “It was true,” he murmured, and I hummed beneath the warmth of his mouth on mine, lingering in that sublime space for as long as I could before pulling back a bit and finding his eyes.
“You’re magnetic to me, too, you know. I really fucking like you,” I whispered.