Page 13 of The Dangers of Daydreaming (Love Connections #2)

True to her word, Gram met us just inside the automatic doors. She rushed forward as I stepped in, Lucy beside me.

“Thank you so much for coming, I’m so sorry to interrupt your day,” Gram said. I noticed Lucy shuffling away at my side. Gram saw her as well. “Is this your friend?”

I gestured at Lucy. “Yeah, this is Lucy, we knew each other in junior high, and she’s staying at your B Lucy would feel bad saying yes, and Gram would feel bad if she said no. So, I grabbed Lucy’s wrist and gently tugged her next to me. “Come on, you can work with us.”

She didn’t end up doing any work. I would have felt bad if I weren’t so grateful.

After staying outside the room while we saw Pops off in all his surgical outfit glory, she spent the next hour and a half bringing us drinks and crackers, talking with Gram, and just being a generally incredible distraction.

I watched with awe as she tentatively started up the conversations, seeming to feel around for if we’d prefer silence or words.

We both preferred words.

Gram had her ankles crossed in front of her, an empty cup in her leathery hands, and her eyes on Lucy.

“Has Finn ever told you what a menace he was in junior high?” she asked as she passed a fresh water cup to my grandma.

Gram’s twinkling eyes shot my way. How could she appear so amused while Pops was in surgery when she’d seemed nothing but frazzled and concerned over the last three and a half days? Lucy was a miracle worker.

“No, but I could imagine.” Her gravelly voice had a distinct hint of laughter to it.

Lucy’s eyes met mine across the waiting room. It wasn’t huge, but she and Gram were in one row of chairs while I was in the ones facing them. My back was to the doors, and I was fighting the itchy feeling that had me wanting to turn and check behind me for the doctor.

I latched onto her look, holding tight to that brown-eyed stare.

“He never did anything overtly mean,” Lucy said. “But twelve-year-old Lucy might disagree with me. She felt very offended by the cute boy who wouldn’t stop teasing her.”

“So, you thought I was cute?”

She made a face. But it was Gram who answered.

“Shush, Finn, your friend is telling me stories.” She leaned closer to Lucy, whispering but not really whispering, “He always was a bit vain.”

Lucy laughed.

It made me smile as I leaned back into my chair.

“Go on, Luce, tell us a story.” Or another, as the case would be.

She’d just finished telling us about the time she and her cousins had tried to toilet paper a house and had the police called on them, and before that, she’d been coaxing stories from Gram about what it was like to have me on the farm growing up.

We were living in stories for the time being…

which was far preferable to the alternative.

“Well, once upon a time—” she said in a lilting voice, like a fairy godmother about to spin a tale.

Gram smiled, the folds of her wrinkles bunching up in satisfaction.

But I didn’t miss her glance at the clock.

She might be enjoying the company, but she hadn’t forgotten what we were here for.

It had been ninety-six minutes since Pops went in, and they’d estimated about two and a half hours for the surgery.

Lucy had noticed Gram’s glance, too, and she faltered at the start of her story.

“Go on, dear,” Gram said, patting her hand.

“Once u pon a time,” she said again, “there was a girl. Sweet. Smart. Unassuming.”

“Pretty, too,” I interjected.

“Well, that goes without saying. Heroines are always pretty in their own way.” But her cheeks had an extra blush of pink that made me hide away a grin. “This particular heroine loved books. She almost always had one—or two or three—with her at all times.”

“So that’s why your bag was always so big,” I said.

“Shush,” Gram and Lucy said at the same time.

My mouth turned up at their united front, and I raised my hands in apology and mimed zipping my lips.

With a saucy look my way, she whispered to Gram, “Later, her mother would buy her a Kindle to avoid early arthritis in her shoulder.”

Gram chuckled.

Lucy straightened up, voice returning to normal. “It was good that she had all the books, because she needed them to avoid a certain boy. He was everywhere. In all her classes. The lunch table next to hers. Even at her thirteenth birthday party that he wasn’t invited to.”

“Aw, you didn’t invite him?”

“That was my question, too, Gram!”

“It was girls only,” Lucy explained.

Gram nodded, accepting that. I shook my head at Lucy’s self-satisfied expression when she looked at me.

“Do you need any more water?” Lucy suddenly asked, looking down at Gram’s again-empty cup.

“No, thank you.”

Lucy stood, taking the plastic cup and walking to the trash cans.

But she kept talking. “Every day, it seemed our poor heroine would have to come face to face with her nemesis in one way or another. If he wasn’t teasing her for using too big of words or making fun of her red hair, he was spoiling the endings of novels she was in the middle of. ”

“How wa s I supposed to know you weren’t aware that Dumbledore died in Harry Potter? Everyone knew!”

Lucy didn’t even comment on my breaking the vow of silence, rounding on me with flashing eyes. “It had come out just that summer! I hadn’t read it yet because I wanted to reread the rest of the series first!”

“Ooof, still a lot of pent-up anger over that, huh?”

“Understandably, I think.” She crossed her arms as she lowered herself back into her chair.

I looked to Gram for support, and she hooked a thumb at Lucy. “I’m with her on this.”

I gasped. “Against your own flesh and blood, Gram?”

“Those puppy dog eyes won’t work on me here, mister. You owe this girl an apology.”

“It’s been over a decade!”

She just quirked a brow.

I sighed, turning back to Lucy. She was watching me expectantly, her own brows lifted, evidently enjoying my reprimand.

I was, too, but I’d never tell. “Lucy—hey, what’s your middle name?”

“Rose,” she said, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why?”

“If I’m going to apologize, I’ve got to do a good job of it.” I cleared my throat. “Lucy Rose Sinclair, I am terribly, deeply, horribly apologetic for what I’ve done. Though it may be in the past, the pain I caused is ever present, and I wish I could—”

“Much as I enjoy this wholly insincere apology, I think I’m good now.”

“But I thought you liked elaborate apologies. Isn’t that something your Sarah of Blue Fields would have done?”

Her look could have killed a small animal. “It’s Anne of Green Gables. You should know, you ruined my copy of it.”

“Ruined?” I scoffed.

“Yep.” She turned to Gram and prepared to turn the sweet old lady against me.

“Turned over the corner of the page I was on—a huge crease. Didn ’t stop there either; he folded over about twenty more pages, too.

And his excuse?” Her eyes cut to me, and I was glad to see she seemed just as entertained by her retelling as I was.

She wasn’t actually still mad at me, that much was clear, and I was surprisingly relieved at that realization. “He didn’t want me to lose my spot .”

“It was true.”

“All twenty-three spots?”

“I was marking your favorite parts. You came back from your bathroom break before I could finish, or I’m sure you would have seen the pattern.”

“You’re hopeless.”

I was going to comment on her newest term of endearment, but Gram was watching us, her head moving back and forth, and her smile a little too wide.

Plans were spinning in her head, I could just tell.

Sure, I was attracted to Lucy, who wouldn’t be?

But if my grandma got involved, it would become a lot more than a little flirting and catching up.

So, before she could impose her schemes on me and my love life, I stood up, hands in pockets. “I’m going to find a nurse and see if we can get an update.”

Lucy’s head was tilted as she watched me, but I avoided her look, turning to Gram. “She can malign my character without interruption now. But I beg of you not to believe her entire smear campaign.”

Gram shook her head with a much smaller smile now. “You forget I helped raise you. I bet I could give her a slew of my own stories.”

Now that almost made me pause and sit back down. What if she broke out baby pictures? My ninth-grade dance photo was enough to send any woman running. But instead, I said, “Have at it, ladies. I’ll get you some paper and a pen to properly map out my miscreant past while I’m gone.”

As I walked away, I heard Lucy ask Gram if she was really okay with how chatty Lucy was being. By the sound of their continued conversation, Gram was.

I stepped out into the hall, headed for the elevators and registration desk.

Either I would run into someone on the way, or else I’d ask the receptionist if she could help me.

The smell of disinfectant was too strong, and the oversized pictures of happy patients on the walls weren’t providing the calming vibe they may have been going for.

Away from Lucy’s distractions, all the worry was slipping in.

Maybe I should have stayed. What was Gram going to do? Try to push me into asking out Lucy Sinclair? I wasn’t against the idea.

My feet stopped, and the soft buzz of the fluorescent lights above me filled the space where my footsteps had been. I was about to backtrack when a scrub-clad man turned the corner ahead of me. He nodded my way but paused when I opened my mouth.

“Do you need something?” he asked.

“My grandpa is in surgery. I was just looking to see if I could get an update.”

The guy nodded. He was maybe five to ten years older than I, with a wide nose and a receding hairline. “What’s your grandpa’s name?”

“James Harrison.”

“I’ll see if I can get you some info.”

“Thanks, man.”

With a smile, he kept going down the hall. My mission complete, I turned around. No matter how meddling Gram decided to be, it would be better than being stuck in this sterile hall with my thoughts.