Not yet.
8
JUNE
The morning of the potluck was chaos with a smile on its face.
Lily was running barefoot through the house yelling about glitter tape and macaroni salad. Willa had commandeered the backyard with a half-assembled balloon arch and a playlist titledvibes only. Harper was printing out name tags in three different fonts, just to see which one gave off “organized but approachable.”
I was trying to make a pasta salad that wouldn’t offend anyone’s dietary restrictions.
“Are the tomatoes supposed to be this squishy?” Lily asked, poking one with a suspicious finger.
“They’re not that squishy, sweetie. They’re just a little soft.”
She squinted at me. “Like Grandma’s hands?”
I blinked. “Sort of.”
“Cool.”
She skipped away like she’d just solved a mystery.
I stirred the salad, heart too tight in my chest. I hated how grief showed up in weird, sideways places. How something as small as a tomato could send you reeling.
Grant texted midmorning.
if you need anything before go-time, i’m around. even if it’s just an excuse to escape for five minutes.
I stared at it longer than I should have.
Typed something. Deleted it.
Typed again.
maybe i’ll cash in that five-minute escape later.
He replied in less than a minute.
i’ll bring snacks. and plausible deniability.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
The thing about attraction—realattraction—is that it doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t wait until you’ve fixed yourself or cleared your schedule or figured out how not to flinch when someone is kind to you. It just… shows up. Quietly. Persistently. Like light creeping through closed drapes.
That’s how it felt with Grant.
Not loud. Not flashy.
Just steady.
And that scared me more than anything else.
By noon,the backyard had transformed into something that looked almost deliberately chaotic.
Mismatched tables with thrifted linens. A buffet station made from two sawhorses and an old door. A cooler full of sodas and a big pitcher of homemade lemonade sat on a small table next to it. Fairy lights strung across the hedges like a constellation we’d invented just for the day.
Willa was in her element. She directed foot traffic like a cruise ship host. Harper stood at the welcome table with a clipboard and a donation jar, dressed like a preppy fundraiser goddess. Lily had taken charge of the dessert table and was enforcing a strict two-cookie-per-person limit. No exceptions.
