“I can see that.” He smiles with sympathy on his face. “The sun is about to come up. How about we have a cup of coffee and get a head start on our schedule?”
“My schedule,” I say without thinking, my gaze still stuck to his chest.
His warm laugh fills the cold room and as he leaves, I watch his butt like I’d watch the lottery numbers if I could see into the future.
“Okay?” he asks, obviously waiting for me to reply to something else he said that I missed because I was too fixated on more important things.
“Anything, yes,” I answer and disappear under my blanket.Anything.
“I’ll see you after your shower then.”
The door closes behind him, and I thrash against the soft cover on top of me.I need to stop doing whatever that was.In the bathroom, I check myself in the mirror and hope that it’s the fluorescents light that makes me look as spent and tired and not the fact that I actually do look like that. After a quick shower and careful selection of my clothes for the day — I am now stuck with tight tops with too much cleavage — I finally make it to the kitchen table and am greeted by two eyes peering over his notebook, checking me out. I use my own notebook to cover up my neckline and direct his gaze to my eyes. We have breakfast before Phoenix sits down at his desk and I do some work on my own book, before taking Dog out for a walk. I leave my phone in the kitchen with an alarm that goes off every 20 minutes, so he has to get up regularly and move.
Figuring I could use the time to check in on Nana, Dog and I make our way straight to her house. When we get there, she is about to depart our way, her trolley filled to the brim with vegetables.
“I packed extra eggplants,” she explains as I drag the trolley up the path. “I hear you kids believe they have a bit of an aphrodisiac effect. Now, in my day, people would say that about oysters, but I don’t think my little pond is big enough for those.”
Eyes wide open, I stare straight ahead, unable to say anything other than an acknowledging noise.
“By the way, Olivia,” she continues, her Scottish accent sounding particularly pronounced in that moment, “you look terribly tired today. Did you not get any sleep last night?” Nana’s grin is audible in her question and it almost seems like she is enjoying teasing me.
“Yeah, nightmares,” I answer, a little flustered. “I get those sometimes, but Phoenix actually stayed up with me this morning, which was nice. We had breakfast and worked together and then Dog and I came over to see how you were doing.” I contemplate whether I should tell Nana about the meeting Phoenix had with his lawyer. Ryker seems like a good friend who was genuinely concerned about what Phoenix was planning to do and he didn’t seem to be able to get through to him. Maybe he would listen to his grandma. Maybe I should tell her so she could help.
“Well, come on, Olivia. You’re lagging behind,” the woman in the winter of her life prompts me in a mocking tone. “An old woman is not an express train, but I am certainly not as sluggish as you are.”
“Sorry, got lost in thoughts there for a bit.” I catch up and she hooks into my arm, using me as a crutch on a particularly rocky part of the path. “May I ask you for advice, Nana?”
“What a needless question, my child. You may ask me anything, but how old I am. Because that’s also the PIN for my credit card and I am not supposed to give that out.”
A hearty laugh escapes my belly as our destination appears behind a slope and Dog dashes towards it. “I have a friend who might make a — possibly huge — mistake. Now, I don’t know all the details but I think they’re acting out of impulse, possibly anger and spite, and they stand to lose quite a bit if they go through with what they’re planning to do and… it’s a complicated situation. I guess my question is: what should I do? Should I try to stop them?”
“Hmmm,” Nana releases a drawn-out sigh, sounding as thoughtful as her old voice sounds adorable, “that is complicated indeed. I wish I had an answer for you. I wish in all my almost 90 years on this wretched earth, I would have acquired enough wisdom, like one of those characters in the movies, to be able to give quotable advice on the spot, but I am afraid that ain’t so.” She gently strokes my hand with hers. "It is honorable that you care enough to want to help, but sometimes we just can’t. Sometimes, we have to let people make mistakes. And sometimes that means to not miss your chance to shut the fuck up. Of course, other times we definitely should intervene to keep people from making foolish or irreversible mistakes. See this one time, my husband, Phoenix’s grandfather, really wanted to buy this rugby or soccer — or whatever other sports there are — team. I believe he was going through his midlife crisis at the time, but instead of just buying a sports car or getting a younger mistress, he wanted to buy an entire sports franchise; not even his favorite one, mind you, he wanted to buy their biggest competitors to run them in the ground. Of course, I wouldn’t—”
18
“Telling the story about how you got grandpa hooked on video games so he wouldn’t buy the Glasgow Rangers?” Phoenix’s head pokes over the fence next to us, his brow raised a little.
“I did do that. I bought him one of those consoles kids play with and told him that he could play with all the teams he wanted to. It worked.”
“Yeah, a little too well. Grandpa once called me a ‘little bitch boy’ when he beat me 5:0.” Phoenix laughs at the memories. “He also damaged several TVs by throwing remotes and controllers at them.”
“Your grandpa was a very passionate man…” Nana leans into me and whispers into my ear, “in more ways than one.”
“Jesus, Nana, not very subtle. I can hear you.”
“What are you still doing over there anyway?” she once again barks at her grandson in her usual lovingly teasing tone. “Can’t you see your poor old grandma is struggling over here? Do you always let your girlfriend do all the heavy lifting? I thought I taught you better than that.”
Without a comment, Phoenix runs off to intercept us before we reach the gate and Nana gives me a wide grin. “I can’t tell you what to do, Ol. My plan only kind of worked in that situation and maybe I could have done better. I don’t know. Hindsight isn’t always 20/20, but it is a good way to be unhappy about what happened in the past. And that doesn’t help anyone. Just try to do the right thing and hope it’ll turn out alright.” Phoenix reaches us and takes the trolley with one hand and Nana’s arm with the other. “It’s a funny word:alright.Nothing is everall-right, but as long as we have people who care about us, it’smostly-right. You should put that in one of your books, Phoenix.”
“I wouldn’t wanna steal your ideas, grandma. Why don’t you write your own books?” he asks as we enter the house and I bring the vegetables to the kitchen. Nana is visibly tired from the little hike and happy to get some rest once her grandson helps her sit down on the couch while I get us both a glass of water to drink.
“Oh, no. The only thing I ever wrote were love letters to your grandpa. And the pope would probably put those on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum if anyone were to publish them.”
A little of my drink spills from my mouth because I can’t keep from laughing. “Like grandma, like grandson,” I whisper as I pass him and hand Nana her water, which only garners me an annoyed stare by Phoenix.
Together, we sit and chat in the living room while Phoenix prepares the quiche in the kitchen, from time to time poking his head out, obviously trying to listen in on what we have to say, probably worried about the embarrassing stories his grandma could reveal about his youth. I learn that in addition to his Backstreet Boys phase, which Nana describes as almostlarger than life, young Phoenix also really liked Pokemon and Baywatch until he entered his grunge phase and stopped liking things altogether. Assumably that was around the time whennormal people started to scare him.I am pleased with myself that, apart from a handful of times, I don’t succumb to my basic instincts and goggle at Phoenix cooking, and I am reasonably certain that the few moments of weakness I did have, went unnoticed.
Time flies by while listening to Nana who is a natural storyteller, although her accent means that I only understand about 80% of what she’s saying once she gets going. I enjoy the stories immensely and learning things about Phoenix’s past feels like a huge privilege, considering how protective and secretive he is of his private life. I can hardly wait to tease him with all my newfound knowledge and find myself looking forward to tonight even more than usual. We might have had a change of schedule during the day, but I am determined to see our reading time through, maybe even after 8 PM.
