4
LOVE LINES ARE JUST MIXED SIGNALS
ROWAN
“You look good, kid. It’s been too long.” The emotion in Pappy’s voice tugs at those heartstrings I’ve spent years trying to cauterize, so I stare straight ahead and focus on the waves as they lap at the shore. Sebastian and the boys headed back to the house, so it’s just Pappy and me out here now.
We talk a few times a year, mostly on our birthdays, plus he calls me on March twenty-second—the date is a reminder that my family will never hurt me again. When my stepfather pulled me out of camp that last summer, I secretly sent Pappy letters to stay in touch. We switched to phones once I turned eighteen and finally had access to a phone. But lately, he’s been calling more often, and it’s unnerving to me.
Pappy is as close to family as I’ve ever had, but even he’s kept at arm’s length, just in case.
The last time I saw him in person, not on FaceTime, was at my college graduation—May twenty-second. I hadn’t invited him, but like every other major event, he presided over it as my stoic guardian. He took me out to dinner that night, and it was the last time I ever let him see me cry.
I’d told him that Jake and I weren’t together anymore, but not why we’d split up. So when I refused his offer to drive me home, he reluctantly took me to the parking lot where Junebug was waiting—and he learned another of my secrets.
The next day, he signed a lease for my first solo apartment. It’s the only time he’s ever been harsh with me. He hadn’t known I was living in my Jeep again until he dropped me off, but my scholarship only covered so much, and I learned early in life not to ask anyone for anything.
And it’s not as though I was unsafe. I rented a parking spot in a lot near the police station and spent all my time in the library anyway.
I was good.
I always am.
But Pappy was heartbroken and said his wife was rolling over in her grave. The memory of Rosa he evoked was what had me relenting to the apartment. It wasn’t until he’d left to go home that I found out he’d prepaid the year’s rent.
It allowed me to save for my future. He gave me a leg up in life—again, after a lifetime of sinking in quicksand. My attempts to repay him sit in uncashed checks somewhere in his house.
“Free spirit, remember?” I say, bumping his shoulder with mine, but his frame is frailer than I remember, and it makes my lungs burn with the need for more air. Avoiding those feelings, I take a picture of the ocean, knowing it’ll look perfect on my Instagram feed in black and white.
He grunts, leaning back on the bench we’re sitting on, then reaches over and picks a piece of grass from the dunes.
“Pappy?” I wait until he turns his attention toward me. “Did you do this?” I say, waving my hand in the air. What I really want to ask is why?Whydid you do this? But I’m too afraid of his answer.
His eyes crinkle, but his features don’t change all that much.
“Do what, exactly?” he asks with an easy drawl.
A familiar pang swirls in my gut. It’s the same feeling I had when I learned about the apartment.
“All of this. Arrange this so we’d all, I don’t know, be on the same path? I don’t understand.”
“Your skepticism has gotten you through life, Row, but you can let down your guard around me. I’ve always tried to keep an eye on you, but you’re too stubborn for your own damn good sometimes.”
He scratches at his head exactly as Sebastian had done earlier.
“Grams used to say that true love is the crossword puzzle of life.” His eyes sparkle and shine. They always do whenever he mentions Rosa. “Your stories cross paths and intersect until that one moment in time, when all the stars align and you become the pieces completing both of your puzzles.”
“Pappy,” I whisper. How can those words make my throat close up? “You cannot seriously be talking about your grandson and me.”
He sits there, staring expectantly. “You were friends once—good friends.”
Were we? That’s not exactly how I remember it. I always felt like more of an obligation for him because my dad worked for his grandmother.
“He’s older than me.” By two whole years. It’s a weak excuse, so I swallow hard and try again. “He’s some nasty caviar to my generic saltines.”
“You think Seb’s nasty?” Pappy chuckles because he knows that’s not at all how I’d describe Sebastian Walker—not when I was ten, and not now. I’ve probably had giant hearts in my eyes since I was eight.
Sebastian always protected me.
