“Your folks know you’re here?” Grandpa asked suspiciously.
“You know I’m twenty-one, right?” I asked dryly.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he replied.
“Howie, leave her be,” Nana said with a wave of her hand. She pulled bacon and a carton of eggs from the fridge. “Put this bacon on the smoker, would you?”
Grandpa harrumphed, but grabbed the bacon out of Nana’s hands and carried it outside. As he made his way down the steps, he reached up and patted the breast pocket of his t-shirt, confirming that his phone was inside. My lips twitched. He’d be on the phone with my dad the minute he got that bacon on the grill.
“So,” Nana said. “Tell me everything that’s been happening. Those fires are scary as hell. We’ve been keeping an eye on the news.”
“It’s gnarly,” I said, sitting down at the little kitchen table. “You want some help?”
“Not enough room, sweetheart,” she said with a smile. “You just sit and relax.”
“Yeah, the fires are pretty bad,” I continued. “Casper and Farrah’s house burned down—”
“Oh no,” she said quietly. “That family’s had enough heartbreak for a lifetime already.”
“No kidding,” I replied. “Rose wasn’t sad to see it go.”
“She’d had a lot of history there,” Nana said, glancing at me. “Not all of it good.”
“I know.”
“Still, sad to lose the family house like that. Charlie must be so upset.”
“She is,” I said, remembering the look in Charlie’s eyes when we’d driven over to her parents’ property and she’d seen the carnage for the first time. “Our apartment was in the red zone for a while, but the wind must have shifted or something, so we were able to go home yesterday.”
“Well, that’s good, at least,” Nana said, clicking her tongue a couple times. “You smell like a campfire.”
I laughed. “Everything smells like a campfire in Oregon right now.”
“Your dad was saying that their house is fine?”
“Yeah,” I said, pulling off my sweatshirt. “They’re inside the city limits, away from all of it. The smoke is bad everywhere, though. You can’t really escape it.”
“Unless you hightail it to Montana,” she said knowingly.
“Right,” I said with a laugh.
“What else are you here to escape?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Boy problems,” I replied.
“Boy problems?” she repeated in surprise. “I’ll be damned, I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Hey,” I said in mock irritation.
“Must be Draco,” she said, glancing out the window at my grandpa.
“Why must it be Draco?” I asked.
“Because he’s the only one you’d leave the state to escape,” she said with a laugh. “Not to mention the fact that you’ve never even looked at anyone else.”
“That’s not true,” I argued. She shot me a look of disbelief. “It’s not! I’ve looked. I’ve just never seen anything else I’ve liked,” I grumbled.
“Well, if you’re escaping Draco then the two of you must’ve broken that little stand-off you’ve been having for damn near a year.” She laughed at my look of surprise. “I’ve got eyes everywhere, honey. Don’t you forget it.”
“Jesus, is everyone talking about us? It seems like they’d find something better to gossip about.”
“You know you’re my favorite topic,” she replied, pointing a spatula at me.
“It’s no big deal,” I said, throwing my hands up. “I just needed a little space.”
Nana hummed noncommittally.
“I’m not sure I want the same things he wants,” I said. “Or at least not the same way.”
“Well, I’ve got no idea what that means,” she said, cracking eggs onto the skillet with one hand. “Unless you mean in bed, and in that case, you should probably discuss this with Charlie… or Rose.”
“Ew,” I said, balling up a napkin on the table to toss at her.
Nana laughed. “What do you mean you might want different things?” she asked. “You want babies and he doesn’t?”
“No.” I shook my head. “We haven’t even talked about babies. God.”
“Then what? You want to travel and he doesn’t?”
I shook my head.
“You want to live in Timbuktu and he’d rather stay in Eugene?”
“Timbuktu?” I asked in amusement.
“Well, hell,” she said with a shrug. “Back in my day, you either wanted to get married or you didn’t. You worked out the rest later.”
“I set the timer,” Grandpa said as he came back in.
“Kara’s runnin’ from Draco,” Nana told him.
“Ah,” Grandpa said in understanding. “Why?”
“Just trying to figure that out now,” Nana replied.
“I’m sitting right here,” I said, pointing to myself. “And I’m not running from Draco. I said I needed some space.”
“Sounds like runnin’ to me,” Grandpa said. Nana hummed in agreement.
“I’m not running,” I said in exasperation.
“So what’s the story, kiddo?” he asked as he sat across from me with a grunt. “Not that I’m not happy to see ya. You’re welcome here anytime.”
“I think there might be too much history there,” I said vaguely.
“Boy went to prison for you,” Grandpa said gruffly. “Some resentment there?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I couldn’t let him have that impression of Draco. “No, he says he’d do it again. A thousand times.”