I heard a clatter from the living room and put the frame down to check on Grant. When I got back to the living room, Grant was standing over his coffee table with his phone in his hand. His eyes were red and his hair was all over the place. He looked like a toddler who just woke up from a nap and it was nothing short of adorable.
“Grant, are you okay?” His eyes lifted up to mine and he smiled harder than I had ever seen.
“Hart?” His voice sounded surprised but sweeter, less rough than typical. His smile reached his eyes and I felt like I just caught a glimpse of a unicorn.
“Beau wanted me to check up on you. How’s your arm?” He looked down at his arm, which was sitting in a navy blue medical sling. Confusion was written all over his face as if he forgot he was even injured. And then he raised his eyebrows like he just realized what had happened.
“I’m fine now that you’re here.” He attempted a wink but it was more of a pathetic, slow, off-centered blink. Oh my God. Is he trying to flirt with me? He was so cute I couldn’t stand it, his stroll over to me reminded me of a baby giraffe trying to walk for the first time. He came up to me and put his uninjured arm around my shoulders, it took everything in me to hold my laughter at his terrible moves.
His large, muscular arm wrapped around the top of my shoulder and I felt him leaning over on me, trying not to put too much weight on my lithe body.
“Alright buddy, let’s get you back to bed.” I hold his good hand in mine and guide us to his room upstairs. When we reached his bed, I carefully guided him on the perfectly made white comforter. He lifted his good hand up to my chin, rubbing it in between his pointer finger and his thumb.
“You’re so pretty.”
I blushed at his drunken honesty, “Am I?”
I was fishing. I knew I was. But how often did Grant let his guard down enough to let me know exactly what he’s thinking?
“The prettiest. If you were my teacher when I was little, I think I would’ve failed every test.” I giggled and put my hand over his.
“I think you’re a little off your rocker.”
He laid down on top of the covers. “Probably. Can you hand me that icy hot in my nightstand?” I brushed his hair through my fingers and petted his forehead.
I opened the nightstand drawer slowly, a little scared of all I might find. I grabbed the icy-hot and started to close the drawer when something caught my eye.
I pause my movements, stuck in the moment of realization.
There sat several trinkets. The first one that grabbed my attention was a white pebble. It was the pebble from when we were at the bar. I knew we lost it somewhere in our game but I wasn’t paying enough attention to see him stick it in his pocket.
Next to the pebble was one of the tickets to the flower field we went to. Beside those was the fortune from the cookies he brought the first time he came over. I picked it up and saw a receipt sitting below it.
The receipt was nothing fancy; it was just for some paint from Cooper’s hardware store. It was clearly a little old and worn. I turned over the back to see a date written in bright red ink on the back.
The date was May of last year and it was circled in the same red ink. Below the date was one word.
“Her.”
It was underlined twice as if that was the most important part of the receipt.
And it hit me all at once, that it was me. The date was from when Grant and I first met at Cooper’s. His comment about our encounter rang between my ears.
“I remember, Hart. As much as I wanted to forget, I remembered.”
Grant must have noticed my paused nature as he leaned forward to see what I was looking at.
“Oh.” He muttered, sounding almost embarrassed?
“Are these for me?” I held up the pieces of paper. Grant nodded his head sheepishly.
He grinned over at me “They’re my June-venir’s.” I thought my heart was going to implode.
He continued, “I kept it in case I would get lucky enough to meet you again. And then I couldn’t stop saving little souvenirs from our meetings.”
Grant Dawes was a closet romantic and I was dying. This man owned me through and through. I always figured Grant thought so little of me and now I knew how he really thought so much of me that he kept these “June-venirs”. He could tell me all day he doesn’t want a relationship, and maybe he didn’t. But I knew that I was special to him for now.
He fell asleep shortly after, clearly still affected by his medicine. I lied there with him the rest of the night, playing with his hair and lying under his good arm. When he was in a deep sleep, I reached over to put all of his things back in the nightstand drawer.
When I opened it I noticed one more small item in the back. It looked like a tiny picture and I pulled it out, expecting another one of his keepsakes.
Instead, it was a picture of a young girl. It was the girl from the picture I saw after I looked up Grant. It looked like she was in some type of restaurant, there were tables and chairs in the background of where she sat. She was beautiful, her blonde hair was down and she was smiling brightly. I flipped the picture over, hoping for some clarity. But there was no caption, date, or anything to hint to me who she was.
And I stayed up late that night, thinking of who she could be and why she was no longer here with him.