XOXO

I used to find comfort in his touch. When I was a young girl, I’d sit on his knee while he read stories to me.

It didn’t matter if it was in his mansion in Buffalo or the beachfront house in Nantucket, he was always wearing a three-piece suit and a tie, just as he is now.

“Come in,” he says as we break the embrace. “Let me look at you.”

I brace myself for the inevitable comment about my appearance. It started when I was a teenager. I chose vintage clothes over the designer brands he bought me. I always told him I didn’t want to wear the things he picked for me, but he kept picking them.

Just as he thought he could choose my life partner.

Baron Guidry is the grandson of my grandfather’s best friend.

He was my first everything – kiss, lover, heartbreak.

Baron wanted me to change too. His idea of perfection is the two of us married running the businesses our grandfathers built from the ground up.

“You look lovely today.”

I glance down at the red and striped sheath dress I’m wearing. I covered up on my way over with a white cardigan. My hair is pinned into a bun that has slid half-way down the back of my head.

“What?”

He steps back. “I said you’re beautiful.”

A lump forms in the back of my throat. I’ve never heard him say that to me. “Thank you, granddad.”

“I’ve missed you,” he confesses. “Very much.”

I glance around the immaculate suite. Something doesn’t feel right. This man has my grandfather’s face, and he’s wearing the same cologne that he’s always worn, but he’s different. He’s kind, and there’s softness in his eyes that I haven’t seen in a very long time.

“You said you wouldn’t try and find me.” I sigh. “You agreed that you’d give me time to decide what’s right for me.”

He gestures toward a seating area. I settle into a big brown leather armchair. He sits in a matching one across from me.

“When you left Buffalo, I was angry,” he admits.

The last conversation we ever had was proof of that. He told me that unless I returned to Buffalo soon, I’d lose my trust fund and any chance I had to take control of his business when he retires.

I told him to keep both.

Being the only grandchild of Vernon Greenwalt was too much pressure for me. I needed an out.

I’d gone to college to get the business degree he wanted me to have, but when I told him that law school was my dream, he listed the reasons why it was a waste of my time.

We reached an agreement that I would leave Buffalo to find my feet before I made a final decision about my future.

The day I arrived in Manhattan, my mind was made up.

I belong here in this city. I want to follow in my mom’s footsteps to become a lawyer. I want to build a practice here helping people who don’t know where to turn when they have a legal issue.

“I know,” I say softly. “I’m sorry, granddad, but I needed time.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “You needed a chance. You needed a chance to find out what makes you happy; who makes you happy.”

“Baron doesn’t,” I confess.

He leans back in the chair. “I see that now.”

I study his face. “Did mom tell you where I was?”

He nods. “She came to see me yesterday. She told me you were working in Manhattan. She told me about him.”

Him.

Dominick.

I had called my mom to tell her that I danced in the rain with a man I was falling in love with. She knew how much that meant to me. On my sixteenth birthday, she was with me when I’d written my life to-do list and tucked it into the poetry book she bought me was when I was ten-years-old at a vintage store near her office.

I was allowed to choose one thing from all the treasures in the store.

I had chosen that book because the title of the first poem in the Table of Contents spoke to me in all my awkwardness.

Her Beauty Within.

I read that poem until I memorized every word, and then I lived it, owning who I am - never apologizing for it. Instead, celebrating it.

“He’s a good man, Arietta.”

That lures my gaze to my grandfather’s face. I nod. “He is.”

“We met.”

Panic sends me to my feet. “What? When?”

My granddad pushes until he’s standing. His movements aren’t as graceful as they once were. Leveling his stance with his hand resting on the arm of the chair, he takes a deep breath. “I met Dominick Calvetti last night. We talked.”

I hadn’t told him about my granddad. I didn’t want that to influence my position at Modica or my relationship with him.

I knew it was a conversation I needed to have with him soon, but I thought it could wait. I fooled myself into thinking it could wait, but now it’s too late.