A Break in Communications

Chapter 8

Anna

So… Lucy’s house. It wasn’t what I expected, even though I didn’t know what I expected, a duplex unit with a yard scattered both with random knickknacks and with Christmas decorations. I sighed, turning off the car and sinking back in the seat, just looking at the house. I wasn’t sure I’d really believed the whole lives with her grandmother looking after her thing until just now, but that was absolutely a house you’d live in with your grandmother looking after her.

After Friday, the last thing I needed was to come here first thing Saturday morning, sunrise still peachy orange on the horizon, to get more of Lucy. But here we were. We’d worked for hours together yesterday, first on everything around Gould and the PR moves with the new task force, and then just everything else we were working on, and maybe it was the competitive atmosphere, but I felt sharper, more focused around Lucy and got twice as much done. When I finally got her to leave, I shut the door behind her with a resigned see you tomorrow, if I must, and I’d settled back on the couch with a sigh of relief that immediately turned into antsy unease.

Had I just been high on the adrenaline trying to figure out how to get rid of Lucy and then I was crashing? Suddenly I couldn’t focus without her around and it was like I needed to pick a fight with her again to get anything done. I spent hours just drifting trying to think of anything other than her smug face, to no avail.

I really needed a girlfriend. I was so lonely I was missing Lucy Masters. And I needed my most recent kiss to not be her.

But instead, here I was, pulled up in front of Lucy Masters’ house, to pick her up and bring her to my family’s Christmas gathering. What a nightmare…

I turned off the music and stepped out of the car, pulling my coat tighter around me, a big thing I was just about swimming in, and I made it up to the door and knocked on the light wood. I was pulling my phone from my pocket when the door unlatched, and I did a double take when it wasn’t Lucy at the door but a small woman with wispy white hair in a wheelchair, wearing a tacky sweater with a reindeer on the front. Woman after my mother’s heart. She looked me over, studying.

“Anna Preston?” she said, and I stood up taller.

“Oh… you’re Lucy’s grandmother?”

She squinted, giving me another studying look, head to toe, and I felt a little awkward under the attention—never been checked out so thoroughly by a woman in her seventies—before she nodded, seeming satisfied. She rolled her chair back to let me in, and she said offhandedly, “You’re not nearly as pretty as Lucy’s always going on about, but you’re not too bad, I suppose. If you’re as good as she says, I’ll let you date her, just because she’s not about to find anyone better.”

Wow. Woman did not mince words. Still, it wasn’t that part that had me stopping in the doorway so much as her comment about Lucy always going on about me being pretty. Didn’t exactly make sense for it to be more than the last day or two… maybe the woman just had a penchant for exaggeration. “It’s, er… it’s nice to meet you, ma’am. Sorry, I don’t actually know your name, Lucy only refers to you as Grandma —”

She waved me off. “ Ma’am is fine. Lucy is upstairs, finishing getting ready. You really have that woman head over heels, you know. Never seen her care so much about how she looks until she’s going on and on about Anna this, Anna that…”

Why did I feel like I was supposed to apologize? I scraped the snow off my boots and stepped into the house, shuffling awkwardly in the doorway as I shut the door behind me. Woman was… protective of her granddaughter, I guess. Would probably be happy to know we weren’t really dating, but we’d get to that once this whole thing was over. “Well,” I said through a fake smile, “if you’re telling me I pulled off a miracle, I’m not arguing.”

She scowled, folding her arms. “Are you not? Lucy’s been telling me for ages now you love to argue. Damn contrary woman seems to find it attractive.”

For ages? I could not fit these pieces together. Was Lucy just placating her grandmother by pretending to be into me, long before we’d ever gotten into this? I could hardly reconcile the idea that Lucy had just always been into me, let alone enough to gush to her grandmother about how much she loved arguing with me.

She had been… willing to kiss me. More than I’d expected. What? No. This didn’t make any sense.

Lucy’s grandmother scowled. “And you don’t even talk? What’s the point of you?”

“Sorry, just—” I scratched my head. “Lucy and I only just got together… how long has she been talking about me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, god, it’s been terrible. She hasn’t stopped talking about you for months. Oh, let me guess, she’s been too emotionally immature to tell you how much she’s been in love with you.”

I found myself spinning, still trying to put two and two together and getting five. If every time she’d gotten embarrassed and lost her cool when I got flirtatious back at her was because—

I snapped back from the thoughts, relaxing, my hands in my pockets. “So, did you want me to come in and start arguing? Was that what you were hoping for?”

“Ah, well, hoping you’d have some personality to you. I’m not about to sit around while Lucy dates some sad lump who’s only… moderately pretty.”

Strangely, that kind of made me feel good about my appearance. That meant I was at least moderately pretty, and not just her flattering me. I doubted she knew the meaning of the word. “Hm,” I said. “Well, you might be disappointed to find my personality is just work. Although, did you expect Lucy to date someone else?”

She laughed, one short bark of laughter, and she nodded. “So, Anna, do you want to know a secret?”

“Oh, do I ever.”

She gestured at her wheelchair. “I don’t actually need this. It’s just been a long practical joke with Lucy.”

I blinked, slowly. “Should we… swap who’s using it for when Lucy gets back down here and pretend it’s always been that way?”

She laughed again, louder this time, slapping her thigh. “Oh, now I wish I’d been telling the truth. That’d be a laugh. No, I actually do need the damn thing. Do you know how awkward it is to use the toilet?”

“No, but I feel like I’m about to find out.”

“It’s like a jungle gym where you’re trying not to pee yourself in the process even though you’re incontinent—”

“Grandma?” Lucy’s voice came from upstairs, and I looked to the staircase, where Lucy pushed out of a bathroom, and I felt an awkward flush seeing her dressed… well, nicely. She always did, form over function and all—she had sections of her blonde curls pinned back, wearing a black pantsuit with a crisp red shirt, a sophisticated makeup look with red lipstick, and part of my mind wondered why she went out of her way to look so nice. She’d dressed nicely to show up at my apartment yesterday too. Had asked Veronica my favorite cookie and baked it for me.

Was Lucy Masters into me? I thought I’d throw up. What a—repulsive thought. The thought that she’d enjoyed the kiss—that maybe she’d want to do it again—had she actually been looking to join me in the shower?

Lucy met my eyes, just for a second that made my throat feel tight, and she came down the steps, sighing hard and carrying a bundle of something with her. “Grandma, please do not start rambling to Anna about incontinence—”

Her grandmother put her hands up. “She’s going to get there one day, too.”

Lucy came down off the bottom step, and I felt my heart miss a beat as I saw the bundle she had in her hands—a flower bouquet. With violets. It was just a coincidence. She did not ask Veronica for my favorite flower too and then go get them for me. My heart beat faster with this anxious weight, not knowing what I was supposed to be—if Lucy Masters was interested in me, I couldn’t keep doing this whole thing pretending to date her, even if it caused problems with Gould. Even if I didn’t get the promotion. Was she thinking about that kiss too?

Lucy beamed at me, and she offered me the bouquet, crushing my hopes and making everything tangled inside me when she said, “Good morning, gorgeous. Vern said violets are your favorite.”

Dammit, Veronica. I needed to… have a word with her.

Ugh—I guess it wasn’t her fault. She thought Lucy and I were actually together. If it were someone I was actually dating, I’d have loved them to show up with a bouquet of violets, find out my favorite things and surprise me randomly with them…

“Lucy,” I said, putting on the best oh-you-shouldn’t-have voice I could and smiling sweetly at her. “Oh, god, this is beautiful. Thank you.”

“Not even the smallest fraction as beautiful as you deserve, darling, but I’ll keep trying my best.”

Her grandmother rolled her eyes. “Ah, gag me. She’s okay at best.”

“Grandma.” Lucy sighed, turning back to her. “Please stop insulting my girlfriend.”

“I’m just saying, I expected better,” she said, her hands up.

“Okay, Grandma, just consider that I like Anna a lot and that very same person, me, is the one who decides what you eat for dinner most days. Keep that in mind and think carefully about that as you decide what next to say about Anna.”

To my own horror, I snorted, and I put a hand over my mouth, keeping myself from laughing any further. I was not laughing at Lucy’s comments. Just… satisfying to see her giving someone else a hard time instead of me.

Her grandmother put her hands up. “I wasn’t saying a word. Except that your girlfriend is very lovely and has such warm eyes.”

“Mm-hm. That’s what I thought, Grandma.”

Her grandmother turned back to me. “So, you do cook, right? Lucy’s not putting up with a freeloader who sits around eating her cooking and complaining about her unless that freeloader is me.”

“Hm… I try, but I have it on my sister’s authority that Lucy’s a better cook.”

She clicked her tongue at me. “Well, what are you doing? Get learning. My granddaughter deserves someone to cook for her, for once. I hoped maybe when she said she was a lesbian that she’d get a pretty housewife, but you’re barely pretty and you can’t even be a housewife?”

“Grandma,” Lucy said. “Remember what I was just talking about?”

She laughed. “Oh, I’m just playing with you. But I mean it. Don’t forget to spoil Lucy. She’s always doing it for other people, and other people should reciprocate. Except me. I don’t have to.”

“So,” I said, “do as you say, not as you do.”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “God, can you imagine? If you were as nasty and mean as I am? Why, we’d have to have you strung up and carted out of here.”

“I’m a bit on the serious side in general, but I’ll be… extra nice to Lucy to balance you out.”

Lucy gave me a weary smile, stepping up next to my side and slipping a hand to my lower back. I almost jumped away, feeling her touch like it was the only thing that existed. Like—not in a romantic way, like having a gun to my forehead would become the only thing that existed. Why did she just step up and slip a hand onto my body like it was so natural? My head spun with the thought of what she might have had in her mind—like maybe she wanted to move her hand lower and take a handful of—I forced my mind back to the present moment.

“Please just ignore everything from Grandma’s mouth,” she said. “I left her dinner in the fridge, so we can abandon her here. Shall we?”

“Shall we abandon your grandmother together?” I laughed. “I feel like she would disapprove if I didn’t say yes, honestly.”

“Oh, get on out of here,” her grandmother said. “Give an old lady her peace. I need to go read a book. I hear your girlfriend’s a big reader and I need to outread her.”

I waited until we were outside—until I’d led Lucy to the car and got the passenger door for her, and I got in and huddled my coat tighter around me as I turned the car back on and cranked the heating up—before I turned to Lucy and said, “What didn’t Veronica tell you about me?”

“Hm?”

“Seems like she mentioned me being a big reader, too?”

“Oh.” She laughed, leaning back in her seat, looking for all the world like she belonged here. Did she want to? Belong in my passenger seat? She looked so comfortable in it, like she’d ridden there next to me a million times, like… I pushed the thought away. “She mentioned a few things,” she said, eyes twinkling at me. “Such as… you didn’t want to read her Sherlock smut.”

“Oh my god.” I put my hand over my face, not even bothering to hide the laughter of mortification at this point. “I don’t know why she’s like that…”

“I don’t know why my grandmother is like that. I apologize for… all of that,” she said, waving a hand back towards the house. “I didn’t think you’d come in and meet her.”

“Didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed. That I was only supposed to pull up and admire your castle from a distance.”

She rested her elbow on the center console, smiling slyly at me. “Are you so sad about the prospect of not coming into my house, darling?”

Ugh—as if I cared. She was the one who—well—I didn’t know if—honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if her grandmother was just screwing with me. And I needed to know, because if Lucy actually did want me, then… then… then what?

“Devastated,” I said lightly, pushing the flowers her way. “Now hold these so I can drive, dearest.”

She took them, and I got a shudder when her fingers brushed mine. Did she do it on purpose? Did she spend a lot of time thinking about her fingers touching mine? “You’re not prohibited from going inside the house,” she laughed. “Just… don’t take it to heart too much, whatever she told you.”

I paused with my hand on the transmission. “About her,” I said.

“Mm?”

“What’s her name? She told me to just call her ma’am. ”

She laughed, rolling her eyes. “That woman… it’s Charlotte.”

“You spend a lot of time telling Granny Charlotte how pretty I am?”

She sighed, sinking back in the seat, buckling her seatbelt. “I’ve talked about you a lot. She’s probably interpreted that however she’s felt right.”

I couldn’t work out the answer in the middle of all this. Whatever… I’d get to it another time. I put the car in reverse, pulling out of the driveway, the music coming back on. “I have to say, I kind of expected someone… nicer.”

“See, this is why I was hoping I could warn you before you met her.”

“Scared I’ll judge you by your scary grandmother?”

“Mm. Maybe just worried she’ll scare you off and then I’ll lose my moderately pretty date.”

I laughed despite myself. Pulled out onto the road and drove for a bit before I found myself saying, “Has she scared off girls before?”

I had no idea why I was asking about Lucy’s love life, but she didn’t make it weird. “I’ve introduced her to a girl before… things didn’t last long with the girl in question, but I don’t think Grandma was the reason. Think she just didn’t like my lack of emotional availability.”

“Well, aren’t we self-aware?”

She raised her eyebrows at me with a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to say something like oh, you must have grown a lot since then, with your strong sense of emotional availability… ”

“Hm. Strange. I don’t seem to have said that. Your grandma’s going to be relieved once we drop this thing, isn’t she?”

“Probably not. She loves you.”

“Oh, does she?” I raised my eyebrows, not taking my eyes off the road. “What does she do when she hates someone?”

“She’s polite. She’ll be devastated once we put this behind us, and get doubly so on my case to find a girlfriend. One who cooks and cleans…”

“I’ll bet anything you don’t go for the housewife type anyway.”

She laughed, looking out of the side of her eye at me. “And what, pray tell, is your read on my type?”

Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? “Well,” I said after a second, “I hear you can be bossy, so probably someone who likes to take orders.”

That came out more flirtatious than I intended. Dammit. I wasn’t trying to flirt with Lucy. It just—happened. Too much practice from the party. Still, Lucy took it in stride, relaxing and adjusting her seat. Making herself at home in my car. “So, you see me as a confident, assertive person.”

“Loud and demanding.”

“Six in one hand, one half dozen in the other.”

“So?” I said, turning down the music a little as the slow strums of a romantic ballad came on. Not really what I needed right now, driving through the drifting snowflakes gleaming in the sunrise, the roads quiet around us, but I wasn’t drawing attention to it by changing the station altogether. “You’re not actually answering the question.”

“My type?” she said, casually, which really made it sink in just how I was asking her type. Still, she didn’t make it weird, going on normally. “Honestly, it would probably have to be someone else work-minded. I’ve scared off too many girls by being too focused on my job.”

“How much time do you actually spend seeing girls?”

She laughed. “Sometimes I’ll do something on the weekends. But it’s been a minute, admittedly. Why, how much time do you spend dating? I’m sure you have people tripping over themselves to be with you.”

What a humiliating question in the wake of realizing how badly I wanted to date somebody. “All the time. Can’t even get out of my front door without running into beautiful women throwing themselves at me.”

“That’s a generous way to describe me.”

Ugh—I rolled my eyes, but I found myself smiling again, my treacherous face at it again. “So,” I said, deciding to go for it, “how long have you been waiting for your chance to date me, huh?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Preston, darling, it was love at first sight.”

Did that mean it was true or that it wasn’t? Dammit, I was going to kill myself thinking about it at this rate.

She could not be into me. Not actually, not seriously. Not in a million years. I didn’t want to think about the things she might have been thinking about—how much she might have wanted to kiss me at the party, whether she actually meant it when she asked if I wanted company in the shower.

I couldn’t get the damn shower thing out of my mind. Since when did I even have a thing for shower sex? Because I didn’t have a thing for Lucy.

“What are you thinking about?” she laughed, glancing at me, and I pursed my lips, looking straight out at the road. You in the shower with me would have been a bad answer.

“What to expect from my family,” I lied.

“And it’s making you blush like that?”

Dammit—was I blushing? I hunched my shoulders. “Wondering what embarrassing things Veronica is going to tell you about me next.”

“Something good, I hope. Now, I think it’s my turn to take a guess at your type.”

“Lay it on me,” I said, trying to sound cool, and I lost it when she said,

“Someone who will let you put something in her mouth.”

“Lucy—” I was definitely blushing now. I was going to crash the damn car.

“Anna?”

Ugh—I’d called her Lucy. I needed to start thinking of her as Masters in my head so I’d quit the habit. “I’m never living that down, am I?” I muttered.

“If I said something like that, would you let me live it down?”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “You offered to join me in the shower,” I said.

She smiled wider at me. “Been thinking about it?”

How were you not supposed to think about it when the worst person you knew muscled into your home and offered to follow you into the shower? And then… if I thought about how that shower went, I would end up crashing the car.

“I try to think of you as little as possible,” I said.

“I’m heartbroken.”

Was she, actually, though? That was the question, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t too long to get to my family’s house—time just flew by when you were arguing with someone as smug as Lucy—and I pulled into where the courtyard was already busy. Big house—my grandfather Mark had bought a house far beyond his budget and spent his life working to the bone to pay it off, and now the family’s legacy was keeping the thing intact, because the thing about having a big house was that there was always something broken. It was a pretty thing, though, Tudor-style facade with dense landscaping all around it, thick trees dressed up with coats of snow and light strings, wooden paneling around the windows that looked rustic and inviting with Christmas lights in the windows, still lit up against the early-morning dimness around.

And of course I could hear the music blaring already. My grandmother loved tacky mid-century Christmas music, and with her hearing going, she really shouldn’t have been in charge of the music volume, but nobody ever had the heart to say no to Grandma, so every year we ended up listening to the same starlets howling about rocking around the Christmas tree . I was hoping she’d still be asleep by now, but knowing my mother, she’d probably gotten the whole family too excited to meet my beautiful, dreamy girlfriend who was just perfect in every way.

I guess I was glad Lucy actually was pretty and charming, or I’d have to deal with veiled disappointment.

“My family’s humble abode,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. Lucy didn’t take her eyes off the house.

“That’s what counts as humble?”

“It’s humbler once you feel how drafty it is, having to keep the heat down so it doesn’t bankrupt them…”

“I didn’t realize I should have brought earplugs.”

“For once, we’re actually on the same page. I’ve been told it’s rude to wear them. Shall we?”

She stepped out of the car, and the woman had the nerve to come over to my side of the car and get the door for me before I realized what she was doing, busy tossing my things into my purse. Still, my grandma being nosy and probably peeking out through the curtains, I couldn’t start a fight right now unless I wanted my dysfunctional love life to be the subject of family gossip for the next year, so I smiled sweetly at her and let her take my hand, helping me up out of the car, and she went one step further than I was prepared for—tugged me off my feet and into her, and I stumbled, losing my breath a little, falling into where she wrapped an arm around my waist, and the next thing I knew, her forehead was resting against mine as our breath fogged up in the cold, mingling together in between where our lips were inches apart. My stomach dropped, and my heart beat faster, anxiously twisting up wondering what she was angling for here, before she winked.

“I’m guessing the old lady looking through the curtains is your grandmother,” she whispered, and I slumped.

“I… had a feeling.”

She pressed the bouquet of violets back into my hand. “Have to make sure everyone knows those came from me, to you. Can’t have them thinking Anna Preston scored an underwhelming girlfriend.”

“I hate you, you know.”

“Oh, I know, darling. Now, do you want to go inside, or stay here gazing into each other’s eyes all day?”

I sighed, pushing away from her. “As tempting as it is, I’ll… somehow… rip my gaze away from your captivating blues.”

“ Captivating blues? Even as a joke, I think that’s more romantic to say than anything a girl’s said to me before.”

I suppressed a smile, walking a half step ahead of her up to the big, overdone porch entry. “Sounds like you’re the one scoring underwhelming girlfriends, then.”

She laughed. “Not anymore, I’m not.”

I paused at the door, glancing back at her, and after a second’s consideration, I offered an arm, looping it under hers and holding her close to me. “Lucky you,” I said.