The Kiss That Launched 1,000 Gifs (11 page)

Grace sent her friend a tired smile. “That happened last night. I was a wreck. Trust me.”

“Poor babe,” Esme said, handing off a spoon. “You should have called.”

“It was midnight.”

“Still,” Esme said. “I could have come over.”

“Then we’d both be sleep deprived right now,” Grace said, pulling the lid off of the pint of chocolate cabernet.

“But, on the bright side, you’re no longer a workaholic dating another workaholic,” Esme said, pulling the lid off the port. “Maybe breaking up with Phillip is a good thing. He won’t be there asking you all those questions that keep your brain in constant work mode. Maybe you’ll remember how to have non-work-related fun.”

“He wasn’t like that,” Grace said. “We had fun.”

Esme grinned and took a bite. “Denial. That’s cute. But the fact that you’re saying that only proves that you have no actual memories of fun in recent memory. We’ll fix that. We’ll find out a cute, fun guy who—”

“Please, no. No men. Not for a while.” She held up her pint. “Ice cream and you are all I need for now.”

“Fair enough,” Esme said, putting the port down and opening the cherry merlot.

“Nuh-uh,” Grace said, wagging her spoon at her friend. “You’re having more than one bite of each. I can’t eat all this by myself.”

“Hon, if you saw the dress I need to fit into tomorrow night, you would understand.”

Grace shook her head and took another bite. “I, on the other hand, have nowhere to be besides my couch this weekend.”

Esme arched a brow. “What about your plans?”

“Canceled them.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

Esme grinned from ear to ear. “Phillip would so not approve of that. Good for you! Take some
you
time.”

Grace took another bite. “I didn’t cancel them to spite him. I just feel… off my game.”

“Well, if that means taking a day or two off, then you deserve it!” Esme said. “Even if those days are Saturday and Sunday—the days the rest of humanity takes off anyway. It’s still progress. We should go dancing.”

“I have no plans that include walking out my front door this weekend, but thanks for the thought.”

“Baby steps,” Esme said, dipping into the port flavor. “And Netflix. The therapy of champions.”

“Seriously,” Grace said. “Although you’re going to have to pick the movie. Nothing sounds good to me.”

“Take a few more bites of ice cream and something might.”

That actually got a chuckle out of Grace. “Esme?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” Grace said, looking her friend in the eye. “I know you had plans for the night.”

“Nothing that couldn’t be moved,” Esme said. “Besides, how many breakups have you seen me through since we’ve known each other?”

“Seven… I think.”

Her friend laughed. “Sounds right. Although I must say that you’re taking all this way better than I’ve taken my breakups. I ramble and rant and cry. All in all, you’re very… mellow.”

Mellow, or confused? Grace wasn’t sure which applied to her more. She and Phillip had just broken up, and Grace had spent the past few hours wondering if that meant Traci would break off her date with Ashton tomorrow night. Traci liked Phillip. Grace had no question about that, but would the woman jump the moment Phillip became available? Or would she see things through with Ashton?

Grace had played a million conversations in her head that ended every which way before realizing that her reactions were backwards. When she imagined Traci breaking things off with Ashton to be with Phillip, all she could think was,
Good! She and Phillip deserve each other.
But when Grace imagined Traci biding her time and giving Ashton a shot first, she felt positively ill.

That was definitely backwards.

Two giant flirts like Ashton and Traci deserved each other. Phillip was nothing like them. Furthermore, the thought of Phillip moving on so quickly was the idea that should have Grace feeling sick and throwing a fit. She felt oddly calm about it, though… almost relieved. She and Phillip had basically been platonic for the past several months. In that way, they had broken up a while ago. Grace had little doubt Phillip would pounce on a rebound relationship very quickly. He was efficient like that.

And Grace was 100% okay with it.

She totally shouldn’t be.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Esme said, watching her closely.

Grace blinked back to reality. “Uh, how long was I checked out?”

“About ten seconds. Where did you go?”

Grace sighed and took another bite. “Just trying to wrap my head around everything.”

“Yeah,” Esme said, reaching for the next carton. “That might take longer than ten seconds.”

“And more ice cream,” Grace said, setting the port-flavored pint down. “Pass that spice one over here. I haven’t tried that one yet.”

Esme tossed the pint her way. “You’ll like it. See how much of it you can down while I try to find a movie where the hero doesn’t get the girl.”

Grace grinned as she peeled back the lid. “Sounds like a winner.” She stabbed a spoon into the untouched ice cream and pulled out her phone. Framing up all the flavors into one shot, she took a picture and decided it was good enough.

Esme let out a little laugh. “Are you going to post that and pretend we’re having fun tonight?”

“Yep. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“Uncle Ash?”

Ash glanced back at his niece, who was only a few steps behind him on the trail up the mountain. “Yeah?”

“Did you know that right now exactly none of my other friends’ uncles are forcing them to hike up mountains with tents on their backs?”

He kept moving up the trail. “Oh? How sad for them.”

“Not the adjective I was thinking of,” Megan said. “But yeah… they’re all at a party tonight.”

“So you mentioned earlier,” Ash said, playing dumb. He listened as she let out an annoyed sigh and smiled to himself. Teenagers were such a joy.

“What I’m saying,” she continued, “is that if we head back now, I can still make it to the party and you won’t have to worry about hanging out with me tonight. You could hang out with a female your own age—not related—and I could do the same.”

“Or we could go camping and let the world survive without us for a night.”

Another longsuffering teenage sigh played out behind him. “C’mon. I downloaded that app you want me to have. You can track me and everything.”

Ash didn’t answer her for a moment, weighing his words carefully while continuing up the mountain. He wasn’t Megan’s father. Ash knew that. But that didn’t mean he didn’t have a right to worry. His sister, Fawn, was unworried enough for the both of them, which meant many of the awkward conversations fell into his lap. When it came to Megan, Ash was the rule maker and his sister was the enforcer. They made a horrible team, but that didn’t mean he could stop trying.

“You think there’s going to be alcohol at the party tonight, don’t you?” Megan asked, her words more of a statement than a question.

That brought Ash to a stop, and he turned to face his niece. “Isn’t there?”

She studied him for a moment, clearly weighing her answer. “Yeah.”

“So enlighten me as to why I would allow you—a fifteen-year-old—to go to a party with alcohol while you’re under my watch?”

Megan shrugged. “Mom would let me go.”

Yes. She would. A fact that irked Ash to his core.

“She trusts me,” Megan added, throwing in some doe eyes just to mess with him.

“I trust you, too,” he replied. “But I’m guessing there will be about a hundred teenagers at this party that I don’t trust at all. So as long as I’m watching over you while your mom is out of town, be prepared to be marched into a remote part of the mountains any time a kegger pops up on your underage social calendar.”

“Hmmph,” she mumbled, earning a smile from Ash before he turned and started up the mountain again. Megan’s steps stayed right behind him. She’d always been a strong hiker, even if she liked to pretend she wasn’t into it anymore. Ash knew she liked it deep down under those frown lines of hers.

They hiked on for several minutes in silence.

“Why wasn’t Grace on the show today?” Megan asked out of nowhere.

Ash’s foot snagged on a rock before he caught himself. “I… uh, she wasn’t feeling well.”

“It looked like she was mad at you on the webcam.”

Ash didn’t mean to stop, but her words caught him off guard. He spun around to face her again. “The webcam? It was on?”

Megan nodded. “It usually turns on five or ten minutes before you two go on the air. Usually all you see is Grace getting everything ready and you walking in at the last second, but today was… interesting. But there wasn’t any audio, so we were all left wondering what was actually happening.”

“We?” Ash asked, feeling his heartbeat in his throat. “Who is
we
?”

“Just a bunch of us on Twitter,” she said with a little shrug. “We made screen caps with captions. It was fun.”

Ash’s mind rewound time, instinctively zooming in on the moment in the sound booth when he was quite certain Grace was thinking about kissing him. Honestly, that was the only moment he remembered from the afternoon with clarity. The rest was a blur.

“Well?” Megan pressed.

Ash blinked, not sure what she was asking. “Well, what?”

“What happened?” she asked, her eyes narrowing in on him in a way that let him know she was analyzing his every move.

Ash cleared his throat. “She… um.” Again, his mind focused in on the look in Grace’s eye when she’d looked up at him and leaned in. His palms suddenly felt sweaty and he wiped them on his jeans. “She just said she wasn’t up to it today and asked if Frank could find a fill in.”

“And before that?” Megan pressed, the look in her eye more than a little mischievous. “There was, like, a good minute of action before then.”

“I honestly don’t remember. Something about how inappropriate it is to flirt in the workplace.”

Megan arched a brow. “The two of you?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Me and Emily. She thought I wasn’t being very professional when Emily was telling me about Instagram.”

“I see,” Megan said with a Cheshire grin. Ash immediately backpedaled.

“It’s not like that, Miss Teenage Brain,” he said. “I think women are hitting on Phillip at work, and it’s just eating at Grace.”

“That’s one theory,” Megan teased.

“The
most likely
theory,” he countered. “I know it may not seem like it when we’re on the air, Megan, but Grace and I really don’t talk to each other outside of that booth. I honestly don’t think she likes me. Today was just… weird.”

“We should head back to town, pop some popcorn, and watch the clip on a loop to jog your memory,” she teased. “It’s up on YouTube.”

Who in the world would take the time to do that? “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Megan shook her head, looking quite pleased with herself.

“How did you find it?” he asked, and grew nervous when he saw Megan’s teenage brain start turning.

“There’s a hashtag for all the fun moments between you and Grace… and for some made-up moments between you and Grace.”

Ash felt both embarrassed and intrigued at the same time. “A hashtag? I heard there wasn’t one—that our names don’t work together.”

“Oh, there is,” Megan teased. “And following it is a fun hobby. My favorites are the Bad Pickup Lines people make using screen shots and sound edits from your show. They’re hilarious.”

Ash folded his arms across his chest and tried for a stern look. “And you never told me about this because?”

“Because it was more fun not to,” Megan said. “Plus, there are only a few hundred of us who are into watching you two dance around each other. Most of them are moms in their thirties, so I’m the odd one out. But it’s still fun. We post most of our stuff on Twitter, Tumblr, or a Google Hangout we’re all members of. If we went home right now, I could show it to you.”

Ash studied his niece, blinking several times. “You
really
don’t want to go camping tonight, do you?”

“Finally, you believe me!”

Yes. Yes, he did.

“Although, come to think of it, I can’t really show you any of this,” Megan added. “It’s the first rule of our little club: it’s for fans only. Introducing any insiders to it might throw things off and corrupt the bets we all have placed.”

“Bets?”

Megan nodded. “You have to place a bet to become an official member. It’s required.”

Ash shook his head, not sure he was comprehending half of what she said, even though it was all English. “Social media really freaks me out, you know that?”