Tandem (5 page)

I yanked the door open, revealing Grant in all his formal wear glory. I could hear my blood pounding in my ears, and my stomach tumbled when he smiled at me. He was clean-shaven, his hair ever-so-slightly slicked back with some sort of product, and he carried the scent of pine needles with him through the door. The sight of him in a tux sent a sizzle up my spine. Part of me couldn’t wait to be alone with him, and regretted calling in Gina and Jeff as reinforcements, but there was another part of me that felt anxious. I had no idea what to do, or what to expect of the evening. Or, come to think of it, what would be expected of
me
.

“Sorry, I couldn’t get out of the house. My mom kept trying to straighten my tie.” Grant stepped back to get a good look at me, his eyes traveling the length of my body unabashedly from foot to forehead, until he met my gaze with his own. “Wow. You look amazing.”

A fierce blush crept into my cheeks. “Thanks.” I couldn’t remember the last time someone had said something like that to me, and I knew it had never been in a tone like
that
. I still couldn’t believe this was happening. Why hadn’t Grant asked one of the many girls he’d dated to go to prom with him instead of me, someone he barely knew? I decided not to let that bother me. What was the point? He didn’t seem disappointed with his choice, and neither was I.

He shook a plastic box with a white corsage inside. “Did you want a corsage? I didn’t know, so I brought one, but it’s probably dumb. You don’t have to wear it.” He curled his arm around it, as if to shield it from my eyes, and I realized that he was nervous, too, possibly just as much as I was.

“No, of course I’ll wear it,” I told him, and his shoulders relaxed. He slipped the corsage around my wrist, then stepped back, the corners of his mouth quirking. As I admired the flowers—an arrangement of snow-colored roses, with some leaves and baby’s breath arranged along the edges—he reached over and tucked a dark brown curl behind my ear. My hair was naturally straight, and I usually wore it pulled up in a ponytail. Gina had declared that style unacceptable for prom, and she’d spent the better part of the afternoon engaging in an all-out assault on my head with a curling iron and hair spray. It’d felt like overkill to me, but the expression on Grant’s face as he looked at me now told me that Gina’s instincts had been right on the money.

“I like your hair down like that,” he said in a low voice.

My skin buzzed where his hand had brushed it. A wave of intense shyness broke over me, and I was anxious to get moving. “Are we ready to go?” Gina and Jeff emerged from the parlor, and suddenly the foyer felt very crowded. All three of them looked at me expectantly. “Oh, right, introductions. Grant, this is Jeff, and that’s Gina.” Grant had gone to school with Gina as long as he had with me, but it was possible they’d never spoken before, high school heirarchies being what they were.

“Hey, guys,” Grant said, pulling a relaxed, affable tone out of his arsenal of charms and shaking Jeff’s hand like they were old buddies. He smiled at Gina. “I heard about your race this week. That’s awesome.” Gina was a fantastic runner, and she’d won all her events at Thursday’s track meet. She shot me a look, surprised that Grant knew this, but nothing about Grant managed to surprise me these days. He’d clearly done his homework. I was proud of him; I knew how hard it was to subdue Gina’s cynical side. “Thanks for waiting around for me.”

“No problem,” Gina said. I could tell she was won over.

“So,” Grant said. “Should we go?”

“You have to meet my grandfather first,” I informed him apologetically.

“Of course,” Grant said. “I’d love to.”

“Well, don’t get too excited. He’s not very friendly.”

Grant laughed. “Just introduce us.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Grant was starting to seem too good to be true. I called upstairs to Granddad, who descended minutes later, looking less than thrilled to have been disturbed. But he
had
demanded to meet my date, so he couldn’t complain.

“It’s great to meet you, Dr. Quentin,” Grant said, offering his hand to Granddad, who shook it cordially. “Thanks for letting me take your lovely granddaughter to the prom.” Grant shot me a self-satisfied smile, and I rolled my eyes. He was trying so hard to make a good impression, and the more his effort showed, the more I liked him. “Is there a time you’d like me to have her back by?”

Granddad mulled the question over for a few seconds. “Midnight should do it.”

“Granddad,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “Be cool.” According to Granddad, that was something my mom used to say to him as a teenager when she thought he was being too strict. He’d told me this once in rare fit of nostalgia, something I’m sure he regretted later, because it worked every time.

“All right,” he relented. “One a.m., then. But no later.”

“Thank you, sir,” Grant said. “We won’t be late.” Granddad nodded, trying not to appear pleased at Grant’s politeness, but I couldn’t disguise my own happiness. Granddad was the world’s hardest person to impress, and if Grant was managing to charm him, it meant I had nothing to worry about.

In a gesture of uncharacteristic sentimentality, Granddad placed his hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the forehead. “Have a good time, dear. And be safe.”

“Thanks, Granddad. I will.”

Gina hooked her elbow with mine. “Come on, Lawson. Let’s get out of here.”

FOUR

Grant was a terrible dancer. When we first arrived at the hotel—where prom was already in full swing—he was shy about it, demurring every time I tried to drag him onto the dance floor. Finally, I took his hand in mine; I’d had two glasses of punch, which had most certainly been fortified by something out of a flask while the chaperones’ backs were turned, and was overcome by a sudden boldness.

“Okay, Grant, what’s up?” I whispered into his ear. “You asked me to prom and you won’t even dance with me?”

“I don’t know how,” he said, confessing this secret in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear it over the pounding music.

I laughed, thinking he was joking, and he looked away in embarrassment. “I’m serious,” he said, his expression dark and distant.

I squeezed his hand, trying to make up for laughing and to reassure him without implying that he needed any reassurance. I felt light and fearless, due to a combination of spiked punch and the realization that Grant wasn’t perfect, that he had his own anxieties and faults just like the rest of humanity. It was a relief. Much as I liked Grant, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to tolerate someone who seemed so flawless.

“You don’t have to know how,” I told him. “Just listen to the music and move the way you want.”

He shook his head vehemently. “I don’t want to. I’ll look stupid.”

“Not possible,” I said in earnest. I led him into the crowd of shifting bodies until we were right in the center of the ballroom. He stood apart from me, glancing around as if anticipating some sort of ambush. I reached up and put my arms around his neck. His reticence had burned mine completely away, and I didn’t care what anyone else was thinking or doing, so long as Grant and I were having a good time.

“Put your hands on my waist,” I commanded. He did as he was told. His fingers were like feathers on my hips, but his chest was solid, so close and so warm, which I didn’t mind despite the heat of the ballroom. I swayed along with the beat. “Come on,” I coaxed. “Just do what I do.”

He did his best to mimic my movements. We started slow, ignoring the high-spirited flailing of our classmates, and after a few minutes I felt him begin to relax in my arms. Before I knew it, half a dozen songs had played, and Grant’s nerves seemed to have entirely evaporated. Soon enough, he was jumping and spinning and pumping his fist along with the music just like everybody else.

“I love this song!” he shouted. I laughed. Though we were surrounded on all sides, it was as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

Four hours later, I collapsed into a chair, panting. My hair was a disaster, I was covered in a thin layer of sweat, and my dress had a stain down the front where Gina had accidentally spilled some punch earlier in the evening. I was having the time of my
life
. Even Jeff was cracking the occasional smile, a pretty much unprecedented occurrence in my experience.

“Come on,” Grant said, hoisting me out of my chair. The lights were coming up in the hotel ballroom; prom was over. Gina and Jeff were making out two tables away. The staff was going to have to forcibly eject them.

Grant put his arms around my waist and held me close. At some point in the evening he’d undone his bow tie; it was hanging loose around his neck and I batted at it playfully like a kitten. He grinned. “Let’s go somewhere. We’ve still got an hour before your curfew.”

“Where?” I fanned myself with my fingers. “It’s so hot in here.”

“To the beach,” he suggested.

“Which one? Fifty-Seventh Street?” That was undoubtedly where everybody else was headed, there or Promontory Point, both of which were in our neighborhood. One of the best things about Hyde Park was its proximity to the water.

“No, no,” Grant said. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing; if we went to a Hyde Park beach, there was no way we’d get a chance to be alone. “There’s one a few blocks from here. Oak Street Beach. It’s not far.”

I was a little worried about making it home on time, but the beach was close and we didn’t have to stay long. Besides, what was Granddad going to do if I was fifteen minutes late? I doubted he would even be up when I got home, since his usual bedtime was ten p.m.—one of the benefits of having a septuagenarian as my legal guardian. I said goodbye to Gina and Jeff, but all I got in return were a couple of barely audible grunts. That suited me just fine—I wanted to be alone with Grant so badly, my knees shook just thinking about it. I gathered my things, including the pashmina Gina had lent me, and hobbled out of the ballroom into the hotel lobby, my feet aching from the three-inch heels I wasn’t used to wearing.

I was grateful when we reached the beach and I could take the shoes off. I plunged my toes deep into the cool sand and sought out my date in the darkness. Grant looked perfectly handsome and disheveled in the moonlight. He was standing with his back to me, hands in his pockets, staring out at Lake Michigan. Behind us, the high rises and skyscrapers that made up the Chicago skyline rose up into the night, mountains of light and glass. I rested my chin on his shoulder and slipped my arm through his.

“Looking for something?” He turned at the sound of my voice and his lips brushed my forehead, right along my hairline. I shivered as he put his arms around me, pulling me in and holding me tight.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No.” I laid my head upon his chest.

“It’s big, isn’t it? Sometimes I forget how big everything is.” His voice was soft and far away, as if his mind was somewhere else. A charcoal cloud sailed through the sky, blotting out the moon.

“I know what you mean.” I looked up at him. He was back to gazing over the water, as if he was searching for something out there in the dense black night. I admired the line of his jaw, the slight upturn of his ski-slope nose. The moon emerged again, blanching our skin and giving Grant the stately appearance of a Renaissance statue. “Granddad always likes to tell me that the Earth in relation to the galaxy is like a single pin lost somewhere in the United States. That’s how small we are.”

“Not us,” Grant said. His hand migrated up my arm and stroked the fine hair at the nape of my neck. I shivered again. “The
planet
.”

“Right,” I said. “ ‘A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’ ”

Grant glanced at me. “What?”

“It’s a quote. By Carl Sagan. He was my father’s favorite writer—he was a physicist, too, my dad. And my mom.”

“The family business,” Grant said, pressing his cheek against the top of my head.

I smiled into his shoulder. My parents would’ve loved Grant, I was sure of it. They wouldn’t have had a choice. There was no way they could’ve disliked anyone who made me this happy. “Something like that, yeah.”

Grant looked directly at me for the first time since we’d stepped foot on the beach, and a sudden bolt of sadness flickered across his face, so quickly that I thought I might’ve imagined it.

“Sasha,” he said, with an intensity that nearly swept me off my feet. I loved the way he said my name, like an incantation, like a magic word.
I’m falling for him,
I thought, in the space between heartbeats. I was surprised by how easy that was to admit. For a long time, I’d thought the deaths of my parents might have inured me to love—fear of losing something beloved was the reason I’d never wanted a pet—but it hadn’t. In fact, it had only made me want it more, something I hadn’t realized until this moment.

“Whatever happens,” Grant continued, “this has been the best night of my entire life.”

I laughed. “What could happen?”

“Anything,” he said. My heart pounded away in my chest like a bass drum, and my hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists to keep Grant from noticing.

He took a deep breath. The air changed, as if there had been a shift in the Earth’s rotation. “I have a gift for you.” He dug around in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a flat black box the size of his palm. “Open it.”

Inside the box was a thin silver bracelet on a bed of black velvet. It was the simplest thing I’d ever seen, and because of that, one of the most lovely. Not a single engraving or gem or artistic flourish, just a plain, elegant silver band. I picked it up and tried to slide it over my hand, but it wouldn’t fit. It was too small. A flush crawled up my neck and into my face. My hand was too fat for Grant’s gift.

“No, not like that.” He reached over to take the bracelet; I didn’t quite see how he did it, but he managed to open an imperceptible hinge. He placed the bracelet around my left wrist before closing it with a firm
snap
. It was snug, but not tight, as if it had been sized just for me.

The sleeve of Grant’s jacket rode up and I caught another glint of silver. I grabbed his arm.