“There’s a very nice place here, too,” Gran said, glancing at her screen. “I visit one of my good friends there. I’d imagine such places are less expensive here than in a place like Los Angeles, but what do I know?”
“I’m starting to think you know a lot,” I told her.
She tilted her head then, her eyes widening as her hands folded on her lap, little wrinkled fingers working together. “You have a lot on your plate. And what about my granddaughter, Tess?”
I dropped her gaze, staring down at my own hands. “I’d really like to be with Tess.” I risked a look back up at the old lined face. She was smiling.
“But …?”
“But I think my life is too complicated for her.”
“Un-complicate it.”
If only it was that simple. “I want to. I want it more than anything … but she … I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t believe me.”
“Seeing is believing, Ryan. Show her you’re serious.”
“I tried, I mean, I want to try.”
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
“Yoda? Seriously?” I laughed.
“People say we look alike,” she said, pursing her lips and lowering her chin in a little pose.
“No they don’t,” I said, grinning and relieved to feel lighter suddenly, less burdened.
“Maybe not, but Yoda was wise,” she told me. “And he knew how to deliver the sagey oracle shit with panache.” She turned her chair back to face the computer screen, where her character stood still, waiting for her to return.
I watched as she pulled the headset back on and leaned forward, her hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard. Her Paladin ran forward, and for a while I just sat, watching the young strong version of Granny on the screen moving over endless green hilltops in a fantasy world where she could go wherever she pleased, do whatever she wanted. But watching made me feel tired—Warcraft was one quest after another. Each achievement was just a key to unlocking harder challenges. There was really no rest, no end.
In some ways, wasn’t that what my life was like now? Roaming endlessly, moving from one thing to another?
I wanted solidity and permanence. I wanted more.
I said goodnight to Granny and went up to my room, set up my laptop and opened a browser. An idea had been brewing in my mind, and the more I thought about Granny, about Warcraft, the more exhausted I felt. I wanted something else. Something real.
Chapter Sixteen
Tess
Sleep was like an old trusted friend who was on some exotic vacation texting you selfies with tropical umbrella drinks and hot dive instructors just when you needed her most.
Bitch.
After Ryan left the room, I lay awake and took stock. My body hummed with memories of his touch, and my muscles were soft and languid, the result of the very best orgasm I’d ever had. And while my body purred as I lay in my bed alone, my brain whizzed and jerked, trying to find some way that all of this would be okay.
But it wouldn’t.
Because I was an idiot. I’d let myself become completely absorbed in the dream of Ryan McDonnell. In the few days I’d actually known him, I’d gotten much too close, and I knew when he left I was going to be broken. I’d entertained a fantasy, let it wind itself around my heart, and now it was going to be very hard to release.
How could the boring standstill world of my everyday life ever compare to the dream of having a movie star sweep me off my feet?
But that was what this was. Just a dream. Even if Ryan was not really with Juliet, there was no chance he was going to be with me. I knew myself too well for that.
I was Tess Manchester, largely invisible to men.
On the plus side, that gave me a lot of time to pursue activities, and had allowed me to build a successful business and construct my life pretty much the way I wanted it.
The down side was … well, it was pretty obvious as I looked around my room. My life often felt empty.
When the sky outside began to lighten in infinitesimal amounts, I slipped out of bed, feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all. I couldn’t remember every single one of the dark minutes that had ticked by, but it felt like I’d been awake to mark each one’s slow passage. And I stood beside my bed now with a weight in my chest and fog in my mind. And more than one hundred guests coming tonight for Granny’s party, not to mention the press for Juliet’s article.
Perfect.
I slogged downstairs in my pajamas, looking for coffee, and nearly had a heart attack when I bumped into Juliet in the living room.
“Oh, Tess!” she said, looking every bit as surprised to see me at o’dark-thirty as I felt to see her.
“Hi,” I said. I wondered why she was wandering around the house this early in her pajamas, but then realized I was doing the same thing. Maybe she couldn’t sleep either. “Getting coffee,” I told her, my best effort at conversation still making me sound like fuzzy and dense at this hour.
“Good, yes,” she said, following me to the kitchen. Her quick answer and the glance behind her made me think my sister was hiding something. For a split second, my suspicion rose again and I peered around in the darkness for Ryan—could they really be together as Gran had insinuated? Was she sneaking around down here with him? But that didn’t make a lot of sense, and it was far too early for me to worry much about it.
While the coffee brewed, we sat across from each other at the small round table in the kitchen, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Once the pot was done, and we each had
