Play It Safe

I didn’t want to laugh because I was mostly terrified out of my mind seeing as Grandma Miriam seriously didn’t like me and didn’t mind me knowing but, it must be said, Gray was funny.

“She still knew how to do it,” Grandma Miriam rejoined.

“Yeah, and so do I and so do you and, it comes to that, which, Gran, this is our second date so why you got yourself in a snit, I don’t know, then you teach her or I teach her,” Gray responded.

“I’m in a snit because before date one, you got yourself a cut over your eye because of that girl’s troubles and this might be date two but it’s night two that girl’s sleeping under this roof.”

“In the guest bedroom.”

“Grayson Cody, look at me. I’m seventy years old and I had four sons. Four. And I was married to your granddaddy. Do you think after all that experience with Cody men that I don’t know?”

Oh dear.

“First,” Gray clipped and I bit my lip at his tone, “I would not disrespect you like that. Second, I wouldn’t do it to Ivey. I’m a Cody, Gran, and I’m more intimately acquainted with your other three boys’ bullshit than you are these days but I’m my father’s son. Remember that.”

Another bit of intrigue from Gray.

Grandma Miriam was silent.

Obviously Gray made his point.

Then Grandma Miriam decided to argue a different one.

“Don’t care you’re five or twenty-five, Grayson Cody, you need to watch that dirty mouth.”

Gray clearly didn’t feel like taking this admonition to heart considering I barely heard but still heard him mutter, “Fuck me.”

“Gray!” Grandma Miriam snapped.

I bit my lip again to stop myself from laughing because it might be scary but it was still funny.

There was nothing from Gray and then nothing from Grandma Miriam until I heard her declare, “I’m watching the box in my room.”

“Suit yourself,” Gray replied.

“I’d like to do it on my bed,” she told him.

“Right, you wanna get ready for bed? Or you wanna watch awhile and call me later?”

“Watch awhile,” she said much more quietly.

“Then let’s go, darlin’,” he muttered.

This time I was biting my lip because they could have an out-and-out and it ended with Gray putting his Gran in bed so she could watch television comfortably and not in the presence of the girl her grandson was suddenly dating that she didn’t like all that much only to go back and deal with her when she needed to get ready to go to sleep.

And I thought that was very sweet.

Grandma Miriam wheeled through calling out her lie that, though it had been a really long time since I went to church, I was pretty certain God frowned on as much as He disliked curse words, “Just feel like watchin’ a different show than you and Gray, child. I’ll say my goodnights now.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Cody,” I called back and noticed as she wheeled around the stairs she didn’t look at me.

Gray, following her, did.

“Be back in a minute, dollface.”

“Okay,” I said softly.

They disappeared.

I looked back at the TV.

Suffice it to say, dinner didn’t go that well. Gray came to get me and we got back to his house before the meal had been prepared. Upon arrival, Grandma Miriam tried to press me into service and before I gamely waded in and commenced slicing off a digit or blowing up their kitchen, I confided in them that I’d never cooked.

Gray didn’t say a word, didn’t even give me a look though it terrified me to admit that. Still, it wasn’t something you could hide so, if we went beyond a second date, he’d eventually find out so I had to.

As evidenced by the fight that happened after I did manage to assist Gray in clean up, we all sat down and watched a sitcom then Grandma Miriam told her grandson she needed “a word”, she didn’t take to this too well.

I felt him before I saw him round the doublewide doorway to the living room. Then I watched him, ready to make my speech only to be cut off when he did something that took my breath away.

And what he did was pluck me right out of the couch and into his arms whereupon he entered the couch to lie on his back with me on top but tucked partly to the back of the couch.

I struggled to get my breath back then I struggled to get my wits about me then I pushed up slightly with a hand to his chest and looked down at him.

He had his beautiful head with its thick gorgeous hair resting on a flowery-patterned pillow that had ruffles at the sides and his eyes were on the TV until he felt mine on him and they moved to me.

“I think maybe I should go back to the hotel,” I whispered and his arm, which was curled around my back, got tight.

“Ivey –”

“She’s uncomfortable.”

“She’ll get over it.”

“Okay, maybe, but now, she’s uncomfortable and this is her home and, my guess and you can correct me, but it has been awhile. No one should feel uncomfortable in their home.”

“That include me?”

I shut my mouth.

His other hand came up and he tucked hair behind my ear but left his hand there, fingers in my hair, palm under my ear.

“She’ll get over it,” he said softly.

I pushed it carefully, “Gray, honey, you promised that if her discomfort made me uncomfortable, you’d take me back to town. That’s happened.”

“Ivey, honey, how much money you got left?”

That shut my mouth again.

“You guard a lotta shit, give me that.” It was his turn to push.

“Six hundred, twenty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents.”

He shook his head against the pillow, his mouth moving like he didn’t know whether to grin or frown.

Then he muttered, “And sixty-seven cents.”

I bit my lip because I knew, knowing it down to the penny, that said it all.

Gray held my eyes a moment before he stated softly but firmly, “She’ll get over it.”

He was looking out for me.

This knowledge washing over me, the way it did, the way it felt, I blurted, “I got a job at The Rambler today.”

Gray’s body went completely still under mine.

Then he asked, “Say again?”

“Janie and I chatted and she said she was looking for someone, I asked if that someone could be me, she said yes. I start Monday.”

He stared at me, body still, mouth unmoving.

Seeing as this was the second date I’d ever had, it was kind of weird though I didn’t know much about dating. Still I thought lying stretched out with your date on his couch while his grandmother nursed her snit in the next room and in a few hours you’d be going to sleep in his guest bedroom had to be weird for anyone. The only man I’d ever dated was Gray not to mention the only man I really ever knew outside our parade of “uncles” was Casey so I didn’t know what to make of his response.