Page 139 of Regretting Youu

I laugh through my tears. Then I turn around and kiss him. “I’m obviously wrong a lot.”

He presses his forehead to mine and smiles.

Someone turns on the lights. We separate, and my mother is wiping her eyes. “Now that’s what you guys should have submitted.”

Lexie is nodding in agreement.

“Doesn’t meet the criteria,” Jonah says. “It wasn’t all filmed this year.” He looks at Miller and winks. “It was great, though.”

I stare at the blank television in disbelief. And then, something strikes me. “Wait a second.” I face Miller. “You said you named your truck after a Beatles song. But Nora was the name of my character in that play.”

He smiles.

“Do the Beatles even have a song called ‘Nora’?”

He shakes his head, and I can’t even believe this guy right now. He’s never going to be able to top this.

An hour later, I’m still on a high. Not a real high. A Miller high.

He promised he’d feed me because I’m starving, but he’s heading in the opposite direction of town.

“I thought we were going to eat.”

“There’s something I want to show you at home, first.”

I’m sitting in the middle of his truck seat, leaning my head on his shoulder. I’m looking down at my phone when I feel the truck begin to slow down. We pass Miller’s driveway, though. He pulls off to the side of the road in the dark.

“What are you doing?”

He opens his truck door and grabs my hand, pulling me out. He walks me a few feet and then points at something. I look up at the city limit sign.

“Notice anything?”

I look down, and it’s cemented to the ground. I laugh. “Wow. You did it. You moved the entire city limit.”

“I was thinking we could hang at my house and order pizza with Gramps tonight.”

“Pepperoni and pineapple?”

Miller shakes his head, drops my hand, and begins walking back to his truck. “So close to a perfect ten, Clara. So close.”

Five minutes later, me and Gramps are acting like Miller ordering pizza is the most exciting thing we’ve ever witnessed. We’re both sitting on the edge of our chairs. I’m biting my nails. Miller has the phone on speaker, so the room grows tense when the pizza guy says, “I don’t think we deliver that far out. Our delivery area is inside the city limit.”

“I do live inside the city limit. By about twenty feet,” Miller says confidently.

There’s silence on the other end of the line before the guy says, “Okay. Got you in the system. We should be there in about forty-five minutes.”

When Miller hangs up the phone, we both jump up and high-five. Gramps can’t really jump up, so I give him a low five.

“I’m a genius,” Miller says. “Five months of hard and very illegal work finally paid off.”

“I’m kinda proud of you,” Gramps says. “Even though I don’t want to condone anything illegal. But I mean . . . it’s pizza, so . . .”

Miller laughs. The alarm on Gramps’s medication timer goes off, so I walk to the kitchen to get him the pills he needs. I’ve been helping Miller out with Gramps while he’s at work. There’s a full-time aide here during the day, but it’s getting to where he needs help during all the other hours too.

I like getting to spend time with Gramps. He tells me so many great stories about Miller. About his own life. And even though he still jokes that his wife skipped town, I love hearing him talk about her. They were married for fifty-two years before she died. Hearing the stories of the two of them helps reaffirm my belief in love.

Jonah and my mother help too. It was weird for a while, seeing them together. But they’re a good fit. They’re taking it slow and have decided to wait before making any big moves, like moving in together. But we have dinner with Jonah and Elijah almost every night.