Page 44 of Book Club Confidential

Tears stung Tessa’s eyes unbidden. The swell of emotion surged. She blinked back a lifetime of frustration and forced two words free. “Thank you.”

The appetizers arrived, and they dug into them in silence, giving her time to collect herself. And long before their meals arrived, the easy rhythm between them had returned. They spoke at length about their love of Harbor Heights, their jobs, and animals. Somehow the previous tension hadn’t built a wall, but rather a battering ram, and Grant moved solidly from a client with friend potential to friend who happened to be a client.

“Do you have any siblings?” he asked, helping himself to another slice of warm bread, then sopping up sauce from his plate.

“A brother,” she said. “How about you?”

“Three sisters.” Grant made a silly face. “All older.”

“Oh no!” She laughed at his goofy expression. “What was that like?”

“Loud,” he said. “Energetic?” He frowned. “Probably great for me, honestly, but I hated it a lot of the time. Like while waiting in line for hours to use the bathroom.”

She laughed. “You all shared a bathroom?”

“We shared everything, including a car when the two oldest were home from college and we all had our licenses.”

“No.”

He nodded. “I also learned the importance of sunscreen, which I appreciate today, and the merits of personal hygiene back when all my buddies were content to smell like a locker room. I learned to be humble when one of my sisters’ high school boyfriends did them wrong and the most I could do as a middle school kid was slander them online.”

Tessa’s bottom lip eased forward as she imagined a young Grant desperately wanting to defend his big sisters.

“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “Reddit is a powerful tool.”

Tessa cracked up.

“How about your brother?” he asked. “What’s he like? Older or younger?”

Tessa worked to hold her smile. “Younger.”

“Oh.” Grant leaned forward, clearly reading something in her face or voice. “We don’t have to talk about—”

“No.” She shook her head. He’d told her about his siblings. She could tell him about hers. “It’s fine. It’s just—”

“Complicated?”

“Exactly.”

Tessa had a decision to make. She could keep letting Grant in, or she could pull back now, before it was too late. She still had time to revert to a strictly professional relationship, instead of indulging her heart any further. Before getting willfully lost in this pseudodate and fledgling friendship.

“My mom had some problems with alcohol,” she said. The words formed and left her mouth before they fully registered as thoughts. “She left Dad and me when I was a baby. He did his best to keep her in my life, carefully, during the times she was sober, and he kept her at bay when she wasn’t. She usually wasn’t.”

Tessa pulled in a long steadying breath and went on before she changed her mind. “I grew up thinking about my mom the way most kids think about their fun aunt. I didn’t have a mom, but I had a dad who played both roles like a champion. Anything he didn’t know, he learned.” Her dad became a black belt at French braiding and an expert in all things My Little Pony and Roblox related. During her middle school years, he took on a variety of roles, including her feminine hygiene products researcher, makeup tutorial video watcher, and team dad for her soccer team. He knew the lyrics to all her favorite songs in high school and the names of all her favorite bands, artists, and influencers. Because if it mattered to Tessa, it mattered to him.

“What about your brother?” Grant asked.

Tessa bit the tender flesh of her bottom lip and winced. “I met him when I was twelve. He was eight. My dad married his mom a year later.”

Grant’s head tilted slightly with interest, but he didn’t speak, didn’t rush her or fill the silence as she considered her next words.

“Alice, his mom, was the most incredible mother,” Tessa said. “She was everything to me, to Devin, and to Dad. Then she found a lump in the shower around their second wedding anniversary. Late-stage breast cancer. She was gone within a year. Devin was twelve. I was sixteen. Dad lost the love of his life. Devin lost his mama. I lost a woman I’d barely known, but who’d meant more to me than people who’d been around my whole life.”

The rush of emotion caught her off guard, and a self-conscious laugh bubbled through the pain. “It’s been nearly two decades. You’d think I’d be able to talk about it without crying.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’d never get over having a wonderful role model who made my family whole, then losing her.”

A renegade tear spilled from the corner of her eye, and she wiped it quickly away. “Thank you.”