Page 98 of The Difference Between

Next to it sits a bright blue vase—almost tulip shaped—mottled with large blobs of clear. It doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the house. If anything, it’s the opposite.

I glance over my shoulder at Gavin. His face gives nothing away.

The next piece makes me fully stop. It mimics stones, river rocks really, stacked on top of one another, making it nearly a foot tall. The base stone is a cream-colored flat oval shape, speckled with dark red. The next a burnt orange swirled with grey. The earth-toned and glossy elements range from egg shaped to discs.

Carefully, I pick it up, not that surprised when I see HS stamped on the bottom. The same artist who made the glasses at the vineyard.

“Greg loved that one,” Gavin says as he steps next to me. “We stacked rocks like that as kids.”

I set the piece down.

“It’s stunning.” The glass doesn’t add up. It has to be expensive, but it’s everywhere. Here, Nancy’s, the tasting room. If I didn’t know Gavin didn’t make it, I’d wonder if Gavin made it simply because he has so much of it. But it’s Greg’s name that comes up every time the glass is mentioned. Even the glass-inspired names of the wine were picked by him. But HS? “What’s your connection to the artist again?”

“My dad knew him,” Gavin says.

“Could I meet him?”

He saws his teeth across his bottom lip. “Why?”

I shrug. “Curiosity.”

A pause hangs.

“Maybe.”

That’s a nonanswer if there ever was one.

“Why do⁠—”

Addie steps into the room and shouts, “Surprise!”

She’s holding a frozen pizza with a can of pineapple dumped in the middle of it and a proud smile on her face.

Gavin doesn’t hide his amusement; I don’t hide my disgust. I may like pineapple on pizza, but there are some lines I won’t cross, starting with canned pineapple and a pizza sitting on a pan that’s filled with juice.

“Uncle Gav can cook this for you,” she offers.

“Oh.” I look at Gavin, waiting for him to say no. Praying he will.

His lips lift on one side and his bright eyes hold tight on to mine. “I’d make anything for Miss Reese if she asked me to.”

That pizza is going to be gross, I know that, but that’s not what twists around my insides. It’s how much I want to say yes. I want to sit with them in this small, outdated house and eat gross food, and when I leave, I want Gavin to kiss me—longer and deeper than the first time—and say, Baby, we like you.

I want it so bad it makes my chest ache.

“I have to work,” I tell Addie, making her face fall. “Get ready for this weekend—” I lift my gaze to Gavin’s. “And my date tomorrow night.”

I don’t know if he’s disappointed or if I want him to be disappointed, but I don’t give him time to say anything before I tell them goodbye and slip out the door.

When I get to Mom’s house, I’m too stuck in my head to acknowledge her standing in the kitchen. I chug water I wish was whiskey.

“You know it dawned on me as we were watching that movie,” Mom says from the stove in a tone I hate. “Isn’t it something how Goldie Hawn had all that money and wasn’t happy but then had no money and found true joy?”

“Really?” I refill my glass and slam the faucet off. “Because I think she looked pretty miserable when she was covered in poison oak and living in that shack.”

She dumps pasta into a pot, humming as she does. I flip her off behind her back.

“I saw that.”