Page 8 of The Roommate Problem
Chapter Four
“August! My sweet boy.”
August felt his lips curve up into a smile as he stepped into Porter’s Petals, the flower shop his grandmother owned and ran. The woman who’d been the only bright spot in his chaotic childhood stood behind the large wooden counter at the front of the shop. A line of sweet-smelling flowers in various shades of yellow and pink lined up before her, waiting to be placed in a bouquet of some kind, if he had to guess. Her cheeks wrinkled, the fine lines around her eyes deepening as she graced him with a smile that never failed to lighten whatever load was weighing on his mind.
Damn, it felt good to see her loving face again. He really needed to visit her more often. At least he’d be seeing her consistently for the next few months, and if he could get her to agree to his plan…he’d never have to say good-bye to her ever again.
“Hi, Gran, how are you?”
She rushed around the counter to hurry to his side. He towered over her, but she put her arms around his neck and tugged, and August was helpless to do anything other than bend his knees so his grandmother could give him a good squeeze that nearly choked the air out of him. The old woman still had a lot of strength in her. That thought made him happy. He’d been worried about her health lately; she was getting on in years and needed to take better care of herself.
It was one of the main reasons he’d finally decided to come out to the city. Temporarily. The city made him itch. He’d never lived in Denver, but he had grown up a little over an hour away in Colorado Springs, a large city in its own right. So many people all crowded together but not noticing a damn thing around them. His parents both lived in the Springs but on opposite sides of town. It used to take him two buses to hop back and forth between their houses when they were too busy with their other kids to pick him up for their custody days.
He hated buses. Give him a town you could walk to the end and back in an hour any day.
Agatha pulled back, her smile dropping into a disapproving frown as she looked him over. “I would be doing better if my loving grandson had deigned to call his grandmother last night—the one who was worried sick about him getting into town.”
A load of bull. If his grandmother had really been worried, she would have called. Repeatedly. She was just giving him a hard time. Probably because this was the first time he’d come to visit in more than a year. Guilt churned his gut, but he pushed it aside. He was here now.
“I got in late. I didn’t want to wake you.” He knew she needed more sleep and headed to bed earlier these days. “I sent you a text.”
“You young folks and your texts.” She reached up to pat him on the cheek. “What’s wrong with speaking to a person directly?”
For one thing, his grandmother always took her hearing aid out when she answered the phone, so she couldn’t hear half of what he was saying. She said it whistled when she held an electronic device up to it. Cheap piece of crap. He’d be adding “buy a new hearing aid” to the list of things he wanted to do for her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call.” He placed a kiss on the top of her head, inhaling the aloe-scented lotion she’d used daily since he was a boy. The smell always put his nerves at ease. “But don’t think I don’t have a bone to pick with you, either, Gran.”
She dipped her head, moving fairly quickly for a seventy-three-year-old as she hurried back behind the shop’s counter. Her fingers fussed with the flowers, picking up the stems and arranging the plants with a focus she hadn’t possessed when he first arrived.
“I’m sure I have no idea what on earth you’re talking about, August.”
Ah, denial. The Porter family trait.
“Oh, really?” He stepped up to the counter, placing an arm down and leaning over. “You have no idea what I could be upset about?”
She glanced up, covering her guilty expression with a shake of her head. “You’re a very sweet boy, August, but you can be a bit of a broody moody at times, so I couldn’t possibly know what could be troubling you at the moment.”
Broody moody?
What in the world did that mean? That made him sound like an angsty teenager who spent all day locked in his room listening to My Chemical Romance. He hadn’t done that since he was fourteen.
Sure, he might be a little stoic, a bit of an introvert, but he wasn’t moody. And his grandmother could try the innocent act all she wanted, but since she had been the one to teach him how to count cards at the age of eight, he knew the old lady knew exactly what he was talking about. She might be able to fool others, but she couldn’t pull the wool over August’s eyes.
“Mo, Gran.”
She glanced up, blinking widely behind her thick glasses. “Mo?”
“Yes, Mo. My new roommate.” He leaned farther over the counter, looking his grandmother directly in the eyes. “My new female roommate.”
“Oh, Moira!” Grandma clasped her hands together, a bunch of pink roses held within their grasp. “Such a sweet girl. And her apartment is rather large for the city. Plenty of room for a strapping young man such as yourself.”
He sighed, knowing he’d have to be direct if he wanted to get any answers out of her. “Gran, why didn’t you tell me Mo was a woman?”
“Did I not?” She shrugged, going back to her work, focusing on the flowers once again. “Ah well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? From what I’m to understand these days, men and women live together all the time. As friends, platonically, romantically.”
He didn’t like the way she said that last one. He wouldn’t put it past his grandmother to be trying to fix him up with Mo—wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to set him up a million times before. Something about wanting to see him happily settled or something. No, thank you. His dad and mom split up when he was a kid, their supposedly happy marriage tossed aside for a shiny new one. Much like their kid.
Half the people he knew were either divorced or separated, and the rest fought so much they might as well break it off. August hadn’t seen one happy, lasting relationship in his entire life.
