Page 78 of No Match Found
I pressed my lips together and took my fingers off the necklace. Having Grant make me jewelry seemed like a bad idea. Instead, I settled on a tray mold—totally benign—while Grant chose two coasters.
“I know you hate how I put my coffee straight onto the desk,” he said, handing them to me.
“It’s barbaric,” I said and gave him my tray.
“Poor Vivian,” he said, inspecting it with twists and turns. “Her neat and orderly office has been invaded by an uncivilized brute.”
“Self-awareness is the first step.” I made my way to the mix-ins, and he joined me.
I tried to envision what sort of coaster design would suit him. How had I spent so much time with him and still felt so at sea about his likes and dislikes?
I looked at him from the corner of my eye and found him riffling through the googly eyes. “Seriously?” I said. “You want to do thisthatway?”
“I considered sneaking in one or two,” he said. “But no. I don’t want to do this that way.”
Choosing a design for Grant was even harder than choosing one for myself, but I tried to force myself not to overthink it. He’d be setting his coffee on these things, not getting buried with them.
I put some mix-ins and the coasters on a spot at the end of the table and started to get organized.
Two minutes later, Grant came up beside me.
“Hey,” I said, shielding my mix-ins from view. “What’re you doing?”
“Starting my project.”
“You can’t watch what I’m doing—it’ll ruin the surprise.”
He looked at me for a few seconds. “Are you saying you want me all the way over there?” He pointed at the opposite end of the table. “We’re on a date, Vivian. The entire point is to be close.”
I ignored the flutter of my pulse. “Hey,you’rethe one who came up with this you-create-mine, I’ll-create-yours thing.” I scooched away, but there was only so far I could go until I reached the end of the table.
“I didn’t say it had to be a secret.” He scooched closer to me.
“Fine.” I hip-checked him back to his place, then started arranging the mix-ins on the coasters to get a sense for what I wanted them to look like.
Grant took one of my hands, then the other.
“Hey,” I said as he turned me toward him.
“That’s the other thing I forgot to tell you,” he said. “We’re not precision planning this art project, okay? We’re letting go.” He released my hands and gave me my pair of gloves. “Tonight, you and I are embracing messy.”
Those words shouldn’t have shot through my lungs and straight to my heart, but they did. I hated messy. I hated letting go. I wanted two hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road, my car smack dab in the middle of the lane. At all times.
Something inside me knew that with Grant more than anyone, I needed that amount of control. Messy with him was bound to be a whole different level.
But I took the gloves. These were his coasters, after all. If he didn’t mind them coming out hideous, who was I to argue?
I’d decided what colors I wanted, at least. Grant was a deep, vivid blue. Confident. Cool. Mysterious like the night sky, which was why I chose gold flecks as one of the mix-ins. But once I had the colors, I hit a dead end. Everything Misha had explained about mixing the resin had slipped out of my brain.
From the corner of my eye, I watched as Grant mixed resin, hardener, and color in pourable glass cups.
He caught me watching. “Need help?”
“No,” I said, annoyed to hear my tone defensive.
He came over anyway.
“I’m fully capable of doing this myself, Grant,” I said, ignoring how my body reacted to his increasing proximity.
