Page 25 of Brother in Law with Benefits

"What changed?"

"I don't know." He looks down at me. "Or maybe I know and I'm not ready to say it."

I let that sit.

After a moment, I feel it — the realization arriving not like a truck hitting me but like stepping onto a floor that wasn't where you expected it. Small. Sudden. The way Grant knows where the plates in this kitchen are. The way he made me grilled cheese last week without asking what I wanted. The way he's been lying here, quiet and unhurried, his hand on my back, like this is natural.

I'm falling for him.

There's no help for it.

"Grant?" I say.

"Yeah?"

"You said you make a mean grilled cheese."

A pause. Then: "I did say that."

"I'm hungry."

He laughs — a real one, quiet and warm — and it goes through me exactly like it did the first time I heard it. "Come on then."

We get dressed. We make grilled cheese in the kitchen and eat standing at the counter, and it is domestic and comfortable and exactly as alarming as I expected.

I've got three months.

Three months to have this.

I'm taking every second.

8

Grant

It’s only taken a few weeks and I've built a life I didn't plan. Tuesdays and Thursdays are chemo days. Wednesdays, Mom has bridge club. Fridays, I have Sophie. We steal other afternoons where we can.

Every single time, I remind myself it's temporary. That this ends. That we agreed.

It's Friday afternoon. Mom's at the table doing a crossword. I'm at the kitchen table with my laptop, answering emails, not thinking about Sophie arriving in three hours.

My phone buzzes. Email from David Kowalski.

Subject: Brazil Contract — Timeline Update

They want to start in late September. That's eight weeks. Should work with your timeline.

Eight weeks.

I have eight weeks left in Copper Falls.

My chest does something I don't have a good name for. I read the email three more times, like the number might change if I look at it hard enough. It doesn't. Eight weeks is eight weeks whether I check it once or thirty times, and I've apparently decided to find out exactly how many times it takes before the number stops feeling like a wall closing in.

"You okay?" Mom asks without looking up from her crossword.

"Fine."

"Liar." She fills in a word. "You've got that look."