Love, Greater Than Infinity (Book 1: New Adult Romance)

by Avondale, Cora

  “Yeah, I saw you flirting with the enemy,” Gracie replied. “I thought the plan was to deep-freeze him in Siberia to make him go away. Not encourage him with liquor and conversation.”

  “He’s nice. I think you should date him,” Misty shrugged. “Besides, he wanted me to give you this.”

  Gracie opened the folded napkin. Inside, was another fifty dollar bill with an accompanying note: You really like me. You just don’t know that you like me.

  “Here,” Gracie passed the fifty to Misty. “You’re the one who was licking his ear all night.”

  “Ha, ha,” Misty sing-sang with sarcasm, accepting the fifty with a sense of accomplishment and shoving it down her bra. “I still think you should let him take you out.”

  “He’s a stalker, Misty,” Gracie said. “I don’t date stalkers.”

  “Who’s a stalker?” Stella asked, breezing into the storage room and rummaging through her locker for an extra hair pin.

  “The hot guy at the end of the bar,” Misty confirmed.

  “The one you were so chummy with all night?” Stella asked. “I thought he was your boyfriend or something?”

  “I wish,” Misty frowned. “But he likes Gracie, calls her ‘Sassy’, but she doesn’t want to date him.”

  “Why the hell not?” Stella was a single mom who was dating Mitch, the bartender, and Stella thought everyone deserved to date someone as cute and nice as Mitch. “Besides, when’s the last time you’ve been on a date, Grace?”

  “She thinks he’s a creepy stalker,” Misty chimed in.

  “That guy? A stalker? Nawwww…he’s too cute to be a stalker.”

  “Look, guys, cut it out,” Gracie said, exasperated. “I’m not interested in going on a date with him, okay?”

  “Well, you should be,” Misty snapped at her. “He’s handsome. He’s obviously rich with the way he’s been leaving those fifty-dollar bills for you like they were mints in your tray. And he goes to Northwestern, too.”

  “How do you know that?” Gracie eyed her.

  “Because he asked me about you and I told him. Told him your name. Gave him your telephone number. Told him you were an English major at Northwestern.”

  “Ahhh, c’mon, Misty,” Gracie moaned, slamming her locker door. “If you like him so much, you date him.”

  “See?” Stella noted with a confirming nod, “Sassy.”

  Gracie gave her a look of annoyance.

  “Well, maybe I would, except he likes you,” Misty muttered. “They always like you.”

  Bebe, a middle-aged career waitress at O’Connell’s, soared through the storage room door. “Who likes who?” she asked, cracking her gum.

  “Some Northshore rich boy likes Gracie,” Stella recapped. “But Grace doesn’t want nothing to do with him.”

  “The baby doll at the bar?” Bebe asked.

  “Yep,” Stella smiled with a wink at Gracie.

  “He was yum-yum,” Bebe hummed with approval. “Mama would be proud to have that glamour boy sucking on her…”

  “Oh, please!” Gracie exclaimed in horror. “Stop. Stop. Please, stop—” Gracie gathered her bag and covered her ears. “Good night. Good-bye. I’m going home, and I am not going on a date with anyone, so don’t give any more stalkers my phone number. Pleeeeaaaase.”

  * * * *

  Gracie left the restaurant that night and drove home, forgetting the incident by the time she pulled up into the driveway. She was more worried about the ten-page paper she still had to write over the weekend for her British Lit class than about her co-workers’ bad taste in men. It was two o’clock in the morning, and even though Gracie tried hard not to wake up her mother when she came home late, Mrs. Harris never fell asleep until she heard the rumble of the garage door, signaling her daughter’s safe arrival. Mrs. Harris didn’t like Gracie’s nocturnal schedule, or the fact that she had to work so many late nights at a bar to help pay for college. And although Mrs. Harris herself worked double shifts on the weekends just to make ends meet, Mrs. Harris felt guilty that she couldn’t afford to help Gracie more.

  “Mom, what are you still doing up?” Gracie asked, spotting her mother sitting in the kitchen as she entered the house.

  “Couldn’t sleep. You know, the headaches.”

  Her mother had been plagued with headaches ever since the accident. An old shoe box of photographs rested on the table.

  “You know, I really should get some more photo albums for all our photos. It’s not right to have so many pictures of your father just wasting away in boxes.”

  Gracie didn’t know what to say, but she knew that she was too tired to be much of a comfort to her mother. Her mom rose from the table and flicked off the kitchen light, abandoning the photograph box in the darkness.

  “Good night, honey,” Mrs. Harris approached her daughter with a kiss. “I’m glad you’re back. Don’t stay up too late.”

  Mrs. Harris passed through their modest living room and up the stairs. “By the way,” she said, suddenly stopping half way up the landing. “A boy called for you. He said he met you at the bar tonight. I left the message on the table. Good night, sweetheart.”

  When Gracie heard her mother’s footsteps safely upstairs in the master bedroom, she turned on the light in the kitchen and surveyed the table. The lid of the shoe box was ajar. Gracie tilted it off and glanced at the top layer of photographs strewn over each other. They were the older prints, the square ones with a matte finish and faded exposures of pastel blue, yellow, and orange. They were the photos from before Gracie was born, before Teddy was even assigned to be her keeper. Her parents looked so young, so happy—blissful ethereal heartbeats captured as timeless smiles and whimsical poses: her mom and dad sailing on Lake Michigan; a series of photos of her parents decorating their first Christmas tree; a snapshot of Gracie’s dad showing off a brand new red 1973 AMC Gremlin. Gracie dug a little deeper and came across a picture of her mom, proudly pregnant; a photo of her mom cradling their one-day-old baby girl; and a picture of Gracie and her father, together in snowsuits. Gracie looked two, maybe three years old, and she was all bundled up like a puffy five-point star and pressed against her father’s chest as they huddled inside the sled.

  Gracie didn’t remember the picture or the moment when it was taken. She wondered if there were many more moments like that, moments of her and her father that had been lost into oblivion, forgotten by memory and never immortalized on film, as if they never had happened in the first place. Gracie suddenly felt sad. Then, she felt tired. She was tired of being sad all the time, tired of reflecting on relics of a happier time. She was tired of watching her mother suffer from paralyzing nostalgia, trapped in the tragic past with only the promise of a lonely future. Gracie suddenly dumped all the photos back into the shoe box when one particular photo caught her eye.

  It was a goofy photograph of Gracie, silly and smiling right at the camera, celebrating after her high school graduation ceremony. Gracie’s eye-catching scarlet dress highlighted her auburn hair under a halo of summer sunlight. Displaying her high school diploma for the camera, Gracie beamed with the satisfaction of achievement and success, her bright eyes shining with laughter. Gracie squinted down at the photography, spotting something curious about the photo. There, in the background, was a twenty-something boy with brown hair, heart-shaped face, chiseled chin, dressed like James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, complete with a red windbreaker, grey T-shirt, and blue jeans. Teddy peered over her shoulder at the photo and immediately recognized himself. The camera’s shutter had snagged his image and exposed it as an underdeveloped apparition in the corner. There were other random people in the background, random faces and bodies behind Gracie’s endearing smile, but Teddy was the only one who was gazing at Gracie. And there he was, standing a few yards behind her, like they were eternally connected. Gracie studied the photograph a long time, reflecting on the significance of the day and her emotions tied up in the accomplishment of finishing high school after so much hardship. Then,
her eyes shifted across the photo to study the giddy underexposed boy, standing behind her. Gracie’s eyes rested on Teddy’s image with an inquisitive gaze. Amongst the other family members, graduates, and unfamiliar figures caught up in the camera’s frame, Teddy was the only one smiling along with her. They were a grinning couple on an illuminated summer day, filled with hope, freedom, and friendship.

  Gracie rescued the picture from the box before replacing the lid. Then, she peered down at the message from Luke Ellington. It only listed his phone number. It looked like a campus number, probably a fraternity house. Gracie placed the shoe box inside the living room closet where Mrs. Harris stashed the rest of the family’s old photographs and boxes of her husband’s old clothes that she couldn’t bring herself to donate to the Salvation Army. Gracie rummaged around the closet for an old frame and finally found one inside a box with Christmas ornaments and decorative table cloths. It was a plain horizontal silver frame, tarnished with age, but it perfectly fit her graduation photo, which she placed on the living room mantel. As for Luke’s phone number, Gracie crumpled it up and tossed it into the kitchen garbage, which she took into the back alley dumpster before preparing for bed. The last person Gracie Harris wanted to date was a frat boy.

  Chapter Five

  A keeper must assist in the fulfillment of his assignment’s Destiny

  Well, of course, that wasn’t the end of Luke Ellington. The laws of the universe were determined to bring Pretty Boy into Gracie Harris’s life, whether she wanted to deal with him or not. Shortly after Luke Ellington left the message with Mrs. Harris, he decided that Sassy was certainly playing hard to get, and Luke Ellington liked girls who played hard to get. The challenge invigorated him. He returned to O’Connell’s the following week and confirmed with Misty that Gracie was indeed single. She was a junior at Northwestern, majoring in English, and her favorite flowers were Gerber daisies.

  “You know, Gracie doesn’t date much,” Misty tried to warn Luke. “Maybe you should consider a girl who’s a little more… open-minded.”

  Luke dodged Misty’s desperate hint. “Well, maybe I’m the one who should open Gracie’s mind.”

  Misty frowned. “You know, you’re not the only guy who has come into this bar, looking for information about Gracie,” she said with pouting eyes. “Although you are the cutest.”

  “And the one who’s gonna make her fall in love with me,” Luke asserted. Misty gazed at Luke’s crystal eyes and freewheeling smile, and almost believed him.

  Misty jotted down Gracie’s weekly schedule and passed it off to Luke, who began sending bouquets of Gerber daisies to the bar every evening before Gracie’s seven o’clock shift. The first bouquets were bursts of firecracker crimson, fuchsia, and mandarin daisies with velvet petals and broad pollinated centers. Then Luke began sending pastel bouquets, uniform ripples of peach and pink Gerbers, accented with dramatic stalks of white snapdragons. When he exhausted every shade and variety of Gerbers, Luke sent bouquets of lavender prairie daisies, wild tiger-striped daisies, and autumn snow-tipped daisies with sunburned centers. Within a week, the blue-collar sports bar looked more like a prissy flower shop.

  This went on for an entire month until the O’Connell’s managing owner, Pete Biagi, called Gracie into his office one day, right before her shift. Pete had known Gracie since high school. He was a tough talker with a soft heart, a big teddy bear with an ugly mug, and the one to hire Gracie as an underage teenager in his rough and tumble sports bar only because he knew her dad and knew she needed the cash. Now, five years later, Pete felt like he had the right to butt into her personal life.

  “Look, Gracie,” Peter started in without much introduction. “The girls have been telling me about this boy, and I figure, what’s the worst that can happen? So you let him take you out for a fancy dinner. Who knows? You might end up actually liking the son-of-a-bitch.”

  Pete was low on tact, but high on generosity. “Look, take Friday night off, and I’ll even pay you to go out with the kid. Okay? Have a little fun, for Chrissakes. Your pop would be mad as hell at me if he knew I was making you slave away like Cinderella while your Prince Charming was courting you with flowers every day.”

  “He’s not Prince Charming, Pete.”

  “Just go out with the kid, already.”

  It was an indirect ultimatum, and Gracie knew there was no arguing with Pete. She was trapped, and she resented Luke for invading her life. Gracie had been on plenty of dates with other Northwestern guys, and even granted a few of them “boyfriend status,” like Travis Hicks, Justin Kirkeberg, or Marty Snyder, who were all attracted to Gracie’s quick wit and pretty face. They were boys to have fun with, hang out together in the dining halls and make out with in the back of the library instead of studying for finals. They were nice, safe boys—the kind who took her to movies and homecoming football games. They bought her roses on Valentine’s Day and chocolates on her birthday, and they drove her home from O’Connell’s when she had to work the night shift. But they never really knew Gracie. They were too inexperienced to look at Gracie the way she wanted a real boyfriend to look at her—with long unspoken gazes of understanding. And these same boyfriends never really missed her when she finally pushed them away, telling them she couldn’t hang out anymore because she was too busy with both work and school. And by the time Luke walked into O’Connell’s, Gracie was sick of entertaining boys who just wanted to show her a good time. She wanted to be with someone who really cared, someone who would discover the truth behind her smile—the truth that there was more pain than happiness hidden there. And yet, love her just the same.

  Gracie would have to call Luke and resort to using calm, collected persuasion to make him leave her alone. During her shift’s break, she dialed his cell phone number, scribbled on one of the bouquet’s cards. When he answered, Gracie immediately recognized his smarmy attitude in his “Hello?”

  “Stop sending the flowers—” Gracie forgot about her plan to remain calm and collected.

  “Saaaassss-y,” Luke sang out her nickname like he was the happiest man on earth. “I was wondering how long it would take before you called.”

  “Stop sending the flowers.”

  “Only if you’ll let me take you out for dinner.”

  “Look, I’m really not interested in you.”

  “Really?” Luke sounded genuinely surprised. “I think you like me, you just don’t know that you like me.”

  “Has anyone told you that’s a horrible pick-up line?”

  “Nope, you’re the first. See, that’s what makes you special, Sassy. Blatant honesty. So what day can I pick you up?”

  “Listen, I really don’t have time to date anyone right now. I work all the time, I’m busy with school, and I’ve got plenty of other—”

  “Do you like Thai food?” he interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Thai food? Like? Dislike?”

  “Dislike.”

  “Mexican?”

  “No.”

  “Sushi?”

  “Luke, I’m not going out with you. Please just leave me alone.” In utter frustration, she hung up the phone. Immediately, Luke redialed the bar’s phone number off his cell phone. Gracie quickly answered it before Mitch, the bartender, caught the call.

  “C’mon, Sassy. It’s just one date. The worst that could happen is that you might find out I’m not such a bad guy.”

  “Luke, I have no interest in being a part of your regular date showcase, the three-act play you’ve performed before,” Gracie replied with annoyance. “First act: you pick me up in your fancy BMW or Mercedes or Porche. Second act: expensive dinner—with an entire bottle of wine, of course. Third act? I’m sorry, but I’m certain I don’t want to stick around that long.”

  It was the first time Luke stopped, paused, and reconsidered his offer.

  “Okay, fair enough. So let’s improvise… No cars. No wine. No food. No script. Let’s meet on campus at the Dearborn Observatory an hour after dusk. One
date. One hour. That’s all I’m asking for. If you still despise me after that, I’ll promise to leave you alone.”

  Luke’s offer was met with long, thin silence.

  “Hello? Sassy?”

  Grace finally answered him. “Fine. One date. One hour. No dinner. And no cars. And stop calling me, Sassy. I have a real name, you know.”

  “Okay, Sassy.”

  They both hung up. Gracie was determined to get the date with Luke Ellington over with as soon as possible so she’d never have to see his smug smile or any other bouquet of daisies again. Luke Ellington was determined to make Gracie Harris his future wife.

  Unfortunately, Luke Ellington was a rich boy used to getting his way. And Destiny was on his side.

  * * * *

  Gracie hurried along the campus pathways, the dim sidewalk lamps casting shadows through swaying tree canopies. It was a crisp October night, cold enough to frost Gracie’s breath in the midnight air and blush her porcelain cheeks, but warm enough to walk for hours in the seducing lunar glow of the harvest moon. Gracie had never traveled this far north on Northwestern’s campus—where the fraternities and science buildings were located—and Teddy followed her closely as she veered off the main walkway and along stone buildings and dark gardens. She trotted through unfamiliar swatches of manicured landscaping before finally stumbling upon the campus Observatory, its dome glinting like a shining helmet in the moonlight, and immediately spotted Luke skulking under its arching shadow.

  “Okay, I’m here,” Gracie called out to him. “You’ve got one hour. Entertain me.”

  “Sassy, you actually showed up.”

  “Fifty-nine minutes, Luke. If you’d like to waste it with small talk, feel free.”

  Zinghhheeeer. That’s right, Gracie… Teddy smirked proudly. Zap that Pretty-Boy playboy glee right off his face.