The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  As long as they weren’t sick, that was all that mattered.

  I made a suspicious face as I headed over to him, snagging my glass of water and refilling it from the filter on the counter. After pulling out the stool with my foot on the bottom rung, I dropped into it, crossed my legs, told myself it couldn’t be so bad as long as they were both healthy, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He reached up and tugged on my earlobe. “Other than you being a sad little shit.”

  I laughed, a tiny bit of relief sliding over my shoulders. “I’m not sad.”

  “But you are a little shit?” Grandpa smiled.

  “It runs in the family.”

  “Yeah, on your mom’s side,” he replied. “But you are sad, and we both know it, so quit trying to lie to me.”

  “I’m not sad, Grandpa. I’m fine,” I insisted, even as everything in me called me a damn liar.

  The look on his face definitely said he thought I was full of shit.

  Which I was. Just a little. When I thought about it, it was like back when I’d first decided I was having Mo and knew I’d have to give up judo if I didn’t want to risk hurting myself so badly that I might not be able to do fun shit with her. It hurt. It sucked. But I knew I’d survive.

  That didn’t mean that I didn’t miss Jonah down to my fucking bones.

  But I’d hoped I wasn’t that fucking obvious about it either.

  “I’m not,” I repeated, not appreciating the bullshit face he was making.

  He blinked. “Now you’re going to choose to lie to me? Now? After all the things you’ve done? All the things you’ve said? You’re going to lie to me about this?”

  I shut my mouth and pressed the tip of my tongue against the inside of my cheek. “Fair enough,” I agreed, earning me a knowing smirk. “I do miss him, okay? But I’ll be all right.” Mostly.

  Grandpa Gus was smirking by then, and he didn’t bother curbing his sigh as he reached over, took my hand, and said, “Lenny, you’re full of shit and we both know it.”

  I blinked. “You’re… full of it.”

  He squeezed my hand. “Yeah, but not right now, am I?”

  “You always are.”

  Grandpa grinned. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you being a sad little panda because your boy is gone.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him that he wasn’t a boy, but he held up a finger that told me to stop talking.

  Grandpa didn’t say anything for so long as he watched me with those thoughtful eyes and smirking mouth that I wasn’t sure what to expect. And that put me on edge because there were very few times I could ever remember where he didn’t know what to say. Grandpa always knew.

  “Tell me something.”

  “Okay.”

  He squeezed my hand. “What is it about Jonah that made you pick him out of all the other men you’ve met?”

  “Why?”

  “Just answer the question, Len.”

  All right. “He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. The kindest. He’s so calm, it soothes me, and when he isn’t calm and he’s pissed off and grumpy, I still want to be around him.” I had to think about that. “He just makes me happy, Grandpa. More than anyone else I’ve ever met, not counting you guys.”

  He still didn’t say anything. All he did was just keep on staring at me as he contemplated whatever it was that was going through his head. And it made me want to squirm.

  He stared at me, and I stared at him.

  For a minute.

  For two.

  Finally, out of fucking nowhere, he beamed at me.

  And that scared the fuck out of me.

  As I sat there, worried and alarmed by the fact him smiling made him look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, he reached forward—scaring the shit out of me again—and cupped my cheeks in his hands.

  Yeah, that kicked it up to me being basically terrified.

  Grandpa Gus squeezed my cheeks together, kissed me on the forehead as I stiffened because what the fuck was happening, and then said it.

  He said it.

  He said, “Lenny, you’re fired.”

  His hands were still on my cheeks and his lips were still on my forehead as I fucking froze again.

  “What?”

  He pulled back and smiled at me. “You’re fired.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He squeezed my cheeks together with every word. “You. Are. Fired.”

  I blinked again and then squinted. “From?”

  My cheeks were squeezed together, definitely making me look like a million bucks as he answered almost cheerfully, “From Maio House, genius. What else?”

  He… he… was firing me?

  “Why?” I murmured, looking at him like I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Because I heard his words. I understood what each one meant separately, but together….

  What?

  “You’re fired,” he repeated himself. “Either effective immediately, or I’m giving you a two weeks notice. It’s up to you.”

  I leaned back, out of his reach, and kept on squinting at him. “Grandpa, what are you talking about? I’m fired? Why?”

  He grinned. “Yeah.”

  He… was firing me? From Maio House? I looked up at the ceiling, then back down at him and felt tears well up in my eyes, telling myself not to feel betrayed. This was Grandpa Gus, the last person in the world to ever not treat me right. “But why?”

  His throat bobbed, and my cheeks were squeezed together again. “Because I love you.” This savage literally pinched my cheek. “And because I don’t want you to work there anymore.”

  He was really trying to fire me. My own fucking grandfather was trying to fire me. From his business. From the business that was supposed to be mine. And I didn’t understand.

  “You can’t... you can’t fire me, Grandpa,” I stuttered.

  He ticked his head to the side. “Pretty sure I just did, Len.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nope.”

  Panic, it was panic that swelled up inside of me as I sputtered, “But… but... why? Because of Jonah? I thought you liked him. Why are you—”

  “I do like him,” he confirmed, still smiling that creepy smile. “But I’m firing you because… you stole pens from the gym. I saw them in your purse.”

  I drew back and stared at him. This wasn’t about fucking pens. Of course it wasn’t about pens. Grandpa had bought all of my school supplies as business expenses my entire life.

  Why the hell was he doing this to me? “But why? I thought”—I had to reach up to wipe at my eye as more panic spilled into my chest at the idea that he was doing this to me for no fucking reason—“Maio House was going to be mine one day. You told me. You told me that when you died it was going to be mine, and that’s why I’ve been working there since for fucking ever. And I’ve been managing it because it’s ours. Because it’s our family’s, and I’m your family. I’m your… I’m your….”

  I was panting.

  I was fucking crying. Holy shit. I reached up to touch my face, and there were real tears there.

  “Why are you taking this away from me?” I croaked, feeling… feeling so fucking confused. “I’ve been doing a good job. Most of the time. Half the time.”

  My grandpa just blinked at me. Then he used his reasonable voice on me. “I’m not taking anything away from you.”

  “Yeah, you are.” I wiped at my face with the back of my hand, feeling… feeling… holy shit. This had been the plan. My entire life, this had been the plan. “You said… you said it was going to be mine.”

  “Is that what I said?” he asked.

  I wiped again, trying my hardest not to get upset but failing miserably. “Yeah.”

  “When, Len?”

  What? “I… I don’t know. A bunch of times. You know you did.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah, I did. When you were ten. When you were three, four, five, six, seven, ei
ght, nine, and ten.”

  What the hell was he talking about?

  He aimed those gray eyes at me steadily. “I haven’t told you that this was going to be yours since you were ten years old.”

  He hadn’t?

  “It’s been twenty years since I did that, Len, and part of me regrets so much that I put that responsibility on you when you were a kid. Do you know why I stopped?”

  I didn’t even answer him. I couldn’t.

  Luckily he wasn’t really waiting for a response. “Do you remember that was the year I made you enroll in gymnastics?” I didn’t nod. Of course I remembered. I had really liked it, and I’d been pretty good at it. “Your coach told me how good you were. How much talent and athleticism you had, and he said he regretted that you were going to be so tall because you would never make it to the elite level.”

  I jumped in. “What does that have to do with you firing me?”

  “Give me a second,” he requested. “I came home and told Peter how much of a badass you were, and he agreed. He said she’s good at everything. Lenny’s going to be able to do anything she wants when she grows up. And that was when I realized what I’d been doing.”

  I blinked.

  “Before you were born, Len… I had been a wreck because of losing your dad. My heart was broken. It was… dust. I had thought… I had thought for a while there that I didn’t want to live in a world that would take my son away from me,” Grandpa said quietly, more quietly than I’d ever heard, I knew for a fact. “I missed him so much, and I was so angry. And then your mom came to me. I told you this story a long time ago.”

  He had. But he retold it.

  “She told me she was pregnant with my grandchild. She said she was five months along, and that it was too late to have an abortion.” I knew all of this. “And she wanted to tell me that she was going to put the baby up for adoption because she wasn’t in a place to raise her, but she wanted me to know.

  “And I knew without a doubt, in that instant, that there was no way I would ever let her put my boy’s child up for someone else to raise. Not when this, you, were the last piece of him I had left. I didn’t know how I was supposed to live without him in this world, and then you were born, and it took one look at you being all ugly and wrinkly—”

  I laughed and wiped at my face, not realizing until then that I was full-on crying.

  “—and I knew that I was going to have to break the world record for being the oldest man alive because there was no way I would ever let anything happen to you. You gave me life back. You gave me a damn purpose, Lenny. You have been the greatest gift I have ever been given. The greatest joy I will ever have. You were my best friend from the moment those cloudy demon eyes looked at me, like you needed me more than anything or anyone.

  “I would fight to the death for you, Len. You were—” He smiled at me before correcting himself. “You are my everything. My soul mate. My best friend. My enemy.”

  I laughed again and watched as he blinked at me, eyes glittering even more.

  “And with that comment, Peter reminded me of everything I had seen in your face when you’d been born. That I would do anything for you. That you were a supernova. And look at what I’d been doing to you. How could I bottle you up and decide your future for you? How could I tell you what to be? I wanted the world for you. I want the world for you. And that’s why I stopped telling you that this place was yours since then. That’s why I made you get jobs outside of here. That’s why I made you get a degree and I didn’t let you work full-time here until Mo came along.

  “Because I wanted to give you a chance to be whoever you wanted to be. Do whatever you wanted to do. All I want, Lenny, is for you to be happy, because that’s what matters to me at the end of the day. That’s what I lose sleep over; that’s what I will always lose sleep over. I want you to be happy in whatever way that is, being yourself the whole time. Do you understand me?”

  At some point, the need to gulp in breath was making it hard to breathe. My cheeks were wet. But somehow, someway, I managed to ask him in a voice that was barely intelligible, “But Maio House is our family legacy.”

  The old fart rolled his eyes even as he smiled. “Maio House is our family business, Len. You, Mo, you two are our family legacy.”

  Oh hell.

  Oh bloody hell.

  I was so grateful right then that this wasn’t the man who had raised me. That this sweet, nice grandpa wasn’t the one I had grown up knowing.

  Because he would have killed me with his sweetness, with his kindness, and I never would have grown up to be the person I was if this was what I’d grown up with.

  More fucking tears came out of my eyes as I slowly started to realize what he was trying to tell me. What he was doing. For me. For Mo.

  A million times in my life, I had thought that I couldn’t love my grandfather more than I did right then, and every single time that was proved to be a lie. Just like it was in this case. Right then.

  And he kept on going.

  “I love the gym, loved running it, loved having you there with me all the time. I love Peter being there. But it’s just a business, Len. It’s four walls and some concrete that could disappear in a day, in a flood, in a hurricane or a tornado. It’s a part of me, you, and Peter, but it’s not everything.” He reached up to wipe under his eye with the side of his index finger. “Some people are lucky to find one person in the world to love. Some people are even luckier to find more than one person to love and be loved back. Some don’t find anyone. If you find someone, you don’t let them run away. We love them the way we need to love them. The way they need to be loved. And we don’t give up on that. We don’t throw that kind of thing away or push it to a better time, because there is no better time. If you love that kid the way you say you do, you don’t give that up. You fight for it, you stick with it, and you go for it. You keep it.”

  I felt like a zombie as I pulled myself into a standing position and then draped myself around my grandpa, giving him the tightest fucking hug and feeling him give me the tightest fucking hug right back.

  I could barely understand what the hell I was saying as I muttered, “Are you telling me to go? To go be with him across the fucking world and leave you?” I hiccupped. “How the hell could you tell me that? How could you tell me to not be with you and see you and…”

  Those strong, safe arms—the strongest, safest arms I had ever known for the majority of my life—didn’t let me down. They cradled me. They loved me. They adored me right then, as my grandpa said, “I’m telling you to go live your life, Len. I’m telling you to go be happy. That’s what I’m telling you to do.” Those hands of his palmed my face and pulled me back just far enough away so he could look right into my eyes. “And who the hell says you’re leaving us behind? Jonah invited us to come along too. My bag has been packed for weeks.”

  Chapter 24

  9:30 p.m.

  Me: Are my messages

  coming through?

  9:31 p.m.

  Me: Our flight just landed.

  9:32 p.m.

  Jonah: Yes : )

  9:33 p.m:

  Jonah: Awesome. Take your time.

  Jonah: Can’t wait to see you.

  Twenty-five hours after leaving Houston, with six suitcases between the three of us and a promise from Peter that he would be flying out right after his next big fight, Grandpa Gus, Mo and myself went through immigration, baggage claim, and customs, half-delusional but happy.

  With our brand-new, very special visas courtesy of Jonah’s rugby club’s connections.

  The fear and the worry hadn’t left me totally in the three weeks leading up to our trip. Three weeks that had been a mad rush to expedite a passport for Mo, get our most important shit together, and train the assistant manager as best as we could. I was leaving almost everything behind, and I’d almost cried once on the flight right after we’d boarded. Almost.

  But as I pushed the trolley with our luggage through those glass d
oors that led to Arrivals, with Grandpa trailing behind me with a Mo who was so over all of this travel bullshit, all it took was one look at the head towering over everyone else’s in the crowd of people waiting around for that fear and worry to ease away.

  Because Jonah was there, surrounded by a large group, signing an autograph while also trying to duck into a selfie with another person, but the second he spotted us, the small, polite smile on his face exploded. The man I loved lit up. His mouth moved with what I could only imagine was an apology, and then he was coming for us with that bright, beaming face full of love and excitement and relief.

  Jonah Collins was there for us, like he always would be.

  Epilogue

  I wasn’t going to cry.

  I wasn’t going to cry.

  The hand holding my right one gave it a squeeze a second before Jonah, knowing exactly what was going through my head like he always did, whispered, “You’re not going to cry.”

  Damn it.

  I pressed my lips together and stared out at the endless turquoise water in front of us, making my eyes go wide so that they wouldn’t backstab me and do something I had promised myself—and Grandpa Gus—I wouldn’t do.

  I wasn’t going to cry, damn it. I wasn’t.

  Curling my toes into the soft sand beneath my feet, I took a deep breath in and let it back out as I gave Jonah’s hand its own squeeze. In return, his thumb swept over the back of my hand, his fingertips even more callused now than they had been back when we’d first met. When he’d first started to hold my hand… twenty-two years ago.

  Twenty-two years ago.

  Goddamn time had flown by.

  That’s what happens when you’re having fun, Grandpa Gus would have said.

  And just thinking that made my throat close up, made a choke catch right at the base of my throat, and it made my eyes want to water again. My heart started beating faster, my fingertips tingled, and it took every single ounce of discipline in my body not to bring my hands up to my face and lose my shit. I had fucking promised, and I wasn’t going to go back on my word. Instead, I made myself keep my eyes forward on that blue water that hadn’t changed in the least bit since the last time we’d been to this beach so long ago.