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Authors: Colleen Hoover

Regretting You (43 page)

BOOK: Regretting You
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The next scene is the day we skipped school. He’s setting the camera up, pointing it at the tree. I’m leaning against the tree, staring out at the water. Miller isn’t in the shot at first, but then he sticks his face in front of the camera. “Hey, Clara,” he whispers in a hurry. “You should go to prom with me.” Then he backs away from the camera and slips between me and the tree, like nothing was amiss.

I had no idea he was doing any of this. I turn around to look at him, but he urges me to keep watching the television.

The next three scenes are all from while we’ve dated, with him sneaking in random promposals while we’re together and me having no idea he was doing it.

Then a scene opens up to him standing in line at Starbucks. He points his camera at me. I’m sitting alone in a corner, reading a book.

Oh my God. This is the first day we kissed.

Miller turns the camera back on himself as he’s standing in the Starbucks line. “You’re so cute, sitting over there reading your book,” he whispers. “I think you should go to prom with me.”

“Miller,” I whisper. I try to turn around and look at him again, but he doesn’t want me to take my eyes off the television. I’m just in shock. I wasn’t expecting any of the footage to be from before we were dating.

In the next scene, Miller is outside, leaning against a pole. I don’t recognize the location at first, but when he wipes away beads of sweat from his forehead and pulls the sucker from his mouth, I realize he’s standing in front of the city limit sign. He’s looking into his camera when he says, “
So.
Clara Grant. You just drove by, and I know you saw me standing out here on the side of the road. Here’s the deal. I have a girlfriend, but I stopped thinking about her when I go to bed at night, and Gramps says that’s a bad sign and that I should break up with her. I mean, I have had a thing for you for a long time now, and I feel like I’m running out of opportunity. So I’ll make you a deal. If you turn your car around at the bottom of that hill and come back, I’m gonna take that as a sign, finally listen to my gut, break up with my girlfriend, and eventually ask you out. I might even ask you to prom this year. But if you
don’t
turn your car around, then I’ll assume you and I just weren’t meant to—” His eyes flash up, and he catches sight of something. He grins and then looks back down at his phone. “Look at that. You came back.”

That portion of the video ends, and now I’m crying.

When the next scene begins, I don’t recognize it at all. The camera is pointed at the floor and then at Gramps.

Gramps looks a few years younger in this video. Healthier than he looks now. “Get that out of my face,” Gramps says.

Miller turns the camera on himself. He looks younger too. He’s skinny, probably about fifteen. “Gramps is excited for the show,” Miller
says sarcastically into the camera. Then he points his camera toward the stage.

My heart is thundering in my chest when I recognize the set.

My mind also starts to race. Twice, Miller’s grandpa tried to tell me about something that happened when they were at the school when Miller was fifteen. And twice, Miller was so embarrassed by it he shut him up.

Miller kisses the side of my head because he knows I’ve been wanting to know this story since the first day I met Gramps.

The camera cuts off. When it cuts on again, it’s the same night, but it’s the end of the play. The camera is on me now. I’m fourteen, standing onstage by myself, delivering a monologue. The camera slowly pans away from me and onto Miller.

His gramps must be holding the camera now.

Miller is staring at the stage. He’s leaning forward, his hands clasped beneath his chin. The camera zooms in on him as he watches me onstage. The camera stays there for a solid minute. Miller is hanging on to every word I’m saying onstage, completely engrossed. Gramps never once takes the camera off him, but Miller has no idea his gramps is filming him.

The monologue is the end of the play, so when I deliver my last line, everyone in the audience begins to clap.

Miller doesn’t.

He’s immobile. “Wow,” he whispers. “She is incredible.
Epic.

That’s when he looks at his grandpa and sees the camera pointed in his direction. He tries to snatch the camera out of Gramps’s hand, but Gramps pulls it away. He angles the camera so that it’s showing both of them. Miller rolls his eyes at his grandpa when he says, “I think you just fell in love.”

Miller laughs. “Shut up.”

“You did, and I got it on camera.” He points the camera at Miller again and says, “What’s her name?”

Miller shrugs. “Not sure. Clara, I think?” He opens the playbill and scrolls through it, pausing on my name. “Clara Grant. She played the role of Nora.”

His grandpa is still filming him. Miller isn’t even denying what his grandpa is saying. Everyone in the audience is now clapping for the actors as they walk out onstage, but Miller is staring at the camera. “You can stop now.”

His grandpa laughs. “I think it’s cute. Maybe you should ask her out.”

Miller laughs. “Yeah, right. She’s a ten. I’m like a four. Maybe a five.”

Gramps turns the camera on himself. “I’d give him a solid six.”

“Turn it
off
,” Miller says again.

Gramps smiles at the camera. He points it at Miller one more time. When they announce my name and it’s my turn to take a bow onstage, Miller bites his lip, trying to hide his smile.

“You look lovesick,” Gramps says. “Damn shame, because she’s out of your league.”

Miller faces the camera. He laughs and doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he seems smitten. He leans forward, closer to the camera, looking directly into it. “One of these days, that girl is gonna notice me. You just wait.”

“I’m not immortal,” Gramps says. “Neither are you.”

Miller looks back at the stage and laughs. “You’re the worst grandpa I have.”

“I’m the only grandpa you have.”

“Thank God,” Miller says, laughing.

Then the camera cuts off.

Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I’m shaking my head, in complete shock. Miller still has his arms wrapped around me. He brings his mouth to my ear. “And you said promposals were stupid.”

I laugh through my tears. Then I turn around and kiss him. “I’m obviously wrong a lot.”

He presses his forehead to mine and smiles.

Someone turns on the lights. We separate, and my mother is wiping her eyes. “Now
that’s
what you guys should have submitted.”

Lexie is nodding in agreement.

“Doesn’t meet the criteria,” Jonah says. “It wasn’t all filmed this year.” He looks at Miller and winks. “It was great, though.”

I stare at the blank television in disbelief. And then, something strikes me. “Wait a second.” I face Miller. “You said you named your truck after a Beatles song. But Nora was the name of my character in that play.”

He smiles.

“Do the Beatles even have a song called ‘Nora’?”

He shakes his head, and I can’t even believe this guy right now. He’s never going to be able to top this.

An hour later, I’m still on a high. Not a
real
high. A Miller high.

He promised he’d feed me because I’m starving, but he’s heading in the opposite direction of town.

“I thought we were going to eat.”

“There’s something I want to show you at home, first.”

I’m sitting in the middle of his truck seat, leaning my head on his shoulder. I’m looking down at my phone when I feel the truck begin to slow down. We pass Miller’s driveway, though. He pulls off to the side of the road in the dark.

“What are you doing?”

He opens his truck door and grabs my hand, pulling me out. He walks me a few feet and then points at something. I look up at the city limit sign.

“Notice anything?”

I look down, and it’s cemented to the ground. I laugh. “Wow. You did it. You moved the entire city limit.”

“I was thinking we could hang at my house and order pizza with Gramps tonight.”

“Pepperoni and pineapple?”

Miller shakes his head, drops my hand, and begins walking back to his truck. “So close to a perfect ten, Clara.
So
close.”

Five minutes later, me and Gramps are acting like Miller ordering pizza is the most exciting thing we’ve ever witnessed. We’re both sitting on the edge of our chairs. I’m biting my nails. Miller has the phone on speaker, so the room grows tense when the pizza guy says, “I don’t think we deliver that far out. Our delivery area is inside the city limit.”

“I do live inside the city limit. By about twenty feet,” Miller says confidently.

There’s silence on the other end of the line before the guy says, “Okay. Got you in the system. We should be there in about forty-five minutes.”

When Miller hangs up the phone, we both jump up and high-five. Gramps can’t really jump up, so I give him a low five.

“I’m a genius,” Miller says. “Five months of hard and very illegal work finally paid off.”

“I’m kinda proud of you,” Gramps says. “Even though I don’t want to condone anything illegal. But I mean . . . it’s pizza, so . . .”

Miller laughs. The alarm on Gramps’s medication timer goes off, so I walk to the kitchen to get him the pills he needs. I’ve been helping Miller out with Gramps while he’s at work. There’s a full-time aide here during the day, but it’s getting to where he needs help during all the other hours too.

I like getting to spend time with Gramps. He tells me so many great stories about Miller. About his own life. And even though he still jokes that his wife skipped town, I love hearing him talk about her. They were married for fifty-two years before she died. Hearing the stories of the two of them helps reaffirm my belief in love.

Jonah and my mother help too. It was weird for a while, seeing them together. But they’re a good fit. They’re taking it slow and have decided to wait before making any big moves, like moving in together. But we have dinner with Jonah and Elijah almost every night.

Jonah is a completely different person with my mother than he was with Aunt Jenny. Not that he wouldn’t have been happy living a life with Aunt Jenny and Elijah. But my mother makes him light up in a way I’ve never seen before. Every time she’s near him, he looks at her like she’s the greatest thing he’s ever seen.

I catch Miller looking at me like that sometimes. Like right now, as I stand in the kitchen, prepping meds for his grandpa.

I take them to the living room and sit next to Miller on the couch.

Gramps swallows his meds, then sets his glass of water on the table next to his chair. “So? I guess you finally saw the video of when Miller fell in love with you?”

I laugh and lean into Miller. “Your grandson is a romantic.”

Gramps laughs. “No, my grandson is a nitwit. Took him three years to finally ask you out.”

“Patience is a virtue,” Miller says.

“Not when you have cancer.” Gramps stands up. “I’ve been waiting to die for seven months now, but it ain’t ever gonna happen. Guess I might as well get this over with.” He uses his walker to slowly make his way into the kitchen.

“Get what over with?” Miller asks him.

Gramps opens a drawer where he keeps a lot of his paperwork. He rifles through it and then pulls out a folder, bringing it back to the living room with him. He tosses it on the table in front of Miller. “I wanted to wait and have my lawyer tell you about it after I was dead. Thought it’d be funnier that way. But sometimes I think I might never die, and you don’t have much time left to apply for college.”

Miller pulls the folder toward him. He opens it and begins to read the first page. It looks like a will. Miller scans over it and chuckles. “You
actually left me the rights to your air in the will?” Miller asks, looking up from the papers.

Gramps rolls his eyes. “I’ve been telling you this for ten years, but you keep laughing at me!”

Miller shrugs. “Maybe I’m missing the joke? How can you will someone
air
?”

“They’re air
rights
, you dumbass!” Gramps pushes back in his chair. “Bought them when I was thirty, back when me and your grandma lived in New York. Bastards have been trying to get me to sell them for years, but I already told you I was giving them to you, and I don’t break my word.”

I’m just as confused as Miller, I guess. “What are air rights?”

Gramps rolls his head. “They don’t teach you kids anything in school. It’s like owning land, but in bigger cities, you can actually own parts of the air so people can’t build in front of your building or on top of your building. I own a small chunk of that air in Union Square. Worth about a quarter of a million dollars last time I checked.”

Miller chokes on nothing. He keeps choking. Sputtering. I pat his back before he stands up and points down at the folder. “Are you kidding me?”

Gramps shakes his head. “I know how much you want to go to that school down in Austin. My lawyer said it’s gonna cost you about a hundred and fifty thousand to get a degree. Plus, you’ll have taxes to pay when you sell the rights. I figure you’ll have enough left to help with a down payment on a house someday or maybe travel. Or buy some film equipment. I don’t know. I ain’t making you rich, but it’s better than nothing.”

BOOK: Regretting You
2.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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