“Sure,” Hailey nodded. “I mean…I like it here if that’s what you’re asking…it’s home, you know?” Nora got out, but she ended up right back here, she thought but didn’t say.
“Maybe I’m just fooling myself that I’ll ever run off and conquer Nashville,” Jessica sighed.
“At least you have a goal,” Hailey gulped. “Beyond basketball, I just don’t know…”
“We all have our goals, Hails,” Jessica argued. “Surely you have some idea of what you want to do. I mean, I might dream of the Grand Ole Opry, but that doesn’t mean I don’t dream of other things like meeting Paul Walker, purchasing something from Kitson and learning all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Grant closed the front door behind him as he smiled. “Let’s get real, Jess. I doubt even Freddie Mercury really knew all the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“Grant, what is it that you want out of life?” Hailey blurted before she could stop herself.
“Right now,” Grant grinned, “I’d settle for a bottle of water and a back massage.”
“I’m talking long term,” Hailey rolled her eyes.
“You look miffed,” Grant commented as he tossed the cordless phone onto the couch.
Hailey threw her hands up in the air. “That’s because I asked you a question, and, rather than answering it, you made a joke…and, sorry, but I’m just not in a joking mood.”
“Regrettably I don’t currently have a printout of my life’s itinerary to give you, but I have an abundance of interests,” Grant said with a raise of his eyebrow. “The rough draft goes a little something like this…Law School at Harvard… maybe land an internship at Meet the Press and trade notes with Tim Russert before I ever have to sit across the table from him and go toe-to-toe… maybe be a Senator’s aide for awhile… clerk for a Supreme Court justice. I could see myself working, in some capacity, for a campaign I believe in during the midst of all that. I’d like to do a lot more traveling and visit some of the places I’ve never been…maybe go back to Africa with a reputable charity at some point…there are lots of things I want to do.”
Hailey took a moment to soak in everything Grant had thrown at her. It was hard for her to wrap her head around the idea that anyone her age could have such clear cut ideas about what it was he wanted to do. She realized that she had never even so much as thought about her dreams beyond playing basketball. She wasn’t even sure what she planned to major in while attending college. She remembered talking to Grant about all the places he had been and being amazed by how much of the world he had seen at such a young age. “Where is your favorite place you have ever visited?” she asked, trying to make conversation without bombarding him with the question she really wanted to hear the answer to.
“My favorite place I have ever been?” Grant repeated with a shrug. “I don’t know that I can narrow it down. Each place I have been is special in its own way; I took something away from every place I lived or visited. Germany feels as much like home as anywhere to me, so I’m inclined to call it my favorite, but there are other experiences I treasure. I went to Africa with my sister because she was working with an organization that had raised money to provide food, clothing and medical care to an orphanage there. Many of the young children I met were around my age, so, over the course of that trip, it would have been nearly impossible not to grow up a little bit. I will always be in debt to my parents for allowing me to go and to Joey for being willing to take on the responsibility that came with having a little kid tag along because the impact of that trip was life-altering for me. As a kid growing up in middle-class America, you can read about poverty or even watch special reports on the news and see the horrific pictures, but, until you experience it first hand and all five senses are engaged, it is nearly impossible to imagine. That was a special trip for Joey and me and part of the reason we are as close as we are today. She looks out for me even when I drive her crazy, and I love her for that. My dad has a close friend with the USO, and I was able to travel with him and a few professional athletes and cheerleaders over to Afghanistan to visit the troops. That was definitely a neat experience, but, probably, the trip that stands out in my mind is going to Vietnam with my dad when I was fifteen. When I was a kid I had an opportunity to sit down to dinner with Hal Moore on more than one occasion, and, no matter where life takes me, I’ll carry his words with me. I don’t have too many heroes, but he’s on the short list. He is a legendary commander who actually grew up in Kentucky but moved to Washington to give himself a better chance of receiving an appointment to West Point, which, I have to believe, is the basis of his longstanding friendship with my father. They are equally hardcore. He was a Harvard man as well, which is no doubt why he is so dang cool. I ask my dad all the time if Mel Gibson is ever going to portray him in a blockbuster, and it really gets his goat every time! But, being able to go to Vietnam with my father and see where the Battle of Ia Drang took place as I recalled stories I had heard told about the Valley of Death was surreal…something I will never forget.”
Listening to Grant talk, Hailey had no trouble recalling what had first attracted her to him. He spoke with such intelligence and confidence that it drew her in. Though he spoke of things she knew absolutely nothing about, hearing him describe them left her wanting to know more. “You have really had an amazing life,” she said in awe.
Grant shrugged. “I witnessed my dad doing the nasty with a woman no older than my sisters. My brother blabbed the dirty details to my mom; now my parents are getting divorced, and somehow I got shipped here to the middle-of-nowhere to finish out my high school experience rehashing third grade with teachers who know no more than what the text books tell them about the subjects they teach. Lucky me.”
“You would leave if you wanted to,” Hailey fired back. “You don’t need anyone, not even your parents, to give you permission to do whatever you want to do in life.”
“No, I don’t need permission,” Grant shook his head, “but there is something to be said for financial stability, and, since I lack a high school diploma, not to mention a college degree, which is a prerequisite for any job worth having, I figure I better hang tight until my birthday, when, thank God for Pops, I will have the means to do anything I want to do.”
“So all you’re really waiting on is the money?” Hailey gulped.
“You sound surprised when you say that?” Grant replied.
“No, not shocked, just disappointed, I guess,” Hailey admitted.
“Disappointed?” Grant asked. “As in you were hoping I would stick around?”
“That whole off-handed comment you made the other day about me stealing your heart,” Hailey shrugged, “was that just some slip of the tongue that you regret, or are you just so accustomed to feeding a line of bull to whatever girl happens to be sitting next to you that you didn’t even realize you said it?”
Despite his impressive repertoire of snappy comebacks, Grant seemed at a lost for words.
Hailey glanced over at Jessica, who, it appeared, had no intention of giving them any privacy. “Grant, can we go outside and sit on the porch?”
“Sure,” Grant began, “just hang on and let me get…”
“Here,” Hailey said, reading his mind and shoving her bottle of water at him. “I haven’t even opened it yet. Let’s go.”
“What are the odds of me getting that massage?” Grant grinned as Hailey practically backed him out the front door.
“Not good, not good at all,” Hailey laughed as she closed the door behind her.
There was a long silence between them, yet it wasn’t awkward.
“Hey, Grant?” Hailey said almost shyly as she sat next to him on the front porch swing.
“Yeah?” Grant said, capping his water and sitting it to the side.
“I wrote you ten e-mails,” Hailey gulped, refusing to continue to ignore the fact that she and Grant eventually had to brave the subject of the summer.
“Yeah, I got them,” Grant nodded casually. “By the third one some of the hostility seemed to have faded.”
“So you read them?” Hailey sighed. “I had started to think maybe you weren’t getting them…that maybe I had the e-mail address wrong or something…but you got them…and you chose not to write back?”
“What did I have to say to a girl like you, Hailey?” Grant shrugged. “I figured the sooner you got over me, the better off you’d be.”
“And, what, in any of those letters, gave you the slightest inclination that I was back home pining away for you?” Hailey snapped.
“Come-on,” Grant smiled. “Do you really write not one, not two, but ten letters to someone you’re not thinking about?”
“Ten letters without a response,” Hailey thought aloud. “Wow…that is pretty pathetic when you think about it, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Grant shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I was sad when they stopped coming.”
“Well, I’m sorry that some of them were a little mean, but I was angry about how things ended between us,” Hailey admitted.
