"Grace!" Maisie chided playfully. "I think maybe you guys weren't ready for this because both Bill and I talked about it, and you guys are perfect for each other. You're both just too stubborn to—”
"Yeah, and you would have known we weren’t ready for dating if you had...what's that, ladies and gentlemen? That's right, if you'd asked us about being set up instead of springing it on us like a couple of teenagers," Grace said, finally taking a seat at the table after helping the kids get their breakfasts in order.
Ever the mother, Maisie came out of the kitchen with a plate of scrambled eggs and toast for Grace and herself, which they both scarfed down like they hadn't eaten for years.
"What's his deal, anyway?" Grace asked, looking up from the cheesy, eggy goodness.
"He's been through a hard time. His wife left him," Maisie said, her tone barely changing.
Grace squished her lips to the side of her mouth, thinking. She felt the slightest bit bad. She hadn't known that, but she'd been through a divorce as well and she wasn't using it as an excuse for being rude. "Right," she said sympathetically. "Well, that sucks, but he doesn't have to take it out on me."
"No, it doesn't," Maisie agreed. "It was terrible, though. She left him with a two-month-old, at the time. They had just had a child together, and she left him after a gazillion years together."
"Well...that does suck. A gazillion years is a long time," Grace only half-teased.
"Shut up," Maisie laughed. "You know what I mean. They were together from the time they were kids, and it's been a rough two years for him. All he does is work and take care of Bex."
"Bex?"
"His son," her friend explained. "I don't even think I've seen him look at another woman since then."
"So, wait, you wait two years to set him up, but for me you’re like, hey, it's been a few months. Why not?" she explained with humor.
"I didn't set you up based on timing. I set you up because we knew you'd be great together."
In truth, her evening with Trent hadn't been all bad. If nothing else, he was fun to look at—but they had a few genuine moments of conversation, too. But the whole thing was so off-putting. Grace hadn't dated since she'd met Aaron, and they had such natural chemistry together, it didn't feel like a chore to get to know him. Trent seemed hard, and she felt like he was looking down on her. She already felt unsure about herself—her worth—and being around Trent hadn't made that any better.
"Well, good luck with setting him up with anyone ever again because he's an absolute charmer and—” Grace began but was cut off as her cell phone began to ring. "Hold on," she said, getting up from her seat and walking over to the kitchen counter to collect her phone.
"Hello?"
"Hey, is this Grace?"
She thinned her lips curiously. "Yeah, who's this?"
"It's, uh, it's Trent," the man said, and suddenly his voice clicked into place. "Look, I just...hey, I'm no good on phones—and not in the millennial 'just text otherwise I'll pointedly ignore your call' kind of way. In a, I'm just not very good on the phone."
"Sorry to say, but you're not that much better in person," she teased.
Trent let out a well-humored breath that was something close to a chuckle, and for whatever reason, she found it immediately endearing.
"Yeah, well, look, can you come outside?" he asked.
Grace's heart lilted with nervous anticipation, and she walked to the window at the front of the house. She pushed the curtain to the side and saw Trent leaning against the driver's side door of his truck. When he caught sight of her, he smiled and waved.
"I'll come as far as the window," she said. "Otherwise, I tend to have an allergic reaction to rudeness."
Trent laughed. "Look, you're not all that much better. You insulted me, my work ethic, and my town. Will ya just come outside so I can apologize like a gentleman?"
Grace let out a sigh and hung up the phone. Spinning on her heel, she turned to give Maisie an uncomfortable but giddy look and stepped outside.
"Okay, you got me right where you want me," she said, leaning against the porch rail as she slid her shoes on. "Let's hear it."
"I went home last night, and I felt kinda bad about our..." he began but trailed off as if he didn't know what to call their evening together.
"Date?" she offered.
"No," he said quickly, walking up toward the step. He tilted his cowboy hat and offered her a sly smirk as he said, "If you were on a date with me, you would leave with stars in your eyes."
"Handsome and humble. What a catch!"
"I felt bad," he said genuinely. "I'm sorry. I was caught off-guard. Neither of us really wanted to be there, and honestly, I haven't dated in years."
"Me neither."
Trent nodded, looked down at his feet, licked his lips, then looked back up at her unsurely. "Do you wanna go for a walk or somethin'?"
"Just...what? Around the neighborhood?"
Trent shrugged. "You got any reason why we shouldn't?"
"No," she said in summary. "No, I do not."
"Shall we?" he asked, gesturing toward her so that she could loop her arm through his.
Grace must have been losing her mind to go off with this guy, but she was never one to turn down an apology. If he felt bad for being such a jerk the night before, she wouldn't stop him from trying to make it up to her.
Bill and Maisie lived in a quaint neighborhood of old wartime houses. They looked small from the outside, but most of them were at least three bedrooms and had been gutted from the inside out. Maisie's favorite part of the neighborhood was the way it circled into a park and community garden. Because the backyards were so small, many had bought a plot of dirt in the garden.
The gardens were made of six ten-by-three raised vegetable beds and were already ripe with tomato sprouts, butternut and zucchini blossoms, and budding red onions. The chef in Grace was buzzing with excitement as the pair wandered through the rows and rows of vegetables.
Community garden aside, the neighborhood was filled with beautiful magnolia trees that were in full bloom. Grace loved spring; even if for most people, a spring in Texas meant summer-like weather, she still viewed it as the beginning of new life.
"I wasn't kidding when I said I hadn't dated for a while," Trent said as he grazed his thumb across a flower petal.
"Neither was I," she said. "It's been more than four years for me, and to be honest, I just went through a pretty strange divorce."
Trent turned to her and raised both brows, his expression going adorably curious. "That's a new one," he mused. "I've heard of nasty divorces. Messy ones, too, but I've never heard of a strange divorce. Was he an alien or something?"
"Bigfoot, actually," she said with a wink. "Nah, it was more that it was quick and I got screwed."
"Sounds like a regular divorce to me," he laughed.
"Yeah," she agreed. "I guess it was more that I felt like I had no say in it, you know?"