Free The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord Page A

if you’re not careful. It doesn’t mean it was all a wash.”
    I shook my head slowly, disbelieving. I scooped up the blue M&M’S and popped them into my mouth.
    “Oh, my little girl,” she said, patting my hand. “Not everything ends so badly.”
    I wanted to live in Lucy and Ricky’s world, where the blunders of life were righted in one neat half hour. They made it look easy.
    “Come on now.” My grandmother’s eyes had the glimmer of intrigue. “There must be some nice boy who makes you want to change your tune.”
    This got a smile out of me. “I guess, maybe.”
    My grandmother smiled back, settling back into her chair. “Tell me everything.”
    “Well, you know how you told me that dating kind of helped you, after Gramps?” Her eyebrows dropped, and I scolded myself for phrasing it as a question. She didn’t remember. “It was a while ago. Anyway, that’s my plan now. And there’s this guy, Ryan Chase, whom I’ve liked since forever, and he’s the perfect person to go out with.”
    “Why him?” she asked, still smiling. “What makes this boy good enough for my girl?”
    I’d told her before, of course, but I started at the beginning all over again—with the cereal aisle.
    “It was such a hard time for his sister and their family,” I said. “But there he was, dancing anyway.”
    “Ah,” she said. “Joy in the face of destruction. A very admirable quality.”
    “I think so, too. He had a bad breakup this summer, but he’s still so confident and positive. I know that if we went out, everyone would see that we’re both doing really well.”
    “So he’s the plan,” said my grandmother.
    “He’s the plan,” I agreed. “Or at least part of it.”
    I told her my other goals, inspired so much by her. “I don’t think I can actually swim—not any time soon. But I put it on the list for someday. And travel might be harder to plan, too, but I’ll figure it out. I’m not sure where yet. Why did you pick Paris?”
    She smiled. “Why not Paris? My world had crumbled around me. Like your friend Mr. Chase, I found a place to dance.”

    “So,” my dad said, pulling the passenger’s side seat belt over his chest. “Are we on speaking terms?”
    “Nope.” I could barely look at him because my mind refused to compute: he’s dating Mom . Did they go on actual dates? Hold hands? I recoiled.
    My mom had dropped me off at my grandma’s, but it was my dad’s turn to pick me up for dinner at his place, making it impossible to avoid him. I’d already dodged a phone call from him because talking about their relationship made it real. And I liked my denial. It was cozy here, in the land where divorced parents just didn’t touch each other.
    I drove with rigid posture, square shoulders and chin held high. My dad stayed quiet for a few minutes, honoring my request for silence.
    “The dating thing is bad enough,” I said, finally. “But it really, really sucks that you kept it from me.”
    I could see him nodding in my peripheral vision.
    “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”
    I blinked. My father, famously verbose, was leaving it at that. If he was aiming for reverse psychology, it worked. I felt like a pessimistic brat.
    “I know you don’t mean for it to affect me.” My shoulders drooped. “But it does.”
    “I know that, Paiger,” he said, a sigh escaping. “I do. But your mom and I are going to do everything in our power to keep this as normal as possible.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “What does that even mean?”
    “Whatever you want it to mean. You and Cameron will still come over for dinner twice a week and stay with me when your mom’s out of town. We don’t have to talk about it. I won’t come over to the house at first if that will make the transition easier.”
    My mom gave me a similar speech earlier that day, only hers had more parenting magazine phraseology: “defined boundaries” and “respecting everyone’s comfort levels.” In reality,