Read The Cranberry Hush: A Novel for Free Online Page B

with Zane,
with Marissa, with Melanie and with Simon—but it had never felt like this
before. I never expected to look across the table and find Griff sitting there,
licking chocolate from his lips.
    As I sipped mine I remembered that tonight was the night I
was going to make Zane a hot chocolate and tell him how I felt. If all had gone
according to plan, he and I would’ve probably been in bed together right now.
But if it hadn’t, maybe I’d have been alone instead. The whole idea felt so
distant now, so odd in light of these new circumstances.
    “So what’s going on in Griff Dean’s life?” I said. “Other
than the Beth stuff. Where are you working? What do you do?”
    He looked surprised. Before answering he blew on his hot
chocolate and then took a long, slow sip. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m rich.”
    “Of course you are. Did you buy stocks with all the money
you made sitting desk in college?”
    He laughed, a nostalgic chuckle, and looked up, rubbing his chin
with one hand. “I was always sitting desk, wasn’t I? No, my grandmother died
last year.”
    “Oh.” I lowered my eyes to the steam rising from his drink. “I
didn’t know that. I’m sorry, dude.”
    “We weren’t close. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
    “Oh...”
    “She and my mom argued like rabid badgers, so...”
    I waited for more; it was beginning to dawn on me that maybe
he hadn’t been joking.
    “She left my mom a hundred bucks.” He paused and then a soft
smile appeared around his eyes and crept down his cheeks to his chapped lips
and he said, “And she left me eight hundred and fifty big ones.”
    “No way. Thousands?”
    “Yeah.”
    I recoiled as if shocked by a lightning bolt, my spine
knocking back against the plastic chair, and then started laughing so hard I
had to press my hands over my mouth to keep from making a scene. The amount of
money was absurd, of course—as ridiculous as a number like fifty
gazillion to a recent grad running a comic shop—but that wasn’t even what
struck me the most.
    “She left you inheritance for spite ?!”
    “The old bird left me inheritance for spite,” he said, “yeah,”
shaking his head but looking like he was trying for all the world not to get up
and jump around the Dunkins.
    “Spite money. Wow.”
    “Can you believe it?”
    I couldn’t. For what must’ve been close to five minutes we
laughed about his late grandmother’s final shaft. Finally, when we’d mostly calmed
down, I asked if he offered any to his mom.
    “I did but she wouldn’t take a penny,” he said, wiping tears
off his cheeks. “She even donated her hundred bucks to the Democrats because Grandma
was a fierce Republican.”
    “Your family belongs on a soap opera.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    My throat felt itchy from laughing so hard. “So what’s it
like having a million bucks fall into your lap?”
    “It’s not a million.”
    “Just about.”
    “Don’t make it crazier than it is. It’s crazy,” he said. “Crazy
cool but crazy scary, too. Brings out the angel and devil on your shoulders
pretty fucking quick, let me tell you.”
    “Do you ever feel like flying to Vegas and just blowing it
all on hookers and booze?”
    He shook his head. “The opposite. I almost feel like it’s
some kind of exotic and poisonous fish and if I don’t consume it in just the
right way it’ll kill me. I want to save it for something, make it last. It’s so
much potential, you know? That’s what’s scary.” He smiled. “I quit my job.”
    “What’d you do?”
    “I made blueprints at an architecture firm. It sucked.”
    “Why’d it suck? You used to like drawing buildings.”
    “I did, but that’s not what this was. I just took other
people’s drawings and made big blue copies. With this special paper and this
giant machine.” He spread his arms wide to measure. “I went home reeking of
ammonia every day. But I knew the shit was hitting the fan with Beth and I’d be
bouncing soon. So a couple