Accidentally Saved

Chapter Twenty

Ian's POV

After all the crap I had to go through with my dad and his sentence, the last thing I thought I would be doing was cleaning my house with the girl I'd had a crush on forever. I'm not complaining though, maybe I'll finally get that kiss I've been thinking about since Friday. And maybe, just maybe, I'll find out if Grace likes me too.

I search through the cabinets for cleaning supplies and grab a handful of different colored bottles, most of them full because my dad and I never cleaned. It was always my mom who took charge and dusted and vacuumed. After she passed away, neither my dad nor I wanted to clean or knew how to do it, so we didn't.

As I walk back to Grace, who is sitting on the couch in the living room, which is one of the least dirty places in the entire house, I am suddenly very embarrassed about how filthy this place is. Thankfully I kept my room decent.

As I walk into the room I hear Grace talking to someone on the phone. She sounds worried and uneasy and it's not until I hear her say, "Uh, okay. Thanks Mom, bye, love you," that her tone of voice makes sense.

Hey, you alright?" I ask, poking my head in the doorway awkwardly, trying not to look like I had been eavesdropping.

Y-yeah, I'm fine," Grace laughs nervously, obviously not fine. But she doesn't look like she wants to talk about whatever is bothering her, and I'm not in the mood to push her into explaining herself.

"If you say so," I shrug. "Do you want to get started now, or, I could go order a pizza or something..." I offer, my stomach rumbling. It's only four-thirty but I feel like I could eat a cow.

"Yeah, that sounds great," Grace smiled, seeming relieved I didn't make her explain herself. "I'll go grab some garbage bags and Windex and we can start."

I hold out a hand to stop her from getting up and pull the heavy bin I filled with all the cleaning stuff into the room.

"TAAA DAAA!" I yell excitedly, sarcasm dripping from my voice. Grace laughs and sifts through the bin before handing me a pair of latex gloves which are too big for my hands.

"These look like they were made for clowns," I joke as she pulls on gloves similar to mine. She just shrugs.

"Jon and I used to blow them up like balloons and then see who could sit on them the longest before they popped. I still have leg pain because of it," she laughs and a jolt of electricity flies through my body.

I love it when she laughs.

~

"So since our last try at this didn't work, do you want to play twenty questions again?" Grace offers after we've been cleaning for about half an hour, taking turns choosing the song that is played next on Grace's phone. I nod and pause the music, I couldn't handle any more One Direction. I needed to feel masculine for at least an hour or I would lose my sanity.

"Okay you go first," she says, grabbing an old bottle of Jack Daniels and throwing it into the garbage can about ten feet from her. "Three points!" she screams as it lands in the white bag before turning to me and blushing.

"First question," I tease, smiling back at her. She just laughs and looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to ask her a question. "Favorite sport?"

"Basketball!" says as if it's obvious, and from her three point shot into the trash bag, it is. "I used to play all the time, and I loved being the only girl on my team because I could boss the other boys around. But when I got older and school became harder, I dropped it. My parents always said academics must come before anything else and so I decided it would be easier to focus only on school, instead of fun..." she looks down sadly.