The Art of Being a Gentleman

CHAPTER NINETEEN

AFTER SPENDING THE rest of the afternoon with their grandparents, visiting and playing cards (David beat Gramps at Cribbage for the first time ever, but he had a sneaking suspicion that his grandpa hadn't been trying that hard to win), Grace announced that it was time to get ready to go.

David noticed the look his grandparents had shared when Grace had told them they'd be hanging out with some friends, but he figured it boiled down to typical grandparent protectiveness.

Gramps thought that almost anything David's generation did was dumb. The Bachelor, the keto diet, PokemonGo... he scoffed at everything David told him about and refused to accept that it wasn't totally idiotic. "Why can't people just stick to the classics?" he would say, but when David asked, he was never told just what exactly the classics were.

But Grace had promised they'd be quiet when they came back in and that they wouldn't be out too late. David didn't have to leave until around noon the next day, so they would have time to sleep in if they stayed out longer than expected. Eventually, his grandparents had approved of the get together and told them to have fun.

David didn't quite know what to expect, but he had known some of Grace's friends from back home and figured the ones here would be similar. So he put on a nicer shirt, and waited the half hour it took Grace to come out of the bathroom only looking slightly different from when she had gone in.

(He didn't understand girls.)

By eight o'clock, they were on the streetlamp-lit sidewalks, hands stuffed in their jacket pockets to keep them warm, as Grace directed them to the proper address. "I'm really excited for you to meet Brad and everybody, I think you'll like them."

"Do you have a thing for this Brad guy?" David narrowed his eyes at her, "You sure like talking about him."

Her jaw dropped a little and her blue eyes flickered between him and the road ahead of them. "What? Brad? Are you... do you really... okay yeah, I do," she grinned, shoving him when he laughed. "You just worry about your little thing with Alyssa Harvard and don't be nosing about in my business."

"Nosing about?" he teased just so he could here her laugh.

There was a bounce in her step as they turned onto Brad's street. Grace glanced at him from the corner of her eye, "I have to warn you, they can get a little crazy, but it's all good. Nothing you've never dealt with, right? You go to parties."

"Yeah—"

"So you'll be good. Just be smart, don't leave your drink unattended, don't accept things that you don't recognize from strangers, don't disappear into dark rooms with black lights... the usual."

The usual? David's face scrunched up for a moment. "What do you mean?"

Grace looked over at him as if checking to see if he was serious. "Really? Think about it, Champ. Use that smart head of yours," she chuckled. Before David could say anything else, they were walking up the steps to a house with barely muted music thumping from the basement, and from what David could already see through the windows, a crowd packed into the place like sardines.

"There's a lot of people—"

"It's a party, Champ," she laughed, adjusting her shirt before pounding on the door. "I told you."

"You said it was a get toge—"

"HEY! G, my girl! Glad you made it," a guy, presumably Brad, cheered loudly as he opened the door and swept Grace into his arms for a hug.