Her grandmother’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe. Maybe you’re not the only one who had a liking for skinny-dipping.”
Fliss took a bite of toast. “You’re a surprise. Tell me more.”
“Not unless you tell me about Seth. Trust is a two-way street. I’ll show you my secrets if you show me yours.”
Fliss sighed. “What do you want to know? Seth was a mistake. We all make them. I was young. Now tell me about skinny-dipping. Did Gramps dare you?”
“No. I dared him.” Her grandmother’s voice was brisk. “He didn’t know whether to be scandalized or impressed.”
“You and Gramps obviously had an interesting marriage.”
“Oh, we weren’t married. Not at that point. Before that night, he’d never seen me naked.”
Fliss choked with laughter. “You’re bad. How did I never know this about you?”
“You’re not the only one capable of breaking a few rules, Felicity. And anyway, rules seemed pointless back then. There was a war on. People were dying. It seemed as if the world had gone mad. None of us knew what was going to happen in the future. It seemed right to grab happiness wherever we could find it.
Nowadays people are so busy working toward the future and thinking about tomorrow, they forget how precious the present is.”
“Wow, Grams, that’s profound for seven in the morning.” Fliss poured herself another cup of coffee, readjusting her image of her grandmother.
“All I’m saying is that you should grab the opportunity to spend time with Seth.”
Living in the present and thinking only of the moment was the reason she’d wound up pregnant at eighteen. But her grandmother knew nothing about that.
“It’s complicated—”
“Love always is. Doesn’t mean you should give up on it.”
“Who said anything about love?”
“Sex, then.”
Fliss choked on her toast. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t look so shocked. How do you think your mother arrived on this earth?”
Fliss tried to delete the image from her brain. It was bad enough thinking about one’s parents having sex, without thinking about grandparents. “Um—okay, but I don’t intend to have sex with Seth either. That’s not going to happen.”
Her grandmother removed her glasses. “I’m going to ask you a question. Being you, you’ll probably dodge it, but I’m going to ask it anyway.”
Fliss squirmed, her heart sinking. “What?”
“Have you ever met a man that made you feel the way Seth did?”
It took her a moment to answer because the word seemed to be stuck in her throat. “No.”
“And that doesn’t tell you something?”
“Yes, it tells me I was a teenager with my head in the clouds, seeing things the way I wanted to see them. Artistic interpretation.”
“Maybe, or maybe it’s telling you something else.”
Fliss thought about the way it had felt when Seth had her and dismissed it.
She wasn’t going there again. Not even with an unreasonably large helping of sexual chemistry thrown into the mix.
“It tells me I’m practical about relationships. Realistic. I’m not like Harriet.”