“I probably will take some pics, but it’ll be close-ups of flowers, playing up the whole garden angle. So my hair and a little dirt won’t hurt,” I tease.
Mom smiles back, unconvinced.
I set my tea down. “Ready to get to it?”
Mom agrees, and we make our way back over to the garden. Mostly, we’re weeding, pulling up some of the junk that always invades Mom’s garden area between the end of the fall harvest and her first planting of the spring.
“Where’s Dad today?” I ask after a bit.
Mom’s brow furrows, and she thinks for a moment. “Today? Malaysia. According to him, it’s all insanity and monkey business. Literally, supposedly. Something to do with coconut imports and labor standards. He said I should have joined him since you and River are out of the house now, but I told him there was no way I could put enough sunscreen on for Malaysia. Now if he gets an assignment to Paris or Oslo, we can talk then!”
“You’d love Paris, I’m sure, but Oslo? Better pack a parka.”
My dad has traveled for work since before I can remember—here, there, and everywhere. I’m not exactly sure what he does, some sort of consultant about export and import laws and regulations for the United States. But no matter where he was, he always made it home for anything truly important. Like Mom, I realize how special Dad is too.
“I can make anything look good, even a parka,” she tells me, striking a pose. Truthfully, she can.
A loud vehicle breaks through the quiet of the small neighborhood, and I wonder who . . . and what . . . that could be.
I stop, listening as the growling diesel engine pulls up out front. Mom looks more than a little eager as she gets up and hurries toward the garage. “Mom? Who’s that?”
Before she can answer heavy bootsteps tread through the garage and a man calls out. “Mrs. Watson? I got the fertilizer you were asking for and . . . oh, hi.”
A guy walks out into the sunlight, a big bag of what I can only assume is fertilizer over his shoulder. With dark brown hair that’s flopped over one eye, a tight T-shirt that shows off an impressive set of biceps, and a day’s growth of stubble on his lean cheeks, he looks like he just stepped out of an old Fifth Harmony video, right down to the slight translucence of his sweat-soaked shirt making his muscles stand out all the more.
“Honey, this is Kyle,” Mom says with so much false innocence I want to roll my own neck. Or maybe snap hers. I mean, this Kyle’s got a fifty-pound bag on his shoulder, and Mom never uses that much gardening chemicals. Hell, you could fertilize half the neighborhood with that thing. “He’s the new gardener I hired to help with the lawn and getting the garden in this year.”
Mom looks at Kyle like he’s the answer to all her prayers. And I don’t mean the garden of her dreams.
“Mom!” I whisper, pulling her aside. “Does Dad know about your ‘gardening’?”
Mom gives me a puzzled look for a second. “What? Dad doesn’t care about the garden.” At my wide eyes, she realizes what I’m saying. “Honey, did you . . . oh, Riley, you silly girl! Did you think I hired a little eye candy while your father is away?”
I blush, looking down. Did I really just think that? I mean, Mom would never cheat, but looking isn’t buying, as they say. “Well, I mean . . . no. But it could happen, and—”
“Honey, your father is all the man I could ever need,” Mom assures me. She looks over at Kyle, who looks a little confused by our conversation out of his earshot. “I asked him to help, not for me . . . but for you.”
Oh. My. God. She set all of this up just to get me to meet some guy? “Mom! What the actual hell?”
But she’s back to playing hostess with the mostest to Kyle. “Kyle, this is my daughter, Riley.”
He throws me a wave and a smile full of bright, white teeth. I flash a closed-mouth smile in return, not willing to be rude but also not playing Mom’s game.
Mom’s not giving up, though, pointing to where Kyle can put his load down. “Thanks, Kyle. And after that, if you don’t mind, can you start breaking up the dirt? I think we got most of the weeds out, and I’d like to get the seeds in today if we can.”
“Sure thing,” Kyle says, taking his bag over and picking up Mom’s old hoe. “This’ll be fun. I don’t get to use a good hoe often enough. Like I told you, I do mostly big jobs and they’re all power tools. It’s like nobody remembers what your hands are for these days.”
My mouth falls open, and Mom bumps me with her shoulder. I look over and she’s fighting a grin. And totally watching Kyle swing the hoe into the soft dirt and pull it back, shifting the earth around. “He’s such a gem. I can’t decide if he truly has no idea what he’s saying or if he knows but is so good at the dry delivery that it makes you question it. Either way . . .”
“Mom!” I hiss.
“What? I call and you’re listening to dirty books while driving down the highway. I met this nice young guy and thought you two might get along. I’m only trying to help.”
I groan, feeling a pulsing headache coming on. Mom’s run off the deep end this time. With River and me out of the house and Dad going overseas on these work trips, she’s had too much time by herself.
It’s got to be the only explanation. “One little romance book—not porn—and you decide the best option is to pull some nineteenth-century setup and—”
“Don’t use that word. He might hear you,” Mom shushes me. Louder, she calls, “Kyle, would you like some tea? It’s a scorcher, and I wouldn’t want you to get dehydrated.”
Kyle shrugs, setting his hoe aside, and comes over. “Sure, Mrs. Watson. Thanks.”
Mom virtually runs across the yard into the house to get another glass. And leaves me alone with Kyle. What does she think? I’m going to jump him and demand to have his babies while she’s in the house?
“I am so sorry about this,” I tell him, majorly embarrassed at the obvious set-up. “I had no idea.”
“I kinda figured when your mom told me all about her single daughter and then offered to pay twice my going rate for some easy day labor,” he says with a laugh.
I melt right there. Into the grass, sinking through the layers of dirt to the lava-filled core of the earth and incinerating to ash. Or at least I wish that’s what happened so I wouldn’t have to stand here like this isn’t the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Oh. My. God. I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” I sputter, lost for words.
“It’s okay. If it’s any consolation, you’re even more beautiful than she said.” He beams like that’s supposed to make me feel better. Oddly, it doesn’t.
Any other time, I think I’d find Kyle attractive, even gorgeous. And objectively, I can say that’s true. But there’s no spark inside me when I look at him. My sparks are already saved for one man, and it’s not Kyle. It’s Noah.
“Thanks?” I say awkwardly because how do you handle something like this? There’s definitely nothing about this kind of situation in Miss Manners for the 2000s. Probably because I never read that, if it even exists.
“Can I ask you a question?” Kyle says. “You look kinda familiar. That’s not a line, I swear. But do I know you from somewhere?”