Page 57 of Love Expert
Frustrated, I stalk across his lawn with clenched fists and lungs that can barely keep up with my temper.
“Oh, Magnolia?”
I stop with one foot lifted, my body halfway across the lavender boundary. Billy’s mocking tone taunts me as I glance back and find him standing instead of sitting. He’s bent at the hips, his elbows on the porch railing. The instant our eyes meet, his smirk grows wider.Prettier. “Goodbye. Have a great day.”
“Yuh.” I hurdle the garden with an undignified grunt. “Goodbye.”
ROUND TWENTY-TWO
BILLY
At two minutes to noon on Saturday morning, I knock on Maggie’s front door and stand extra tall. Extra straight. Extra muscular, maybe.
Fuck, I don’t know.
Fortunately, I don’t have too long to obsess over myself, because something crashes inside her house, and right after, Maggie’s hiss of anger follows.
“You think she’s okay, Dad?” Jeremy hovers on my left, his arms wrapped around a Battleship game box as he hugs it to his chest. “Did she hurt herself?”
“Just her pride, buddy.” I drop my hand to his fresh hair. “She has a metric ton of it bottled up in her body, and sometimes, people don’t know how to handle all that pressure. She’s like a boiling kettle with all the steam coming out the top.”
“Cos she’s proud?”
“Happens to the best of us.” I knock a second time and earn her feral growl. “See?”
“I’m coming!” She stomps across her house, the angry little kitten she is, and trips her way into a pair of shoes according to the step-step-clomp of her stride. “I told you I could drive myself, ya know!? I’m a fully grown woman who can—” She swings her door open and stops dead, her eyes locking onto mine, then flipping down to my son. “Oh. Hey.”
I may as well be a fucking ghost, because she lowers into a crouch and strokes Jeremy’s brown locks. “You got a haircut?”
He flashes a wide grin. “Uh-huh. Do you like it?”
“I sure do.” She tilts her head to the side and runs her fingers through the shorter side. “You look very handsome. Did you get that done today?”
“Uh-huh.” He hooks a thumb in my direction. “After my dad got done mowing the lawn, we went to the shops. He got a haircut, too.”
Too proud for her own good, Maggie tips her head back and acknowledges me through narrowed eyes. “I see that. Were they having a two-for-one sale down at the barbers?”
“That’s what I said!” he cackles. “But nuh-uh! Dad had to pay for both. Is his haircut handsome, too?”
“Mmhm.” Slowly extending her legs, she straightens out and shows off a soft pink blush warming her cheeks.
Should I try to kiss her again? Now would be a good time, since she’s less likely to stab me with her keys when Jeremy’s watching.
“Maggie?”
“Yes. Your dad’s haircut looks great.” She drops her gaze, her long lashes coming down to tap her cheeks. “Very handsome.”
“But not as handsome as me, right?” The little shit shoulder-checks me back and forces himself into the gap between us. “People tell me I look just like he did when he was my age, but now he’s old. So he can’t be nearly as handsome as me.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Ya know, he’s notthatold.”
“He was born in the nineteen-hundreds!”
“Iwas born in the nineteen-hundreds, too.”
He nods. Simple, clean, devastating. “I know.”
“Yikes.” Laughing, she turns on her heels and heads back to the base of her stairs. “I packed a picnic basket, since Ramone’s thing is a barbecue lunch and I didn’t want to turn up empty-handed.” Hefting the heavy basket onto the crook of her arm, she cuts left and snags her phone and keys, slipping the former into the back pocket of a denim skirt that stops several inches above her knees. She wears an oversized sweater, with too-long sleeves and a neck hole too large not to sit askew. She risks drowning her body in fabric and creating an amorphous blob, but her skirt fixes all the problems her sweater creates, and her sinfully long, ridiculously toned and tanned legs make up for every single unkind thing she’s ever said.
