Chapter 8 #2
Or the result of a red sock sneaking into the wash.
My eyes narrowed as he approached. We’d had that weird conversation about laundry the other day, but surely—
“Am I doing okay, Coach?” Ian called.
I felt my lips twitch. “Stop swinging your arms so much.”
Ian laughed, his smile standing out against the invading dusk. Without slowing, he hollered, “Hi, Mr. Judd.”
“Hi, Ian,” my dad replied. “See you for poker this week?”
“Yes, sir. Wouldn’t miss it. Y’all have a good night.”
And then he was gone, angling up the drive behind the house that would lead to the highway and back toward the Clarks’ land.
I gave my father a long look. “Poker?”
My dad had the good grace to look a little sheepish. “He’s so bad, Joanie. He has no idea what he’s doing. But Reggie and I are teaching him.”
Nick Judd avoided my incredulous stare. “Is this an adopt-a-celebrity situation? Is he here to make a movie or to learn life skills from the Judd family?”
“Your mother was the one who gave him her lasagna recipe. He said he wanted to try to make it himself.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
He pointed an accusatory finger at me, and then ruined it by sounding like a toddler. “You started it!”
“What?”
“Training him for a 5K. Pfft. Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Dad,” I gasped, mortified.
My father laughed before patting me on the shoulder. He turned to make his way inside, muttering, “He’s a good boy. I like him, even if he can’t play poker.”
I stared after him until the screen door settled into place, wondering when our lives had taken such a strange turn.
Sophia texted me Tuesday afternoon and asked if George could stop by for a bit. She said he had something important to ask me, but he wouldn’t tell her what it was.
I’d already tilled a space for the tulips I’d picked up yesterday after talking to the florist, so I told Sophia to drop him off if he wanted to help me plant them.
An hour later, we were sorting through tulip bulbs. I had a new friendship bracelet dangling on my wrist, and George next to me on an overturned bucket.
His little feet dangled as he swung them back and forth. With pants too short, I could see his pink socks standing out beneath the hem.
I remembered my brother, Brady, at that age. He’d been a gangly, knobby-kneed little thing. His beanpole body would shoot up randomly, and, as a result, all his pants would be too short all of a sudden.
“How’d your socks end up pink?” I asked.
George rolled his eyes, and I thought his growth spurt must have skipped straight to adolescence.
“Uncle Ian tried to do laundry and ruined all our socks and underwear. Miss Sophia said to be patient and not to be too hard on him. That he was obviously in the middle of a nervous breakdown, whatever that is.”
My laughter caught in my throat. Eventually, I managed, “And this is a new thing? Your uncle doing the laundry?”
“Yep,” George said. “And the dishes and cooking. We made brownies yesterday that were so gooey we had to eat them with a spoon. But I didn’t mind. They tasted good. Uncle Ian even let me put ice cream on top.”
There was something so sweet about his honesty. It made it even better knowing that Ian probably—definitely—would not have wanted me to know about his forays into domesticity. Obviously, our conversation had spurred him into action. I didn’t know whether to be horrified or strangely impressed.
If the warm amusement in my middle meant anything, I was leaning more toward impressed . . . and attracted—well, more attracted. Ian had that face, those dimples, and that body. But now he was an A-list celebrity doing household chores in his spare time, and—yep—that was making me feel things.
I’d called him spoiled, and he’d set out to do something about it.
Oh, Jesus. Did he think I would date him now?
Before I could panic about the ramifications of Ian doing laundry very poorly, George said matter-of-factly, “My mom never let me have brownies and ice cream.”
The boy rarely spoke about his mother, so I made sure my tone was casual. “Really?”
“Yep. She said it would make me too hyper or hurt my belly. But it didn’t hurt my belly at all yesterday.”
“Your mom probably just wanted to make sure you were healthy.”
George frowned, turning that over. “So, Uncle Ian doesn’t want me to be healthy?”
To myself, I thought, Ian wants you to be happy. There’s a difference.
But to the kid, I replied, “Your uncle wants you to be healthy, too. It’s okay to have a treat now and then. And maybe Ian had just as much fun cooking the brownies with you as you did eating them.”
George smiled. “It was pretty fun. He let me crack the eggs all by myself.”
“So, you think you want to be a chef now, or you still want to be a farmer?”
He giggled like I was silly, and the sound made me smile. “Farmer!” he shouted, earning a laugh.
“What was the big, important thing you needed to ask me about?”
“Oh, can we go fishing sometime? Uncle Ian said you were good at fishing, and I’ve never been. I’ve read about it, though.”
I didn’t know how I felt about George and his uncle having conversations about me.
That felt a little too . . . real. I’d compartmentalized everything about the film—from the interruptions to the shooting schedule to our visitors—into temporary categories.
It was important to keep those things separate.
George and Ian, the movie, all of it, couldn’t get mixed up with real life.
“I can take you fishing,” I agreed. “I’ll keep an eye on the weather for a mild day, and we’ll try the pond over at Grandpappy’s. You think Miss Maggie would let us fish over there?”
I already knew the answer to that, but I also knew George liked visiting the Clark matriarch at the bakery where she worked. We could swing by when I took him home in a few hours.
“I bet she would. Can we go ask her?”
“Sure thing, George.”
“Maybe she’ll have a treat for us.”
I smiled. “Maybe she will. You ready to help plant these tulip bulbs?”
“Yep!”
I passed him a pair of kid-sized gardening gloves I’d picked up at the tractor supply store.
I tried to ignore the way it felt when he grinned up at me like I’d done something special. They were just gloves.
And this was all temporary. It wouldn’t do to blur the lines between fleeting and forever . . . for any of us.