Ten
“Hey!” a voice called from down the hall. “Ms. Turner!”
It was Agent Duran. My heart triple gainer-ed, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I had a dead guy in my trunk or because
Agent Duran was a smokeshow. Either way, I needed to keep my panties on.
a bulletin board covered in fifth graders’ poems. But I’d actually been savoring the feeling of having done an impromptu stand-up
set that was not a total failure.
Agent Duran stopped next to me, our shoulders almost touching. I pointed to the drawing and he read the words out loud. “My
hamster is named Midnight. After dark she flies to the moon. She whispers all the secrets of the universe in my ear and I
get tingles. She is boundless.” He paused. “Am I wrong or is this an extremely psychedelic poem?”
“What do you know about psychedelics? You’re a federal agent.”
“My dad listened to a lot of Jefferson Airplane,” he said. “Also, I’ve seen SpongeBob.”
I laughed. So he did see his kid, sometimes.
He looked over at me, his dark eyes kind and curious. “You killed it in there,” he said.
“It was tough following up a dad who takes guns away from bad guys for a living.”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “The guy who talked before me was a firefighter! I wanted to be like: ‘Thanks for setting me up
to fail, Mrs. Glidewell.’”
I giggled.
“Also,” he said, “I’m not—I’m not a dad.”
“So that little boy who was staring at you adoringly—?”
“Total rando,” he said. “It’s my niece that’s in the class.”
“Who’s your niece?”
“Maricela.”
“Don’t know her and don’t believe you,” I joked. “Are you undercover right now? Is Mrs. Glidewell harboring a stockpile of
weapons?”
“If so, she was definitely thinking about using them on you.” Even in the middle of this endless winter, his skin was bronze
(and weathered in a way I liked). Except for an adorably crooked spot below the bridge of his nose, he had the kind of facial
symmetry usually only seen on movie stars. When he smiled, I saw his teeth were a little uneven too.
“It’s not my fault she’s bitter,” I joked as we started walking toward the front exit. “Her life’s dream is to teach sixth
grade. But she can’t because her last name is Glidewell.”
“Seriously,” he said. “With a name like that, it’s third-grade-and-under only.”
Agent Duran set off a strange inner turmoil in me. My romantic life was a desert, and he was a man-sized oasis. But it was
more than that. Being near him, I had the strange, powerful sensation I’d known him for decades. Even though I’d absolutely
never met him before.
We approached the front desk sign-out, which was manned by the principal’s assistant, a sweet grandma named Tina.
“Can I ask the obvious question?” I said, taking the visitors’ clipboard.
“Why I’m at Job Talk Tuesday when I don’t have kids?” he replied. “Apparently, Mrs. Glidewell’s class has a shortage of dads
willing to spend an excruciating ten minutes trying to explain whatever they do for a living to a bunch of second graders.
My sister made me fill the gap.”
Tina smiled up at me. “He’s the principal’s little brother,” she said.
Agent Duran nodded solemnly as he signed the visitor’s sheet. Nathan. His first name was Nathan. “Guilty as charged.”
“Nate! How’d it go?” Principal Cruz had appeared in her office doorway.
If I’d seen her on the street, I would’ve guessed her profession as tarot reader or J.Lo’s sister who has somehow been exiled to Idaho for bad behavior.
Her black hair hung to the middle of her back and she had at least seven earrings in each ear.
“Not great since I was sandwiched between a firefighter and the world’s funniest woman,” Agent Nate Duran said.
My face flushed as Principal Cruz gave me an assessing glance. “Funnier than Maya Rudolph?” she said. “Funnier than Jean Smart?”
“Never,” I said at the exact same time Nate said, “Absolutely.”
“Thanks for coming, Nate,” Principal Cruz said. “And you too, Ms. Turner.”
“Anytime, sis. I always like it when you owe me one.” Nate gently backed into the cross-bar of the school’s front door, which
he held open for me.
As we walked toward my car, our breath steamed. Nate was a fed, and there was a dead guy in my trunk. I couldn’t tell if the
feeling gripping me was pure panic—or panic mixed with a thrill that Nate clearly wanted to keep chatting. A hot guy who thought
I was funny—now that was my kryptonite.
“Your sister seems cool,” I said.
“Now?” he said. “Sure. But when we were kids, did she trick me into drinking toilet water? Sure did.”
I could not stop laughing around this guy. I liked that he seemed a little bit unhinged, in the best possible way.
“My sister,” he said, “she has a theory that straight single guys ‘go off’ by their mid-forties.”
“What do you mean, ‘go off’?” I said.
“Like milk turning bad. According to her, if you’re a man, one day you’re tasty and viable as a romantic partner. And the
next you’re spoiled, no longer fit for consumption by nice normal women.”
“Sounds about right,” I said. “Since I moved back to Idaho I’ve been on exactly two dates.
One guy ate fried catfish with his hands and licked every single one of his fingers between bites.
The other just wanted to show me instructional TikTok videos he’d made about how to detonate a grenade.
‘Pull the pin! Throw! Duck below a bale of hay!’”
“Yikes!” Nate said. “Were they both mid-forties or older?”
“Can confirm,” I said.
“My sister’s other theory is that the going-off process might be sped up by repeat exposure to the kind of people who illegally
stockpile weapons. Like maybe your grenade guy. Or the kind of folks I’m around for work. She thinks normal wholesome stuff
is good for me.” He leaned back against my trunk. A very attractive, very single, very child-free federal agent was literally
inches from the corpse in my car.
“My niece is playing soccer on this team called the Saber-Toothed Turtles,” he continued. “My brother-in-law is usually assistant
coach, but he’s taking some professional development classes at night until March. So I’ve been recruited.”
“Wow! Any chance you want to sit in on PTA meetings for me too?”
“Not a chance.”
“Does your sister think you might meet an eligible divorcée at Saber-Toothed Turtle practice?” I asked, edging toward the
driver’s side of my car. I normally would be doing internal cartwheels over this banter, but panic had a vice grip on my chest—I
had to get him away from my trunk.
He shrugged and took another step toward me. “She probably thinks spending time around a nice single mom would slow down my
‘going-off’ process. Anyway, kids ages seven to nine are welcome.” He paused and looked at the ground, then back up at me.
“Any chance your girls want to play some soccer?”
In lady porn (aka contemporary romance novels), eligible men always go weak in the knees for disheveled moms in yoga pants.
But in real life, super-hot employed guys do not trip all over themselves for a chance to see single mothers of twins again.
But how to explain this sense Nate and I had been best friends or lovers in a previous life?
Living in LA had made me woo-woo, but not woo-woo enough to believe that.
I shrugged. “I have to ask them. Phoebe is fierce. But Alice unfortunately inherited my utter lack of hand-eye coordination.”
“You don’t use your hands in soccer,” he said. “So she’s good.”
I laughed. “I’ll think about it. Can I ask you something? I mean, do I— Do we know each other from somewhere?”
“I probably just have one of those faces. Besides, I’d remember you.” He paused. Was he blushing? “Soccer practice is Thursday
at three thirty. At the indoor soccer fields over by Fort Boise.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe.”
He looked right into my eyes. It was sexy and a little unnerving. “It was nice to meet you, Ms. Turner,” he said. Even I could tell he was flirting.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Duran.”
Flustered, probably by a whiff of his pheromones, I tried to hit the unlock button on my key fob, but heard the trunk pop
open instead. I dove to slam it shut, blood rushing so hard into my head I felt like my eardrums might blow. Hurrying back
around to the driver’s side, I unlocked the door for real this time. But before I could climb in, Agent Duran said, “Knock,
knock.”
I suddenly got the kind of tingles that could usually only be achieved by having a hamster named Midnight murmur all the secrets
of the universe in my ear. “Who’s there?”
“Owl.”
“Owl who?” I said.
“Owl be seeing you soon, right?”
I groaned. “Are you sure you aren’t a dad?”
As I pulled the car out of the lot, his reflection waved, then did a quick little “Gangnam Style” dance move.
I was absolutely, positively not going to take my girls to join the Saber-Toothed Turtles soccer team.
Nate Duran might be a manicorn—single, smoking hot, adorably goofy, and apparently heterosexual—but at this point, an ill-fated flirtation with a federal agent could land me in prison for the rest of my life.
So why was I still smiling?