Chapter 19
Nineteen
The only thing worse than my mother’s smug expression is the reason behind it. As we park in her driveway, Gavin parks in his.
Even her breaths turn chipper.
“Shut up,” I snap.
“I didn’t say anything,” she argues.
With a smile.
I avoid looking in their direction, but at Addie’s shouted “Hi, Miss Reese,” I have no choice.
Addie meets my slight wave with one that involves her whole arm.
And then . . . there’s her smile—it’s a great damn smile. A smile that makes me think for a split second that this world is the most perfect place there is.
Like the traitor my mother is, she’s already walking toward them. Since her risk of exhaustion, dizziness, or collapse is real, I have no choice but to follow.
In his driveway, Gavin looks like Gavin—T-shirt, jeans, boots, hat, charming smile hidden beneath that scraggly beard—and Addie is wearing denim overalls and red T-shirt with her hair in a ponytail.
“Hi, Miss Reese.” Addie looks at me like I’m the only thing she wants to see. “Uncle Gav had to work this morning.”
“Hi yourself,” I say, feeling less awkward than the first day we met. “He’s busy, huh?”
We both look at him and he grins, twirling his keys around his middle finger. “Somebody’s gotta keep the freezer filled with pizzas.”
Addie pushes the bridge of her glasses. “I love pizza.”
“Reese likes pineapple on her pizza,” Mom says with a disgusted face that makes Addie laugh.
The two of them talk pizza, and I stuff my hands in the back pockets of my cutoff shorts, observing them, but mostly Addie.
She’s animated. Everything she’s feeling shows up on her face.
She’d be terrible at contract negotiations, but I can’t help but smile at every move she makes.
The way her eyes widen then narrow, the way her mouth opens then splits her face with a grin.
Gavin steps next to me, close but not touching, neither of us saying anything as we face the two of them. Our silence turns awkward. Then funny. When I look at him, he’s fighting a smile.
“Miss Reese,” he says.
I glance his way. “You win last night?”
He licks his lips. “Not the way I wanted to.”
Not touching that one.
Mom and Addie inspect a rosebush in her yard, and my aloneness with Gavin paired with our proximity fucks with my biology. It’s another hot day without a hint of a breeze, but goose bumps ripple over my skin just the same.
“I’m surprised the city has you working on Saturday mornings,” I say. He’s devoid of his typical grass and grime. He’s a little sweaty but nowhere near as dirty as I’ve seen him. “You work every weekend?”
He nods, scuffing his toe in the gravel of the driveway. “Most Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings.” His head teeters. “At least until the shop’s gone.” He blows out a breath. “We’ll see what happens then.”
It makes sense he picks up extra hours. Between his modest wage and all the hours he wasn’t paid for at the vineyard, money’s probably tight. But the shop . . . not sure where that comes in.
“Your mom’s records show you paid them for the property.”
He nods. “I did. Just never jumped through the legal hoops to get it in my name.”
I already knew that, of course.
I squint at the yard. “My boss wanted me to talk to you about back pay for all the unpaid hours you logged at the vineyard. Worried about a lawsuit popping up from some disgruntled former employee, you know?”
“Sue because I helped my parents take care of their property?” He barks out a laugh. “Tell ’em to keep it.”
“What?” I don’t get this. Him. At all. He doesn’t make much money even though he works hard—really hard if he’s picking up weekend hours that require him storing city equipment in his building.
He has a kid with special needs. Lost his dad.
Money like this would change things for him.
Make life easier. “You could use that money to go to school,” I say. “Get a better job.”
He shakes his head but his smile stays. “I don’t need the money, Reese. Or want a better job.”
Who the hell thinks that way?
“Plus,” he adds, “I went to school.”
“For what?” The question comes out as disbelieving as I am.
“Well . . .” His face twists and he rubs his chin. “I didn’t finish.”
“What? Why?”
“Already knew it all.”
He meets my scowl with a grin.
“Just so I’m clear—” I don’t hide my judgment. “You have a shed you dreamed of living in but never finished, went to school that you also didn’t finish because you knew it all, are turning down money because you have enough, and have no desire to ever have a better job?”
His brow furrows like he’s really thinking about this. “Sounds right.”
If geography, age, and community snacks didn’t seal the deal, that list confirms how wrong he is for me.
“Fine.” My tone is all business. “If you’re rejecting the back pay, the other option is to finish out this season. You maintain the grounds of the vineyard, and in exchange, you’ll get your shop and the three acres around it. Legally.”
“What?” Now he’s shocked. Ha! “Why?”
Great question.
I roll my shoulders, diverting my gaze to Mom and Addie.
“Because the region is in peak season and trying to find someone new right now would be a pain in the ass.” That’s true.
“You want the building I assume.” He nods.
“My company has no use for it. We put a value of the building and lot at two hundred thousand.” I haven’t even seen the inside, that might be generous.
“That’s more than you’re owed for the work, but we’re willing to eat the rest if you’re willing to waive your rights to suing over back pay. That work for you?”
His throat bobs with a swallow as he studies me. “Yeah.”
“Good.” That might be the worst deal I’ve ever made, but it’s better than my initial plan of having it written into the contract that he would get it outright—at least now I benefit. “You think you’ll ever finish it?”
“Haven’t thought about it for a while,” he says. “Life makes us shelve some things, you know?”
I have never known anything less.
“I don’t, actually,” I admit. “If I want something, I go get it. No shelving involved.”
His brows lift. “Who says I don’t have what I want?”
“The unfinished building, for one.”
“For someone who refuses to go out with me, you care a lot about where I live.”
“I don’t care,” I insist. “But I can tell a lot about someone by what they value and how they spend their time and money. You seem to start a lot of things you don’t finish—” I pause to let him explain the trend, but he doesn’t.
“Meaning you either lack discipline or money—which you just turned down, might I remind you.”
“Because I have enough.”
Liar.
He tracks Mom and Addie across the yard. “Money the only reason you do anything?”
“That a proposition?” I bat my eyelashes.
He laughs through a breath. “Just a simple question.”
It might be simple, but every answer I think of sits wrong.
From a numbers standpoint and if I managed and invested my money right, I’d never have to work another day in my life, just like teenage me dreamed.
But teenage me had no idea how terrifying that would be.
I’m good at my job, and since it’s all I’ve done for the last fifteen years, I don’t know what else I’m good at.
I’ve been here a month and am nearly climbing the walls; I’d lose my mind if I didn’t work.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m good at what I do.”
“And you like it?”
“I’m good at it,” I repeat.
“Not the same.”
“And you?” Heat creeps into my voice. I’m so sick of everyone accusing me of not being happy. Not loving my job. Maybe I don’t love it, but everyone does things they don’t love. “If you had all the money you needed—which apparently you do—would you keep mowing the grass of Fontain?”
I sound like a bitch, but I don’t care. Sylvia, my mom, and now Gavin have formed some kind of happiness army and strategized their attack for today because the theme keeps smacking me in the face.
Happiness is great, but at the end of the day, success is what matters. Excellence and results. It’s what pays the bills and keeps businesses open.
Gavin, naturally, is unbothered by my shade of pissed off. He smiles—a full-blown, genuine kind that irks the hell out of me—and says, “I’d do more of the parts I love for less.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not vague at all.”
Mom and Addie stroll toward us. He says, “You should come with me one day. To my work, I mean. Might learn a thing or two.”
“About mowing?” I laugh dismissively, but when our eyes meet next, I’m rattled.
Not because his shabby beard and old boots are growing on me—they are—but because every time he says something like that it makes me think I’ve overlooked some key detail about who he is.
He’s not laughing, he’s serious. He genuinely wants to take me to work with him.
Mowing.
“Reese would love to,” Mom says, pulling my gaze to her and Addie. “She was in a play when she was your age.”
Addie smiles wide. “She was?”
“What was it, Reese?” Mom asks. “That play in elementary school you were in?”
A laugh sticks in my throat. “Alice in Wonderland.”
“That’s right,” Mom says. “She was the Queen of Hearts.” Oh, the irony. “Believe it or not, she makes a great villain.” Her eyes cut to mine. “Especially in her own story.”
It takes less than a breath for me to plot her death. Once that dream fades, I focus on Addie. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a school play,” she says, her voice a little slower and less precise than I’ve heard it.
“Wizard of Oz,” Mom adds.
My attention stays on Addie. Gavin told me the first day I met her that she’s just a person and that the only difference between us is a chromosome.
I latch onto that truth. I talk to her like I’d talk to Bennie, Nora, or Luke.
“I bet you’ll be a great Dorothy,” I tell her. “Better than Goldie Hawn even.”
Addie’s bright smile returns. “I want to be Toto.”
I make a face. “Does Toto even talk?”
“He barks.”
I scoff. “How will anyone know how good you are if you don’t talk?”
Her face tells me this has never occurred to her.