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Ivy’s lips split into a wide grin. “Tonight, huh?”
Why were my cheeks hot? This was ridiculous. I set the base down and pinned her with my fiercest glare. “Ivy. I’m glad we’re getting along. Don’t blow it by sending your boyfriend over to appease his morbid curiosity about my friendship. He always used to ride my ass about it, and I don’t particularly feel like dealing with that again.”
She whistled. “Touchy. We’ll stay away, I promise.” As she gathered her binders into her arms, her expression was a bit too innocent. Before she left the shop, Ivy paused and gave me a meaningful look. “Can’t say the same about your mom, though.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and reevaluated all the life choices that brought me here.
“Nosy fucking family,” I muttered. “No one cared what I did when I lived across an ocean.”
But the buzz of my phone with the appearance of another text from Harlow had me rescinding that frustration.
Harlow: Okay. We’ll be there around five thirty. Sage will likely eat more than you, just be prepared.
Me: Congratulations on completing your overthinking.
Harlow: Thank you. I’ll take riotous applause and wild praise later.
And with a lingering smile, I slid my safety goggles back on and finished the rest of my workday with an undeniable sense of anticipation rumbling under my skin.
At five twenty-five, I walked in the door with two boxes of hot pizza balanced on one arm and sawdust still stuck in my beard.
Occupational hazard.
The pizza went onto the counter, and I did a quick splash of water onto my face in the kitchen sink, then tugged my shirt up to my nose for a smell test. There was no time for a shower, but hopefully, Harlow’s daughter didn’t walk in and wrinkle her nose because I smelled like a construction zone.
The quiet knock on the door had me blowing out a quick breath, and I snagged a piece of paper towel to wipe off my face. But when I approached, the sight of my mom holding a plate covered in aluminum foil had me swallowing back many curse words.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Sheila.
She stepped into our life when I wasn’t even a teenager yet and tucked three boys who were missing their mom right under her wing. She had the biggest, most welcoming heart of anyone I’d met in my life, and she was the absolute last person I wanted to see at the moment.
Based on the look on her face when I swung the door open, she knew it too.
“Now don’t be mad,” she said. “I’m just dropping it off.”
Wordlessly, I gestured her into the house and took the plate, then dropped a kiss on her cheek. “I could never be mad at you.”
She snorted. “Liar. Do you remember yourself in high school?”
I decided to ignore that. “What did you bring us?”
“Some chocolate mint cookies. Had a recipe I wanted to try.” She glanced around the house, shaking her head a little when she saw the lack of furniture. “Lord, Ian, you’re having a girl over with it like this?”
I set the cookies on the counter. “I’m having Harlow over. It’s different.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Don’t get that tone,” I told her. “Her daughter is coming too.”
Mom’s face lit up. “Is she? How old?”
A voice came from the still-open doorway. “Ten going on twenty-one. Or that’s what my mom says, at least.”
Harlow had her hands on Sage’s skinny shoulders, and the girl in question met my gaze unflinchingly. I thought she might be nervous, or shy, but … she was Harlow’s daughter, so I didn’t know why I expected anything other than complete fearlessness.
Harlow’s smile when she saw my mom was the kind of smile you stamped somewhere deep in your memory.
“Sheila,” she said, shifting around her daughter to step straight into my mom’s tight hug.
