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“Arf.”
“Quiet, Milo.” The yapping stops, and I scrunch up my nose and look at Mo. “That’s a good color on you, matches your hair.”
Her eyes narrow. “This is your fault, and now I’m going to have to work the rest of the day sopping wet and smelling like dog shit.”
“Here, let me fix it.” I flick the nozzle from stream to spray and aim it at her hand. “There, problem solved.”
Mo shakes her head, flinging water from her face. She drops the hose and very carefully climbs to her feet.
“Truce?” I offer.
“Sure.” The soles of her rubber boots squeak against the floor as she takes a step toward me. “We can call a truce.”
“Good, because I really didn’t mean to cause this big of a mess,” I tell her. “I was just mad that your big mouth blabbed my life to your dad before I had a chance to tell Mom.”
“Do you feel better?”
“I do, actually.”
She takes another step forward, and that’s when I notice her holding her other hand out to the side—the hand that had been gripping the hose. There’s a streak of brown running down her arm. It must’ve gotten there when she fell.
“What are you doing, Mo?”
I take a step back as she closes in on me, and when she’s about a foot away, she lunges, tackling me to the ground.
“Payback!” she yells, trying to rub her arm in my face.
I try to douse her with the hose, but we’re too close together, and I end up drowning the both of us. Mo wrestles the hose from my hand, blasting me in the face. We’re rolling around on the floor, both of us struggling for dominance, when a loud whistle pierces the air.
Mo and I freeze. She’s on top of me, her hips pinning me to the floor. She looks up, and I tilt my head back. Trevor and Rhett are standing in the doorway, both of them grinning from ear to ear.
“What are you two doing?” Rhett asks.
Trevor walks the short distance to us and crouches down. He swipes a finger across my cheek, brings it to his nose, and recoils.
“Why do you have shit on your face?” he says, wiping his finger on his work pants.
“Mo told her dad about us, and he told my mom, and then she called and gave me the third degree.”
“And that’s a problem?” he asks, looking at me tenderly.
“No, it’s not a problem. I just wanted to be the one to tell her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Yeah, Claire, why didn’t you?” Mo says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You stay out of it,” I say, pointing a finger at her before I look back up at Trevor. “Her grandclock is ticking, and I wanted to be sure you and I were, in fact, a we before I told her.”
Trevor furrows his brow. “Grandclock?”
“Yeah, you know, when a mom wants to turn into a grandmother but her child isn’t popping out kids so she hounds them every chance she gets,” I explain.
“Oh. Oh, damn. Vivian does that with Rhett and me,” Mo says.
“All the damn time,” Rhett adds, grabbing two towels off the shelf.
He hands one to me and the other to Mo. She crawls off of me, and Trevor pulls me up to a sitting position.
