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She looked at him like he’d grown another head. “You’re barely squeaking by, Watson. I’m going to teach you how to approach life like a Collins. It’s a lot more fun than what you’re doing now.”
If she’d worded it any other way, he probably would have persisted in his argument that he was fine, but there was a lot to be said for how her family approached life. It was the first thing that had drawn him to her and Lochlan and Colm and Padraig.
For one thing, none of them seemed to know a stranger. After growing up fairly sequestered on the farm with just his parents and siblings, Leo had been starving for friends, and Yvonne and her cousins had been there, absorbing him into their circle.
When he looked back, it occurred to him some of his best times had been spent with them, either hitting the local bars or at the over-the-top theme parties they liked to throw at the Collins Dorm.
“And the first secret is don’t overthink things?” he asked.
She nodded. “Let’s face it, Leo. You’ve always tended to live in your head a little too much. Worrying about things you can’t change and overanalyzing past mistakes. Sometimes it’s good to be impulsive.”
There were a few impulsive things he wanted to do to her at the moment. Of course, the fact he was thinking about them rather than acting on them sort of proved her point. He didn’t have a spontaneous bone in his body.
“That could be tough for me,” he admitted.
She considered that. “Yeah. I think you’re going to struggle with a few of these secrets.”
“Jesus. How many are there?”
“Have you met yourself? About a million! I’ve got a shit-ton of work to do to fix you,” she teased. “The impulsiveness is actually an easy one. I think the hardest thing for you is going to be finding a way to be the truest version of yourself.”
He thought about that for a minute. He’d spent a lifetime defining himself the way others saw him. A son, a boyfriend, a friend, a father, a farmer. He wasn’t sure any of those descriptors defined him…not completely. Rather, they felt more like titles, roles he’d assumed for the people he cared about.
“That one might be impossible.”
“Did I ever tell you about how my mom and dad got together?” she asked, her question surprising him. Yvonne wasn’t the type to ever let anyone off the hook easily.
Leo shook his head. “No. I assumed they’d just met at the pub.”
“Actually, my mom was a successful photographer with her own studio on the West Coast. She was doing a shoot where she followed my uncle Sky around, doing one of those behind-the-scenes biopics with a superstar, and that was how she ended up in Baltimore. Sky and Aunt Teagan were touring together by that point.”
Yvonne had extremely famous relatives. Her uncle Sky was part of The Universe, a band that was often compared to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. When Sky left the band and joined forces with Yvonne’s aunt, singer/songwriter Teagan Collins, his star flew even higher.
“I swear my mom still can’t believe I know Sky Mitchell and Teagan Collins. She shows off that autograph they signed for me to give her at Christmas all the time. The damn thing is framed and hanging in the living room.”
Yvonne laughed. “They’ve always been Aunt Teagan and Uncle Sky to me, but I’ve seen the star-struck reaction everyone has whenever they see them, so I get it.”
“So your mom was taking pictures of Sky,” he prompted, sorry he’d interrupted her story.
Yvonne picked the tale back up. “Yep. They’d been friends for a long time, so Sky trusted her. Anyway, they were in Baltimore at the pub, and as my dad tells it, he’d had his eye on ‘pretty Miss Nat’ for quite a while.”
“And he asked her out?”
“Sort of.”
“How do you sort of ask someone out?” he asked.
“Mom was a bit prickly at the time—her words, not mine—and my dad is eight years younger than her. So she rebuffed him. Then Dad called her out for her grumpiness, and that was when she confessed she was tired of always being behind the camera, tired of being a spectator behind the lens while others were getting married, celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, new babies, that kind of stuff.”
Leo nodded. “I get that.” He’d always liked Yvonne’s mother, but he’d never realized how much he had in common with the older woman. He always felt like he was just going through the motions day after day too.
“Anyway, Dad told her he’d teach her how to get a life in seven lessons.”
“I’m sensing a theme here.”
“You have a life,” Yvonne pointed out. “Too much life. My secrets are going to help you navigate the waters and find happiness.”
“Yvonne,” he started. It occurred to him he’d probably made her think he was actually taking this tutoring of hers seriously, when the hard truth was, he didn’t have time to play her game.
