Page 72 of From Coast to Coast

I shorten my stride,noting the serious look on Remy’s downturned face. His mom is standing close to him, arm wrapped around his waist and listening intently as he talks down to his feet. I’m just about to turn around and pretend to get something from the car when she says something to him that makes him smile. He lifts his head, eyes meeting mine, and the smile widens.

“So,” I say as soon as I reach them. “How about those gutters?”

It turns out that the gutters aren’t the only thing that needs doing in Dora’s yard. Remy and I start there, making quick work of the job between the two of us. Stripping out of our shirts, we then assist with the weeding and mowing of the lawn. After that, we spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to excavate a tree stump from the corner of the property; a job I’m pretty sure would usually require a backhoe,but that we get done with two strong bodies and Remy’s SUV. At the end, the pair of us are sweaty and filthy, something Dora points out to us from her perch at the garden table.

“Thanks for your help, Ma,” Remy calls to her, and she laughs.

“It’s fun to get a little dirty sometimes. Fun to clean off afterward, too,” she quips back, making him groan.

“Oh my god, are youtryingto scare him away?” Remy says, flinging an arm out in my direction and planting the other hand on his hip. My gaze tracks down his torso, noting the way sweat has tracked rivulets through the dirt on him. She’s not wrong—Iamlooking forward to getting him into the shower.

“You’ll have to try harder, Dora.” I raise my voice so she can hear me, and bend over to pick up my shovel. We still have to get the hole filled in and the yard put back to rights. I glance around. “Is there sod or something? So that we can fix the grass, too?”

“The neighbors will think I’ve just buried a body,” Dora jokes, yelling it loud enough for the whole street to hear.

“Ma!” Remy yells back, making me laugh.

“I love it here,” I say to nobody in particular, dumping a shovelful of dirt into the hole. Remy joins me, coming to stand next to me instead of working on the opposite side like he was before. He’s close enough for me to smell him—sun and dirt and sweat.

“I love having you here,” he says back, but keeps the words low enough that they’re for me alone.

The sun is still barely peeking over the top of the trees by the time we’re standing by the car saying goodbye. Dorahugs and kisses her son, before remembering something else she wanted to give him and sending him inside to get it. We both watch him go. When he’s far enough away that he can no longer hear us, she turns to me.

“Sometimes his head gets in the way of his heart,” she says without preamble. “You give him enough time alone with himself and he’ll think himself in circles until he’s so tied up in knots, he can’t get himself undone. Don’t you let him scare himself off, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She gives me a look. “Dora.”

“When you come back over the summer, you’ll have to stay longer. The house needs some new paint. Green, I’m thinking.” Remy walks back out of the house, two Tupperware containers clutched in his hands. She waits until he’s close enough to hear. “Grayson was kind enough to volunteer to help you paint the house this summer.”

I bite my lip to keep from smiling. Remy looks at me and I nod. “Sure did.”

“You’re coming back this summer?” he asks, eyes wide and an excited lilt to his voice. Dora’s expression melts from mischievous to fond as she looks at him.

“Of course. If you’ll have me.”

Remy beams as his mom hugs me goodbye before she goes back for a second one from him. He squeezes his eyes shut and visibly tightens his arms, bending his head and resting his cheek on the top of her dark head. When they pull apart, she winks at me.

Halfway down the driveway—Remy once more keeping the speed below five mph and leaning over the steering wheel in an effort to spot potholes—his cell phone dings. Without looking over, he holds it out to me.

“Can you check that?”

I glance at the screen. “It’s your mom.”

“The pin is 1907,” he says, shooting me a quick smile.

Warmth tingles through my fingers as I type in his passcode. The only other person who’s given me access to their phone is Troy. It feels significant—an obvious display of trust. I tap into the message from his mom, smile spreading across my face as I read it out to him.

“I love him.”

“What?” Remy glances at me, brow furrowed in concentration as he flicks on his blinker unnecessarily and looks both ways before turning off of his mom’s drive.

“That’s what the message from your mom was:I love him.” I try to modulate my tone and speak evenly. Inside, I’m soaring. Remy and his mom are extremely close—earning her approval means a lot and will obviously hold a lot of weight with him.

“Oh,” he says, clearing his throat and fidgeting in his seat. “Well, I’m not surprised. You’re pretty incredible.”

Reclined back in the seat, I smile at him in the dimming light of the day. I let him focus on driving until we merge onto the interstate. Once he settles into his lane, I reach a hand over the console and rest my palm on his leg. The interior of the car smells like two men who spent the day doing hard labor, and his skin is tacky with dirt and sweat beneath my fingers.

“Thanks for inviting me today. It was perfect.”

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