Page 84 of You're so Bad

Bertie’s a little stinker with Leonard, but he takes it with good grace. I’m starting to think my little man is jealous, so I make a point of fussing over him and giving him plenty of pets. Later tonight, there’s some vanilla ice cream with his name on it.

We order a pizza after all of our sweaty work, and eat it outside in fold-up chairs in the back garden. Maybe Nana and I should add gardening to our bucket list, because it’s more weeds than plants.

Leonard entertains us with stories about the two weeks he spent making pizzas in Tennessee, and how one of his co-workers accidentally baked a fingernail into one. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear while eating pizza, but he has us laughing anyway. Nana asks us about last night, and by unspoken mutual agreement, we leave out all of the sex, Colt’s black eye, and the horde of crickets.

If we told her, she’d ask where I’d stayed last night, and that’s a conversation I don’t think either of us is ready to have with her. We can’t exactly tell anyone what’s going on between us if we don’t know ourselves, can we?

When my grandmother excuses herself to use the bathroom, Leonard lifts his eyebrows at me and puts a hand on my thigh. “When do I get to play with clay?”

“When can you come by the studio?” I ask.

“When can you pick me up, Sweet Cheeks?” He grins, then adds, “I’ll talk to Burke and text you. Maybe I can get out of doing something horrible at the flip house. Flooring’s a bitch on my knees.”

“Speaking of something horrible, what should we wear for the photoshoot next weekend?”

Bianca sent an email this morning to everyone who’d gone to the campground, apologizing for the “disaster” on Saturday night. It also assigned us colors to wear to the photoshoot.

“I’ve always wanted to try parachute pants,” he says. “Think I could pull it off?”

“Maybe we should just skip it and save our ideas for the wedding. I figure we already ruined the photos because Colter’s going to have to wear layers of makeup to hide that black eye.”

“Black eye, you say?” my grandmother says, stepping out of the house. Damn it, for someone who claimed she couldn’t move any furniture because of back pain, she can move like a ninja when she feels like it. Then again, that’s one of the perks of aging—getting other people to do tedious shit for you.

Leonard pulls his hand back, but I know she noticed.

“Sure,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “They said some psychopath broke into camp and punched him in the eye. Crying shame.”

Nana reaches her fist out for a bump, and he laughs and gives it to her.

“I will say this for Colter,” he adds. “He’s not a snitch.”

“Because he’s afraid of that woman of his,” she retorts. “And heshouldbe. We had her over here dozens of times, didn’t we, Shauna? For tea. For crafting. To cry her crocodile tears about her mama. And then what did she go and do?”

“Her mama?” Leonard asks, glancing at me.

“Was as difficult as mine,” I say. “Nothing was ever good enough for her.”

“Sometimes the apple don’t fall far, huh?”

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it feels like there’s a challenge layered into his words. Like he’s saying his apple didn’t fall far from the poisoned tree either, and Nana and I had better remember that before we go expecting things from him.

Nana leans over and shoves his arm. “You’d take that back, young man. My mother had a hairy chin and warts.”

He grins at her, then me. “I said what I said, Constance, although I expect you own a tweezer.”

“Maybe I should make you young people tweeze my chin.”

“No offense, Nana,” I say, “but I’d put you in a nursing home first.”

“Hallelujah,” Leonard says, leaning over to nudge me with his shoulder.

After he takes an Uber back to the little purple house with Bean, my grandmother and I relocate to our newly feng-shuied living room, whichdoesfeel more open with the couch in its new spot. She settles onto it with a sigh and says, “Shauna, be a dear and fix me some tea.”

Bertie wags his tail, as if telling me he’s ready for that ice cream, and climbs into one of his plush beds.

I’m happy to oblige them, mostly because I need a minute to collect myself before what’s sure to be an interrogation.

When Nana and I are settled on the couch with our tea, our identically shaped feet propped up next to each other, I sigh and say, “Oh, out with it. I know you have something to say.”

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