“Waste of time when you can make your own fortune.” He snorts softly. “Or be the lucky bastard who’s born into it.”
“Ever eat at a food truck?”
“Hot dog carts are for plebeians.”
I know he’s quoting his parents, and it’s less the sarcasm dripping from his words and more that I’ve heard my parents say the same thing.
“Bea makes a corn dog that’ll change your life.”
He smiles softly. “Spoken like someone who’s never had grits.”
“But Ihavehad tater tots dipped in very bad melted cheese, so I think I know what I’m talking about.”
He makes a face like he’s gagging without putting his heart into it.
It’s freaking adorable.
“What else?” he asks.
“What else what?”
“What else do I need to know how to do to…to live. To be normal. To—to enjoy life on a daily basis. What normal, everyday things have I missed that I can—that I can experience now?”
Yep.
I’m a goner.
Have to leave. First thing tomorrow. No question. No doubt.
So I have tonight to tell him everything he needs to know. “Water parks. Sometimes you need to spend an afternoon floating on a lazy river through a water park while kids yell and shriek and play all around you. And if you don’t have a favorite sledding hill in winter, you’re missing the opportunity to feel like you’re eight all over again. And apple picking. It is a moral imperative that you go apple picking in the fall with a hayrideand then tease the kids around you about the apple cider having crushed worms in it.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I didn’t do it. Bea’s brother did it. He’s working on being the newget off my lawnold man.”
“You laughed when he did it.”
I grin. “Maybe a little. But in my defense, Bea’s boyfriend that year had slipped spiced rum into my apple cider, and I was tipsy before the hayride ever started, and I think Ryker was too. Ryker doesn’t get tipsy very often. He’s very serious. And grumpy. You’d like him. While Bea and I are sitting on our porch someday, telling our great-nieces and great-nephews all of the stories of the trouble we got into, you and Ryker could be on the porch next door, grunting and scowling and yelling at all of us to get off your lawn.”
“Wouldn’t it be your lawn?”
“No, no, I have a new plan taking shape. Bea’s going to guilt Ryker into letting us build our retirement home on his farm so that we’re definitely on his land, and he’ll let us because that’s what brothers do. We’ll annoy him until the day we all croak. Probably it’ll be a mass casualty event when he gets fed up with us and drives a tractor into our porch.”
“Jesus.”
“Live epic, die epic.”
He stares at me.
I giggle.
Just a little.
The teensiest amount.
And then the very worst thing ever happens, and he smiles again.
At me.
