Page 30 of XOXO, Yours

My chair scrapes so loud Dad stops mid-sentence about Bermuda grass.

"Where's the fire?" Mom asks.

"Friend needs help. With a…garbage disposal."

"At suppertime?" Dad says.

"It's an emergency disposal."

Mom looks at me for one long, terrifying second. "Baby, you wore cologne to the feed store yesterday."

I kiss her on the cheek and get out of there before she can ask anything else.

I save her number before I pull out of the drive.

Then, I stop for tacos, carne asada with extra guac, because I listen. I make it to her yellow door in nineteen minutes, tacos included. I don't want to talk about how fast I drove.

She opens the door in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt with blue paint on the sleeve. She looks at me. She looks at the bag.

"What is that?"

"Tacos." I grin at her. “You said tacos were a gray area."

She stares at me for three whole seconds. Then she grabs a fistful of my shirt and pulls me inside.

The tacos get cold.

Nobody complains.

chapter

ten

Jules

It's almost dark when I pull under the carport after a staff meeting that should have been an email. I'm already digging for my keys. My porch light has been blinking like a haunted-house strobe for a year, so I usually find the lock by feel.

Except tonight, the porch light is on. Bright and steady. Not flickering at all.

There's a note taped to the fixture, on the back of a feed store receipt this time.

Your porch light was blinking in Morse code. Pretty sure it was saying SOS. Fixed the wiring. Shouldn’t give you any more trouble.

—P

I never told him about the porch light. Not once.

That means he came to my house when I wasn't here, on a Wednesday, and stood on my porch with a screwdriver. That is not how booty calls work. There are rules. I'm fairly certain one of them is no unsupervised home improvement.

Me: Did you break into my porch?

Payton: Porches don't have doors. Can't break into a porch.

Me: That's not the point.

Payton: The point is you can see your keys now.

I stand there under my steady, stupid porch light and fit my key in the lock on the first try.