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“I’m scared you won’t want me because of the sex.”

“I’m scared I don’t care about the sex.”

“I’m scared you’re married.”

“Me too.”

Then we’re quiet, sitting in our own seats, looking at each other. Knowing without saying it, something is happening.

“Birdie!” Huck’s call pulls my head in the opposite direction and the dog starts to whine from the back seat. There, blocky smile in place, his face fills the open space beside me.

“Hey, Huck!” I say with a grin.

“Hi, Bo!” he shouts.

Bo lifts his chin and smiles. “Huck.”

George Strait clambers to my lap from the back seat and jumps through the opening and onto Huck who immediately forgets about me and starts chasing the dog around the yard.

I turn back to Bo. “Did you mean what you said about adopting him?”

He nods. “I did.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he says as I get out of the Jeep and turn to face him from the open passenger doorway.

“Now what?” I ask. “I don’t know what any of this means.”

His easy smile covers his face, dimples carving his cheeks when he says, “I want to take you out next weekend. Friday?”

Grocery night?!I know he sees my struggle because he laughs. “Yes,grocery night. There’s something that only happens on Fridays. And it’s for the list.”

I shake my head with a snort. “The list? Haven’t you accomplished your goals with that?”

He shrugs. “I need a reason to keep seeing you. Friday?”

My nod is met by his toothpick-holding smirk.

“And, Birdie?” He lifts his chin. “Lucy is staying with her cousins overnight.”

Like everything else he’s just said, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it as I watch him drive away.

Twenty-two

“You’ve lost weight,” Isay, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorway.

Veda flicks her fingers through the air. “It’s probably all that healthy stuff you’re making me eat,” she says dismissively, lifting a mug to her lips at the kitchen table.

I thought I noticed it a couple weeks ago, but now in our third month together, the same shirt she wore the first day I met her is noticeably baggier. Veda is thinner.

“Veda,” I say with a pleading breath. “Just tell me what’s going on.” Our eyes meet and hers narrow at me. “Please,” I beg.

Other than me finding the pills and her sleeping in one morning, her weight loss is the only sign there’s something off.

We look at each other with a steadfast kind of resilience. I want to know what’s happening as much as she doesn’t want to tell me.

“Birdie, I’ll be eighty in two months, of course I lost weight—that’s a lot of years to be carrying these bones around!”She smiles as if she’s said something funny, but I see it for the lie it is.