Avalon noticed. But she just grinned at that as if she’d won an Olympic medal.
“We’re going to make friendship bracelets out here on the tables. And then have a sing-along. And games. Involving mallets and balls. Care to join us for hot dogs and fruit smiles?”
He could vividly imagine a day’s worth of shrieking. Croquet balls hurtling through his windows. Little feet trampling the well-tended landscaping. Unannounced visits while he tried to work on his tractor or the lawn mower.
“No. Thank you. I’m good.”
Her hair was piled in a ponytail on top of her head, and it fluttered in the breeze like the tail on a fox. She was wearing a perfectly ordinary dark pink T-shirt and a perfectly ordinary pair of faded jeans, rolled up a little at the bottom, but the way they smoothed so perfectly over her curves made her look more edible than a “fruit smile,” whatever the hell that was. He imagined resting his hands in those sweet notches of her waist, and he would bury his face in that little hollow beneath her ear and whisper dirty things and explicit compliments... and... and... lick her.
She tipped her head and studied him. “You look more like you’d like to drink a fifth of Jack for lunch.”
He said absolutely nothing. Because he couldn’t yet. Thanks to the previous unbidden reverie, his head was as light as if he’d sustained another blow to the head by a tractor bumper.
“Next week we thought we’d have a campout. Games and songs and activities. All. Day. Long. We’ll maybe do it once or twice a week. Maybe evenforever.” She whispered that last word like a Marvel Comic villain.
He was silent.
And grim.
Honestly, lickable or not, there really was only so much a man could take.
“You really want to do this, Avalon?” he asked idly. His tone said:bring it.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She laid her hand delicately across her sternum, as if that’s where an invisible rope of pearls was draped.
He fought the impulse to look below the hand at the boobs.
“Those girls found ten horn worms on my tomatoes. Pretty useful. Best thing that could have happened to me today.”
“Huh.” He could tell it took a good deal of self-restraint for her not to ask what had become of the worms, even though the Harwoods of course had a garden when she was growing up and hornworms had likely met a similar demise back then. He saw the flicker of worry anyway, and he knew a shocking surge of tenderness and impatience that made him curl his fingers into his palms and dig his nails in a little.
“They can be quite a... handful... don’t you think?”
The question had begun as a sardonic little test; oddly, it ended on a different note. She was asking a genuine question.
And all at once he understood something: part of why she seemed so attractive now was that she was literallyglowing. When he’d found her flat on her back outside the gate a few days ago, she’d been tense and pale and nervy; he knew now it was because something had made the light go out of her. Some element of joy she’d always radiated had been missing. But it was back now.
How did she veer so far off course?
How did the two of them veer so far away from each other?
Had she seen something inhimthat warned her of disaster, or heartbreak?
“They didn’t bother me in theleast.” He gave it an ironic lilt. To make it sound like a lie.
But there was a peculiar, surprising ache in his chest.
They locked gazes. Something in her eyes told him that she knew he wasn’t entirely lying.
“Avalon... why aren’t you a teacher?”
She blinked. Her eyes widened in surprise.
She looked back toward the table, at all the little girls, the tomatoes, the friendship bracelets in progress.
“GradYouAte is kind of a school,” she said vaguely, finally.
He didn’t know quite what to say. “Right. Sure. Of course.”