“Oh, hey, Ryn.” Jillian stepped inside, holding the screen door open with the backside of her body while she smacked the soles of her shoes together. “I hate it when they spread those stupid fertilizer pellets then takeoff without using a broom or blower on the driveway and sidewalk. Now they’re stuck like shit to the bottom of my shoes and if it rains they’ll discolor the cement.”

“Jill … not the best word choice.” He gave Ryn an apologetic look. She returned one that looked just as pained.

“Sorry, I always say that wrong. They’ll discolor the concrete … I know, cement is the powdered form. It’s like the whole itch versus scratch thing.” She shut the door and looked up. “So how’d it go today?”

Ryn forced a smile. “Fine. Look around after I leave and let me know if there’s something I missed or that you’d like me to do different next time.”

Jackson sighed with relief from the promise of next time.

“Thanks, Ryn.” Jillian held the door open. “Jesus, Jackson, don’t just stand there. Help her take her stuff out.”

“Oh yeah.” He jumped out of his daze and grabbed the other bucket and vacuum.

“Sorry about your head.” He handed her the rest of the supplies as she loaded everything into the back of her white RAV4.

“It was my fault.” She closed the back door and leaned against it with her arms trapped behind her. “You caught me off guard when you said…” she glanced up with a sheepish look “…what you did.”

Wearing a guilty half-smile, he shoved his hands into his pockets and shook his head. “Yeah, I was completely out of line.”

“It’s fine. I applaud you for your commitment. A vow of celibacy at your age must be difficult sometimes.”

Jackson bent down, cocking his head to bring his ear closer to her face. “What did you just say?”

“I said it must be difficult,” she answered with breathy words, eyes on his mouth.

“No, before that.” He squinted.

She mirrored his expression. “The part about me commending you for your commitment to God?”

“What commitment to God?”

Her eyes darted to one side and then the other before meeting his again. “Uh … the vow of celibacy.”

“Who told you about that?”

Ryn’s body sank until the bumper halted her descent. “Jillian,” she replied in a small voice.

“She told you I took a vow of celibacy?”

Ryn nodded as her nose scrunched.

“So you thought what? That I’m a priest or something?”

Another uncomfortable nod.

Jackson stepped back, giving her space. The dots connected themselves. “Tell me … did you go to church last weekend?”

Ryn shook her head, eyes wide.

“The weekend before that?”

Another shake.

Jackson chuckled. “Give me your keys.” He held out his hand.

“Why?”

“Just give them to me.”

She set them in his hand. Fear painted her face in crimson as he slid in the front seat and turned the key. The radio blared with Adam Levine complaining about the summer hurting like a motherfucker.

Ryn covered her face with her hands. Jackson stepped out and peeled them away. She kept her eyes set firm to the driveway.

“Doesn’t sound like gospel to me.”

She shook her head. “I’m so embarrassed.”

He bent down and whispered in her ear. “See you next week, my child.”

*

After a cold shower to relieve the flush of embarrassment and to temper her riled up libido, Ryn grabbed an iced tea, a good book, and planted her ass on her front porch swing with Gunner at her feet. The day would go down in history as: Ryn is An Idiot Day. Somewhere between graduating high school, getting pregnant, and marrying Satan, she lost her normalcy gene. Preston physically beat it out of her, leaving a wreckage of insecurity, fear, and social awkwardness like an abused animal whose tail never wagged.

“Hey, Ryn. How was your day?” her neighbor, Drew, asked as he walked up the sidewalk from his mailbox.

“I’ve had better,” she answered on a laugh.

Her handsome forty-something neighbor leaned against the railing to her porch steps. “Sounds like a story.”

She teased Gunner’s ear with her toes and smiled. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“If not for religious reasons, why would a guy take a vow of celibacy?”

Drew chuckled, scratching his head then leaving his salt and pepper hair a bit ruffled. He was Dermot Mulroney’s twin, especially that sexy crooked smile.

“I thought maybe you were going to ask me why the clover seems to be taking over our lawns this year.”

“Yeah, that too, but first answer the celibacy question.” She grinned.

“Okay, well maybe the guy has STDs or he’s afraid of getting them. Maybe he has an unhealthy attachment to sex or …”

“Or what?”

A sadness stole Drew’s handsome features. “Maybe he lost a lover.” Cancer stole Drew’s wife a year earlier.

“Drew, I didn’t mean to—”

He shook his head. “You didn’t. It’s fine.” He shrugged one shoulder. “But it could be the reason.”

Ryn nodded. Could Jackson have lost a wife or girlfriend?

“Have a seat.” She stood and walked to the front door. “I’ll get you a beer.” Her lips twisted to the side as she looked at him. “Maybe two.”

A few minutes later, she returned with two bottles of beer.

“Thanks.”

Gunner waited until she sat down before resuming his spot at her feet.

“So you have a thing for a guy who’s taken a vow of celibacy?”

Ryn laughed. “He’s younger than me. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to have a thing for him.”

“So? My wife was almost ten years younger than me.”

“Really?” Ryn looked at him with wide eyes. “I never knew that. Then again when you moved here she was going through chemo and …”

“And the fucking poison stole her hair and eventually her life.”

“Yeah, that.” She frowned.

After a long pull of his beer, he sighed. “I was thirty-one when we met. She was my student when I taught an intro to business class at a community college.”

“Sounds scandalous.”

Drew chuckled. “Her parents were not happy. At our wedding when the minister asked who gives this woman, her dad just grunted.”

“No!”

“I’m serious. We were married five years before he stopped scowling at me.”

“That’s just it. I can’t imagine dating someone significantly younger than me. Not to be sexist, but I think older women dating younger men get more scowls than the other way around. Obviously your in-laws weren’t this way, but most people don’t think much of the older-man-younger-woman relationship these days.”

“So how young are we talking?” Drew asked.

Ryn smiled while taking a sip of her iced tea. “I don’t know. Thirty-ish? But I could be off and I don’t think in my direction. With my luck he’s in his mid-twenties and the perfect guy for Maddie.” She waved a dismissive hand. “It doesn’t matter. He’s celibate.” She laughed. “Of course I have been lately too.”

“When I turned forty my wife swore I had a midlife crisis. I swore forty was too young to be considered ‘midlife.’ We’d been trying to get pregnant but it just never happened. So I told her to quit her job—she was an accountant and hated it anyway—and we traveled the world for two years living like gypsies. We left our naked ass prints on many beaches.” Drew wiggled his brows.

Ryn laughed.

“We would have stayed longer, but that’s when they discovered her cancer. We were in France. I berated myself for being so reckless. Had we just stayed home, maybe they would have found it sooner. But she refused to regret any of it. She said my midlife crisis was the best two years of her life. She said she’d never felt so alive and we all deserve to feel that way at least once. After all, why the hell else are we here?”

Ryn loved that story. But what she loved the most was how many times Drew had told it to her. Each time it felt like the first, and each time he came up with a new moral.