Page 3 of Tequila Tuesdays

Josh came over and smacked my shoulder, and I turned back to celebrate with my jubilant, mismatched team.

Chapter 2

IfI’dknownwhowas going to be at my neighbor’s pool party that Monday night, I would have stayed home. I could have finished binge-watching the South Korean series about a brilliant autistic attorney who loved whales. Or maybe cleaned my house.

But Ava, my mother, came over on Sunday morning and convinced me to go.

“Harley, I need you to go with me tomorrow night.” She’d bustled through my house into my backyard without knocking. Gary, my small gray and white rescue mutt, lay on the loveseat with his head in my lap. Ava scowled down at him.

Ava still had nice curves, and she was shorter than me by at least six inches. She turned heads with her Scandinavian complexion, blond hair, and clean bone structure. I’d inherited a few of those traits, but my height and lean frame came from my dad.

“Why?” I leaned back and studied her.

“Grace and Sheila want you to come, and I’m callingquid pro quo.”

My little house sat on the left side of her larger one. When she found the house she wanted, she’d begged me to buy the little rundown home next to hers when it had gone up for sale.

So after finishing law school and landing a job, I took out a mortgage loan. I bought the little house for a great price, but it needed a lot of work.

I loved my place now. However, Ava living next door was the fly in the ointment. I called her Ava instead of Mom for good reasons.

“You need to knock. How many times do I have to tell you? What if I was having sex on the couch?”

She paused and cocked her head. “You haven’t dated in years, so the chances of that are miniscule. Your vagina probably has cobwebs in it by now.”

“Ava! Geez. Just knock, okay? And why are you callingquid pro quo?”

Dad often talked to us in legalese, and some of our family conversations still sounded like we were negotiating a legal contract.

“Grace and Sheila are hosting the Martini Monday party tomorrow, and they specifically invited you.”

They lived two doors down and across the street from me. They’d also just completed a major remodel on their Spanish revival home.

“Okay. What favor do I owe you?”

“I picked you up from the oil change place and took you to lunch last week when it was taking too long,” Ava replied.

“Yeah, you picked me up because you wanted a couple of margaritas with your lunch, so you needed someone to drive you home afterward,” I shot back. “And should you be drinking?”

She ignored my question. “True, but you used my car for the rest of the day. Soquid pro quo.”

I shrugged. “Okay, if you want to use it for that. Deal.” I leaned back and smiled smugly. “That was a bad deal. I would’ve gone anyway since I want to see how their house turned out.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

“You started it, Ms.Quid Pro Quo. And I knew you were saving the oil change to spring on me.”

She huffed and sat down. “I’ll remember that for next time. Your hair looks greasy. You need to wash it.”

“You don’t have any room to talk. Most of the hair on your head isn’t even yours.”

She sniffed but had no comeback.

The ladies across the street were funny and friendly, and I liked them. So it wasn’t a hardship to go. Grace worked as a paralegal at a well-known law firm in town, and she’d helped me out a few times when I started working as a new attorney. She and Ava also golfed together several times a week.

“What’s a Martini Monday party?” I asked.

“It’s a little get-together to socialize and meet people on Monday evenings. And of course, drink martinis. A lovely woman started it years ago.”

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