Page 9 of Lovewell Lane

Even though she was now living in my backyard.

She gave me a shy thank you as I gathered the cleaning supplies. I left her with a broom and some cleaner and a short nod goodbye. Letting her stay couldn’t hurt as long as she followed my rules. We would hardly ever need to cross paths.

Back inside, I found dinner finished. Time must have passed a lot faster than I thought while we were cleaning. Tessa was setting the table while my sister, Calliope, helped her.

“You couldn’t have cleaned the damn place before she moved in,” I complained to my father as I walked toward the bathroom.

He only smiled back at me. “You’re a good man, son.”

What the hell did that even mean?

“Can you hurry up? I’m starving,” Jack criticized.

“Let me wash my hands and change. I have about ten layers of dust covering me. Y’all go ahead and sit down without me,” I answered.

In fresh clothes and no longer feeling gross, I rounded the corner to enter the open-plan kitchen and dining room only to find— Margo. I shut my eyes. Maybe when I opened them she would be gone.

“I thought we should welcome Margo to town with a homemade dinner,” Sam said with a shit-eating grin. “I was just introducing her to everyone.”

He turned back to Margo and gestured to my father. “This is our Dad, but everyone calls him Slick.”

“Why do people call you that, Grandaddy?” Tessa asked. I watched her look cautiously at Margo before stepping closer to Sam.

“Ask me when you’re older, kid.”

Margo laughed and looked incredibly uncomfortable. Something told me this city girl had never been to a family dinner quite like this.

I silently cursed Sam for inviting her. He knew I was attracted to her from when we met earlier. I doubt he’d invite her otherwise. Then again— maybe he would. He loved social gatherings. But something about his smile made me feel like he knew something. His ability to read me better than anyone annoyed the hell out of me.

I walked over to the dining table where Margo stood next to everyone else. I was raised right, so I pulled out a chair and waited for her to sit. She avoided eye contact for a few seconds until she caught me staring. Glancing back and forth between me and the chair a few times, she finally got the hint and sat down.

Calliope saved us from the awkward interaction. “So, Margo, I heard you’re a Dreamer. That’s exciting,” she said.

Margo nodded and let out a deep breath. She must have been thankful everyone in my family wasn’t as unpleasant as me. “Yeah, I’ll be opening a diner here in the next couple of months.”

With Jack off managing some bar in Atlanta and Calli starting university, Weston family dinners with everyone in attendance were rare. Which meant there were a lot of outlandish, exaggerated stories to share. Mostly from Slick.

Calliope and Sam did their best to make Margo feel welcome despite my father’s tendencies to overshare and our inability to have one conversation at the table at once. Tessa, despite usually acting shy around strangers, laughed freely with potatoes still shoved in her mouth, while I did my best to hide my smile at one of Slick’s stupid jokes.

“I’m thinking about going vegan,” Calli announced over the ruckus to me. My baby sister always went out of her way to include me when I was quiet for too long.

My eyebrow raised at her declaration, but before I could reply, my father on the opposite end of the hardwood table interjected himself. “You’re thinking of going out with old man Keegan? We need to sit down and have a talk about better decision-making now that you’re an adult.”

She scoffed, as she did any time our hard-hearing father managed to retell the most ridiculous version of what he heard. “No, Slick, I’m just thinking about not eating cheese anymore.”

His worried face turned into one of confusion. “My point still stands.”

I could make out his grumbling about cheese all the way from my seat.

Tessa put her hand on my shoulder and loudly whispered in my ear. “I like cheese. I still want to eat it.”

I shot Calliope a look. “Don’t worry, Tess. You’ll get to eat Cal’s serving until she’s graduated college and wants to join us back in the real world.”

My sister glared at me with a hint of playfulness. “Dairy is one of the biggest consumptions of water, which is water that could instead be used for crops. That’s something we asfarmersshould probably care about.”

“Send me your study and I’ll look it over,” I grumbled. This was a regular back-and-forth thing since Calli went off to school. I had no idea when she got her scholarship that I would in turn be forced to learn about social and environmental issues right there with her.

Jack and Sam went to business school, so they never brought any of these issues to the dinner table.

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