She was cleaning. Her kitchen specifically, delicately picking through piles of old, crusty dishes, scrubbing at the new and exotic life forms that had bloomed on her used pots and pans since she had stopped washing them ... when? A month ago? More? She cringed to think of Cam's father at work on his gazpacho soup amidst the turmoil and the filth; he, at least, had carefully washed and set aside on a drying rack the knife and blender that he had used. He had broken down the blender into all of its separate parts and cleaned each piece. She hadn't even known that a blender had that many parts.

So he had seen her kitchen, so what? It wasn't like he hadn't already seen the rest of her life from the inside out, along with his son. How, in the space of a few days, had Cam Walker and his father become so intimate with the inner workings (or not-workings) of her physical and emotional existence?

She bent down too fast to lift the overstuffed garbage bag out of the kitchen trashcan and a wave of dizziness overcame her for a moment. Though the eggs, water, and aspirin the night before had taken the edge off, she was suffering from a big fat hangover after her night of tequila shots and other questionable decisions. Again she cringed, this time over her muddled recollection of kneeling before her former student and—ugh, did she really fumble at his shirt and try to unbuckle his belt?

Yes, she definitely had. Unfortunately, she hadn't been drunk enough to black out all memory of the night before. If only.

There was a rap at her back door and she yelped in surprise, the trash bag slipping to the ground, its innards spilling out into a tangle of rotten produce and coffee grounds, among other things. Of course she hadn't bothered to tie it shut.

Shit.

"Coming," she called, desperately kicking the trash into some semblance of a pile with her bare foot. She gagged a little from a combination of tequila fumes and disgust, took a deep breath behind the still closed door, and then opened it to reveal Cam's father along with an unwelcome explosion of late morning sunlight.

"Mr. Walker!" she said in surprise. She had expected to see Cam. And was, she realized, disappointed to see that it wasn't him.

"Kyle I mean, sorry Mr. Walker, I mean Kyle!" she fumbled. She had to raise a hand to shield her eyes from the sun so she could see his face. At least he was smiling.

"I brought your car back from Charley's," he said. "I tried knocking on your front door and then figured you must be busy back here."

He had his thumbs hitched into the front pockets of his jeans, and wore a short-sleeved plaid work shirt similar to the one she had seen up close on his son the night before. She darted her eyes down to see if he also sported an elaborate belt buckle, and then felt a flush of embarrassment when she realized what she was doing.

"Um, do you want to come in?" she stammered, confused and confounded as usual by the presence of a Walker man. She stepped backwards into the kitchen in invitation. "I was just cleaning a bit."

She would never know if he meant to accept her invitation because as she took one more step back her foot made contact with a river of garbage juice that had been snaking its way across the kitchen floor toward her. Next thing she knew she was lying on her back, her backside shrieking in pain. Another part of her simply stared at the kitchen ceiling, taking note of the water stain that she wasn't sure had been there the last time she had had occasion to look up. She felt warm rivulets of liquid soaking her hair and body.

She was pretty sure she had landed in the goddamn pile of garbage.

Cam's dad was now bending over her, shaking his head slowly, a look of kindness and warmth piercing through her pain and disbelief.

"Courtney, you've had one helluva week," he said, then tutted at her like an old grandmother.

She locked eyes with him, and suddenly both of them burst into laughter. It hurt like the devil to laugh right at that moment, but really, it was the only thing she had left in her, and damn it felt good.

***

Her tailbone and her ribs still ached hours later from the combination of the fall and the laughing, but it was the kind of steady, dull pain that almost felt good, like a loose tooth ready to fall out; it was a pain that rooted you to the present, and reminded you of your physical self and the world it lived in. She appreciated that pain, because it offset the growing sense of nervous anxiety ballooning inside her that began when Cam's father appeared at her back door, and carried through the next hour as he waited patiently for her to clean herself up so she could drive him to work.

Now, as she pulled slowly into a parking space outside his shop—taking note of the presence of Cam's truck two spaces over—it abruptly sunk in that Kyle Walker was asking her to dinner. At his house. The one he lived in with his son, Cam Walker. The son she had—well. No sense replaying that particular memory one more time.

"Oh," she murmured helplessly, putting the car in park. "You don't have to do that, I've bothered you so much already this week."

He turned toward her, ducking his head to catch her eye. He smelled different than his son, older, more like a man in a way. There was a muskiness to his scent that Cam didn't have. He also didn't smell like cigarette smoke.

"Courtney, when is the last time you've had yourself a home cooked meal?" he asked her. He had a lean, square jaw like his son, but the stubble on his face was peppered with grey. Cam's face was always smooth. The fact she could make this comparison between the two men was a sure sign she was getting in way over her head.

"Yesterday," she replied with a shy smile, daring to look up at him, hoping the blush on her face was not visible. His eyes were a deep, dark brown, black almost, nothing like his son's. "My own personal chef whipped me up the best bowl of gazpacho soup I've had in a long time. And then he even did the dishes after."

He grunted at this, but smiled back.

"That wasn't a meal, that was a bowl of soup," he said. "An appetizer."

He opened the passenger side door, stepped out, and shut the door behind him. But before she could shift into reverse he rapped on the window and motioned for her to roll it down. He bent down and met her eyes with the same steady, confident look that his son had, the same look that kept melting her from the inside.

"I'll have Cam text you our address and directions," he said. "Don't use those online maps, they are about worthless out here. Come at eight, and bring whatever it is you like to drink."

"Well," he added, "Except for tequila that is. Think you've had enough of that for now."

Then he winked at her and was gone.

***

She should have known better than to answer any call labeled as "unknown." At best it was going to be some collector for one of her long disputed bills—no way was she ever going to pay the last month of her Internet bill from her senior year in college when it was her roommate who technically owed the money, her credit score be damned—or else a pre-recorded commercial for a timeshare in Orlando. At worse it would be her sister, being crafty.

It was her sister, being crafty.

"Courtney, don't hang up," her sister said as soon as she answered it.

She had been standing in the ABC liquor store—the only one in town—when her phone went off, wavering indecisively between a bottle of wine or a six pack of Corona. What did she like to drink, anyway? She vaguely remembered a night of martinis with her fiancé not long after accepting his proposal, and before she knew she was pregnant, but she had no idea what kind of ingredients would make such a drink, and anyway she couldn't really imagine Cam's father making her one.

"Hi Christie," she said, her stomach dropping and her anger flaring simultaneously. Her sister was good at causing seemingly incongruous emotional reactions in her, one of the many reasons why she had been ignoring her calls and texts of late.

"I knew you wouldn't answer unless I called from a different number," her sister explained, needlessly. Actually, it sounded less like an explanation and more like a complaint.

"Yeah okay, what's up?" she said. She grabbed the six pack of Corona off the shelf and heaved it onto the check out counter along with her i.d. and a twenty. The bored, pasty-faced man behind the counter was also on the phone, and he took her money, gave her back the change along with her i.d., and bagged the beer without once looking her in the face, which was just as well because she was definitely scowling.

"It's mom," her sister said flatly. "She's worse. Way worse."

She angrily plunged the change into her purse without bothering to count it and sighed loudly.

"Yeah, I know, you told me," she said. "And I told you I am stuck here doing summer school, so I don't know what you want me to do about it. I'll come when it's done and before the regular school year starts up again, okay?"

She needed this conversation to end before she ended up throwing her phone again, or worse. Break down crying in the ABC liquor store. No one ever looked good crying in a liquor store, and while she had never seen the clerk before, and he seemed happily absorbed in his own phone conversation, she was willing to bet money that word would get out anyway about Miss Park the "new" English teacher sobbing in the liquor store parking lot with a six pack of beer in her hand.

"Listen," she continued, "I have to go. I have to be somewhere now and I can't—"

"Courtney, stop it, will you just listen to me now?" her sister interrupted, an unfamiliar note of anguish in her voice. "Are you listening?"

Suddenly the anger disappeared, and the sinking feeling in her stomach got much heavier much faster.

"I'm listening," she said, stepping out of the store and into the thick humid heat of the parking lot.

"Okay, well good," her sister snapped. "Took you long enough."

"What is it Christie?" She leaned heavily against a wall. Brick painted white, cool to the touch, rough against her skin.

"Mom had a stroke. Two days ago. I've been trying to reach you, but you won't call me back, and I know you don't read my texts or you would have known."

She felt the pull of gravity on her grow more insistent, and she slid down to her heels, remembering at least to keep her still very sore butt off the ground.

"Courtney? Are you there?" her sister said, sounding both fearful and annoyed. "Please tell me you didn't hang up again."

"Yeah, I'm here," she said. "I'm still here."