The Blind Date by Landish, Lauren (suggested reading .txt) 📕

“Hi, Mom!” I tell her warmly, holding her extra-long. “Have I told you how much I love you and appreciate everything you’ve done for me recently?”

“Aww, honey. That’s so sweet,” she says, but then she gets to the point. “What do you want?”

I laugh, letting her go because she’s broken the moment. “Nothing. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately and realizing that you’ve done so much for River and me. I always knew you had my back, never doubted that for a second, but maybe I didn’t appreciate how rare that was. So just . . . thank you.”

“Riley, honey,” Mom says, tears shining in her eyes. “That’s so . . .” Instead of continuing, she just hugs me again, a little tighter this time.

“Oh, I got dirt on you.” Mom tries to brush off my shoulder with the back of her hand, but she only succeeds in getting another smudge on my T-shirt.

“It’s fine, Mom,” I tell her, laughing. “I wore work clothes because I knew we’d be getting dirty in the garden.”

She freezes suddenly, looking me up and down. We’re dressed similarly, in denim shorts and T-shirts, though her shirt has the sleeves cut off. And Mom’s not wearing boots like I am, but rather her gardening Crocs that are easy to hose off at the end of the day.

“Hmm, I didn’t think of that,” she mutters, wiping at her forehead.

My brow furrows. “Think of what?”

“What? Oh, nothing. You want a glass of tea?” she asks suddenly, turning away from me and walking over to the patio table. She has a pitcher of iced tea sitting on a tray and is pouring one for me before I can even catch up with her.

Her frenetic energy worries me. “Mom? Everything okay?”

“Of course, of course.” She hands me the tea, and I take a slow sip, my eyes never leaving her because she’s scanning me from head to toe. She reaches out, messing with my hair . . . or fixing it?

I wave her off. “What are you doing?” I mean for it to sound sharp and no-nonsense, but I choke on the overly sweet tea and lose any and all cred. “And who made this? It’s basically diabetes in a glass!” I sputter around a cough as I thump my chest.

She smiles as though her actions, and her tea, are totally normal, which they are not. “The tea is fine, honey. Maybe you don’t know what flavor is.” She tilts her head, one shift away from a neck roll and I know true fear. If Mom can do the whole sassy neck roll correctly, I will know that I’ve surely entered the Twilight Zone. “And I’m just fixing some flyaways in case you want to take some pictures for your page,” she explains as the infamously eerie theme music starts.

Doo-doo-doo-doo . . .

That makes zero sense.

Mom is completely supportive of my work, but she doesn’t exactly understand it. And my photo habits are not something she thinks of . . . ever.

“I probably will take some pics, but it’ll be close-ups of flowers, playing up the whole garden angle. So my hair and a little dirt won’t hurt,” I tease.

Mom smiles back, unconvinced.

I set my tea down. “Ready to get to it?”

Mom agrees, and we make our way back over to the garden. Mostly, we’re weeding, pulling up some of the junk that always invades Mom’s garden area between the end of the fall harvest and her first planting of the spring.

“Where’s Dad today?” I ask after a bit.

Mom’s brow furrows, and she thinks for a moment. “Today? Malaysia. According to him, it’s all insanity and monkey business. Literally, supposedly. Something to do with coconut imports and labor standards. He said I should have joined him since you and River are out of the house now, but I told him there was no way I could put enough sunscreen on for Malaysia. Now if he gets an assignment to Paris or Oslo, we can talk then!”

“You’d love Paris, I’m sure, but Oslo? Better pack a parka.”

My dad has traveled for work since before I can remember—here, there, and everywhere. I’m not exactly sure what he does, some sort of consultant about export and import laws and regulations for the United States. But no matter where he was, he always made it home for anything truly important. Like Mom, I realize how special Dad is too.

“I can make anything look good, even a parka,” she tells me, striking a pose. Truthfully, she can.

A loud vehicle breaks through the quiet of the small neighborhood, and I wonder who . . . and what . . . that could be.

I stop, listening as the growling diesel engine pulls up out front. Mom looks more than a little eager as she gets up and hurries toward the garage. “Mom? Who’s that?”

Before she can answer heavy bootsteps tread through the garage and a man calls out. “Mrs. Watson? I got the fertilizer you were asking for and . . . oh, hi.”

A guy walks out into the sunlight, a big bag of what I can only assume is fertilizer over his shoulder. With dark brown hair that’s flopped over one eye, a tight T-shirt that shows off an impressive set of biceps, and a day’s growth of stubble on his lean cheeks, he looks like he just stepped out of an old Fifth Harmony video, right down to the slight translucence of his sweat-soaked shirt making his muscles stand out all the more.

“Honey, this is Kyle,” Mom says with so much false innocence I want to roll my own neck. Or maybe snap hers. I mean, this Kyle’s got a fifty-pound bag on his shoulder, and Mom never uses that much gardening chemicals. Hell, you could fertilize half the neighborhood with that thing. “He’s the new gardener I hired to help with the lawn and getting the garden in this year.”

Mom looks at Kyle like he’s the answer to all her prayers. And I don’t mean the garden of her dreams.

“Mom!” I whisper, pulling her aside.