“What about you?” he asked. “Concerts? Favorite bands?”
“I played cello in high school and college. I’m still kind of a classical music snob. But I love Alison Krauss, too.”
“Country, right?”
“Bluegrass and country. Mom’s an English professor so books will probably come up in conversation. Favorite books? Last book read?” Clover asked.
“Last book read was Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Favorite book? Either A Farewell to Arms or House Made of Dawn.”
“I’ve never read either of those.”
“Ruthie had to read them in her AP Lit classes. I’d read Hemingway a little in high school but read him again when she did. I’d never read House, either, but whew, damn good stuff.”
“You read what Ruthie reads in school?”
“Why not? I mean, I know she’s smarter than me, but I’m not about to let her figure that out yet.”
“She is smart, but so is her father.”
“Tell her that.”
“I will. She might be able to name the ritual healing properties of a hundred different kinds of incense but I highly doubt she knows how to build a cedar deck.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t go near cedar. She says it has too many masculine properties. Supposedly the scent of it increases male virility.”
“That explains last night. And this morning.”
“And tonight and tomorrow morning...”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the forward motion of his rowing.
“I completely forgot what we were talking about,” he said when he pulled back on the oars again.
“We were talking about how wood gives you wood.”
“Before that.”
“Books and music and other stuff real couples know about each other so we can trick my family into thinking we’ve been dating longer than three days,” Clover said, tensing at the thought of Thanksgiving. Two days. Only two days away. She wished it was today to get it over with. She wished it was a year away so she had more time with Erick.
“Where’s your family from?” Erick asked. “Where did you grow up? I should probably know something about your past. That might come up.”
“Born and raised in Redmond. After Mom got her PhD, they moved to Sacramento and she started teaching at CSU. She retired last year. I was in college when they moved so I stayed in Oregon. Hunter’s my older brother. He’s a bank manager in Spokane. My sister got married right out of college to the son of a Seattle real estate developer.”
“That sounds like money.”
“A lot of money. Kelly has never had to work, which is why she has four kids already even though she’s eighteen months younger than I am.”
“Four kids? At twenty-eight?”
“One set of twins—Ian and Eva. The oldest is Elena. Gus is the baby. He just turned four. Hunter’s married to Lisa and they have three girls—Skye, Paige and Zoe. All spelled with e’s. Got all that?”
Erick blew a hard breath and his eyes went wide. “I need to write this stuff down. Can I get a chart or something?”
“I’ll make you a spreadsheet.”
“Thank you. And maybe flash cards. What about your dad?”
“He’s also an academic. Retired associate dean of Sacramento State. That’s another issue with my family. I went to college for three years but dropped out before graduating.”
“Why’d you drop out?”
“I got offered a very good job at the nursery I worked at part-time. Management position, good pay and benefits. I was so much happier at work than at school, I took the job. With a professor mother and a dean father? That didn’t go over so well.”
“I can see them not being happy about it then, but it’s not like you’re a burnout selling pencils on the street and sleeping in gutters. You’ve done pretty well for yourself.”
“Tell them that,” she said. “I mean, don’t tell them that. We aren’t going to fight with my family. We are going to suck it up and get through it without anyone losing it. Especially me.”
“If you say so. Are you sure you want to do this? I can pretend to have hep A or something.”
“There’s an idea. The good news about my family is that the kids are all great. Very sweet and well behaved. Them, I really want to see. I might even eat at the kids’ table.” Clover wasn’t kidding. She’d survived many a family meal by using the kids as human shields. Nobody would ask her about her personal life while she was playing tea party with her nieces.
“So let me get this straight—your parents have seven grandkids already, and they’re still bugging you to get married and have kids? Aren’t they being a little greedy? My parents have one grandkid. One. And they said that’s plenty.”
“Seven. And that’s apparently not enough for them, so at least pretend you want more kids even if you don’t. It’ll shut them up.”
“I’ll mention the thing about cedar and male virility. ‘Want some pumpkin pie? Also my sperm count is probably really high because I work with cedar.’ How’s that?”
“Sounds perfect. Thanksgiving is going to be a blast.”
“You said that while looking at the peak of Mount Hood.”
“Are we one hundred percent certain that Mount Hood isn’t going to explode this week?” she asked. “Just a tiny eruption would work. I’m sure they’d make us evacuate.”
“Not going to erupt. All my fault. I sacrificed a virgin to it this week. It’s appeased,” Erick said.
Clover sighed. “There’s never a volcano eruption when you need one.”
She stared out at the water and inhaled the crisp autumn air. She should have felt peaceful out here on the lake with the water gently slapping the side of the blue aluminum boat and the snowcapped peak of Mount Hood looming over Erick’s shoulder and the Canada geese flying overhead in a halfhearted V formation. She even spied a majestic bald eagle in the bare branches of a vine maple and heard the unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker close by. But as sublime and tranquil as the setting was, she couldn’t relax completely even for Erick’s sake. Especially for Erick’s sake. Three days ago she would have said she asked Erick to play fake boyfriend on Thanksgiving because her family would approve. Responsible single father, small-business owner, handsome and sweet and funny. A perfect fake boyfriend, right? Except her mother had decided Erick was a bad match for Clover for the sole reason he had an almost-adult daughter and would surely not want more kids. Once her mother got something into her head, there was no getting it out again. And if her mom or her dad said something rude to Erick or about Erick... Clover didn’t even want to think about it. Mount Hood would have nothing on her eruption if her parents said something rude to Erick. But surely they wouldn’t, not with their middle child and favorite bull’s-eye there to take the darts.
“You’re very stressed out about Thursday, aren’t you?” Erick asked.
“I’m considering throwing myself in this lake in the hopes I’ll get bitten by a piranha and will have to spend a few days in the hospital.”
“You know there are no piranhas in Lost Lake, right?”
“What about sharks?”
“It’s going to be fine,” Erick said as he turned the boat to steer it away from a submerged tree. “It’ll be over before you know it. They’ll show up, you’ll introduce me to everyone, we’ll stick close to each other, we’ll eat, we’ll have a couple glasses of wine, we’ll have dessert and then we’ll do that thing where we serve coffee so people know it’s time for them to leave. Then poof—” He blew on his fingers. “They’ll be gone.”
“That’s why people serve coffee at parties? To get their guests to leave?”
Erick nodded. “Best trick in the book. It’s a subtle way of saying, ‘Wake up and go away, please.’”
“Coffee. Good idea.”
“What is it you’re so worried about? What do you think’s going to happen?”
Clover shrugged and shook her head.
“I think they’re going
to be mean to you.”
Erick burst into laughter, and the sound bounced off the water and echoed into the trees.
“Mean to me? You’re worried they’re going to be mean to me? Like ‘punch me in the face and call me Shorty’ mean? ‘Shove me into lockers and steal my lunch money’ mean? I’m a grown man, Clover. What could they do to me? Give me a wedgie? I’ve survived worse.”
“Well, no. They’re not going to be mean like that. They’re just kind of snobby sometimes.”
“Ah. And I do manual labor for a living. But so do you.”
“Yeah, and they’re rude to me about it.”
“What do they say to you?”
“Mom says I’ll wreck my back by doing so much gardening and it’ll make it hard for me to pick up my children.”
“You don’t have children.”
“Not yet, but she’s planning on it already. She says I should get an MBA like Hunter did since I’m business-minded. I could teach instead of ruining my body with all this physical labor I’m doing.”
“I’ve seen your body. If that’s what ruined looks like, sign me up for ruination.”
“Meanwhile Kelly says my life is so much easier than hers because she has to keep her kids alive whereas nobody cares if plants die. And Dad has said repeatedly I should have been a botanist.”
“Is that bad? Suggesting you should have been a botanist?”
“It’s bad when ‘You should be a botanist’ is followed by ‘instead of working retail.’”
“Working retail? Shit, that’s what they think you do?”
“I ring up customers sometimes when they buy my plants at the nursery. Ergo, I’m working retail. That I own the business doesn’t seem to compute with Dad.”
“Wow. Your family is a bunch of snobs, aren’t they?”
“The worst part is that they don’t even know they’re doing it. So you can’t call them out on it because it just won’t register. I once told my sister, ‘Please don’t act like my work is unimportant just because you don’t care about plants.’ And she said, ‘Oh, Clover, don’t be ridiculous. I think your work sounds so fun.’”
“Fun. But not important.”
“They hear what they want to hear. And there’s not much I can do about it except grin and bear it and then go back to my happy and busy life until the next holiday when I make myself grin and bear it again. This is why April through September is my favorite time of the year—it’s the busiest time at the nursery and no major holidays.”
“Maybe Ruthie and I will kidnap you at Christmas so you can have an excuse to avoid your family.”
“It would be a Christmas miracle.” She sighed wistfully, imagining the happy thought of Erick and Ruthie dragging her out of her family’s Christmas party and throwing her in the back of a white van.
“We’ll see about making that happen. Ruthie’s been dying to commit another felony, anyway, before she turns eighteen. Kidnapping you sounds fun. I might tie you to the bed with a big red bow.”
“Finally, a reason to look forward to a holiday.”
“You know, your family can be as mean to me as they want. They’re not my family. I won’t give a damn about what they say. No skin off my nose.”
“My siblings aren’t that bad but my parents will find a way to needle you. Trust me.”
“They can try. I’m impervious to needling. I have a teenage daughter. You grow very thick skin when you have a teenage daughter as intelligent as mine.”
“Is Ruthie mean to you?”
“Vicious. She said I wasn’t good enough for you.”
“What?” Clover nearly fell out of the boat.
“If you ever wondered why I call her Ruthless...that’s why. Because she is.”
“Surely she didn’t mean that.”
“She did. But it’s not because she thinks I’m a bad person. She thinks you’re too good for almost anybody out there.”
“That’s very sweet of her. Even when she’s trying to be mean she’s sweet. Which is kind of the opposite of my parents, who are mean even when they’re trying to be sweet.”
“Ruthie is not passive-aggressive. She’s just aggressive-aggressive.”
“And I’m passive-passive. Must be why Ruthie and I get along so well. Unless I catch her insulting you again. Then I’ll show her how mean I can be.”
“Not mean at all, you mean.”
“Yeah, I’m a wimp.”
“You are not a wimp. It takes a very strong person to tolerate a family like that without going off on them. I think you should go off on them, but that’s just what I would do.”
“Don’t, please. You’re a wonderful man and I know you’ll want to defend me when they say stuff to me—and they will—but please don’t fight back. I’ll never hear the end of it from them. I told you I quit college to take a good job. Nine years ago that happened. Nine years. You know what they still call me? I’m their ‘little dropout.’ And I bet you money they’ll call me that in front of you.”
“Are you sure I can’t go off on them?”
“I’m sure. I think.”
“Are you sure you’re sure?”
“I’m sure I’m sure. Erick... I like you.”
“Oh, stop.” He batted his eyelashes.
“You stop. I mean, I really like you. I’d like to keep seeing you if I can. If you want. If you like that idea. No pressure.”
“Clover, I’ve spent the last three days having the best sex of my life with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever dated. I think it’s safe to say I like the idea of us seeing each other even after Thanksgiving.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad to hear it. But I’m serious here, if you go off on my family, they will shun you. I have a cousin my mother hasn’t spoken to in three years because he dared suggest their darling son-in-law, Mike, the Seattle real estate developer, was doing the city more harm than good with all his gentrification projects. If you and I are maybe going to keep seeing each other—”
“No maybe. Definitely not a maybe.”
She grinned. “Since we’re going to keep seeing each other, I’d like us to stay on their good side. That’s all. We just have to get through Thanksgiving without losing our tempers with them. Otherwise I will truly never ever hear the end of it for as long as I live. And it’s not worth it to me. Understand?”
“I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.”
“Thank you. Now let’s do something other than talk about my family.”
“It’s really a boner killer.”
“Sorry. What’s the opposite of a boner killer?”
“You.”
“You want to talk about me?”
“I would love to talk about you. I would love to talk about you in bed.”
“We’re in a boat. No bed here, and the cabin is way over there.” She pointed to a tiny speck in the distance. Erick had rowed them all the way from one side of Lost Lake to the other. Now they had to row back.
“I can get us back there in no time.”
“It took us two hours to get out here.”
“Give me some inspiration.”
“Hmm...how about this? As soon as we get back to the cabin, I’ll do that thing you suggested we do while I was going down on you last night.”
“I don’t remember what I said. I was in a sex trance.”
“Then let’s get back to the cabin and I’ll tell you what you said. Then we’ll do it.”
“You drive a hard bargain. And by that I mean I’m hard.”
“Start rowing, mister.”
Erick rowed them halfway back to the cabin, then stopped in the middle of the lake.
“What’s wrong?” Clover asked.
“I just remembered something,” he said.