Merry looked to her. “In the market to get a house. Got a realtor; she sent some listings. Looked through eighteen of ’em. Didn’t like what I saw except for two, both outside my price range. To make ’em in my price range, I gotta liquidate some things for the down payment.”

I kept staring at him, because selling your boat might not be something that you’d share with the woman in your life but buying a house definitely was.

I wanted to be smart. Not get ticked or more freaked but instead twist that to something happy.

First, Merry out of that crappy apartment. Second, the idea he was doing that now, after he’d decided to take a shot at an us with me.

But the way he gave Mom that information, void of emotion, didn’t sit well with me.

Mom didn’t care about the void-of-emotion part.

She went straight to the twisting.

“You’re in the market for a house?” Her voice was an octave higher, filled with hope and excitement.

“Yeah, Grace. Don’t live in a great place. Time to move on,” Merry answered, no inflection in his tone at all.

Mom gave happy eyes to me.

Ethan declared, “A boat is better than a house.”

“You don’t have my view, buddy,” Merry replied.

“View is always better from a boat,” Ethan informed him.

Finally, one side of Merry’s lips curled up. “Can’t argue that.”

“Have more corn, Garrett,” Mom urged, seeing his plate almost clean and picking up the bowl of corn.

“Prefer seconds of that casserole, Grace,” he returned.

She dropped the corn so fast it clattered and nabbed the casserole.

With Merry reengaged (sort of), the rest of dinner and dessert went okay.

Not great.

Just okay.

And okay was so…not…Merry.

After we were done, Mom shooed the boys out so the women could do the dishes, something she’d normally never do because she wasn’t about “women’s work” unless that work involved pushing out babies, which was only women’s work due to biology.

Which meant she wanted to be alone with me to hash out what was going on with Merry.

The guys hit the living room and I hit the sink, wanting to hash out what was going on with Merry too. The problem with that was, in this scenario, it was me who had to provide the information and I had no clue.

Mom got close with the meatloaf platter and a Tupperware container.

“Garrett’s being strange. Are you two okay?” she asked under her breath, seeing as her house was nearly as tiny as mine and they were in the next room.

I thought we were.

For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine the way Merry was at dinner had one thing to do with him and me.

I just couldn’t think of what it did have to do with.

“Yeah,” I told her.

“He wasn’t him…” She paused. “At all.”

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“Except with Ethan,” she revised.

At least there was that.

“You need to talk to him, honey-sicle,” she advised.

I looked from filling the sink with soapy water, to my mom.

“Maybe I should let this slide,” I suggested.

Her face started to go mom-like, so I rushed on.

“We’re new, Mom. Still feelin’ each other out. It’s only been a week since our first date. Not your fault, I was all for it, but maybe dinner at the mom’s house was too soon.”

This was a possible option of what was going on with Merry.

But even as it came out of my mouth, I didn’t buy it.

“He’s sat at that table before, Cheryl,” she reminded me, swinging her hand to the kitchen table. “I fed him and Mike when they helped out with my house, and I fed him lunch when he was takin’ care of my walls. He filled his plate with food from that table when I had Ethan’s ninth birthday party. Stuffed his face from that table at last year’s Christmas party. He is not a stranger to this house. He’s not a stranger to me or Ethan. But he was a stranger tonight.”

She was right.

I looked back to the water filling the sink and turned it off. I was shifting to go to the table to grab plates, but I stopped when Mom’s hand caught my forearm.

I gave her my eyes.

“Whole town’s watchin’, you know that,” she said quietly. “Whole town’s waitin’ to see what comes of you and Garrett Merrick. Figure most of ’em are rootin’ for you two. Same’s I figure most of ’em think you’re gonna go down in flames, that bein’ you who ignites that blaze or, due to history in this scenario, more likely it bein’ him.”

Her hand left me, but she didn’t quit talking.

“I know my girl. I know you want everyone to think you don’t care what they think. But I also know you care about that man in there.”

She jerked her head toward the wall on the other side of which was her living room.

She then kept going.

“It is no secret Tanner Layne had his hands full beatin’ back the demons that plagued the woman he loved, demons that drove her away from the only man for her and she knew he was just that. She still let those demons win, sugar. Story told so often in this town, I know. Everyone knows. And what we know is Tanner made one mistake in all that. In the beginning, he gave up. But Raquel put up a hell of a fight to make him quit and they were young so neither of ’em knew better. You and Garrett are not at that place.”

I opened my mouth to tell her she wasn’t wrong, and more (something I had to chew on), Mia’s fatal mistake was giving up too.

But Mom wasn’t done speaking.

“Like I said, I know my girl. So I know my girl’s a fighter. Now, don’t you make the mistake of doin’ somethin’ you’re tellin’ yourself is right, givin’ him space and time to sort his own self out, when you know it’s wrong. Garrett Merrick didn’t sit at my table tonight, honey. And you need not to waste any time findin’ out what took him away from that table, which meant he took himself away from you.”

“There’s a lot goin’ on that you don’t know, Mom,” I shared.

I shared it and it was lame.

“I know this,” she returned instantly. “I know he knows he sat at my table as the man who brought my two babies in his truck to my home to eat my food with the possibility he’d be at that table a lot in future. He knows me, but he knows what tonight meant. So he would know not to mess that up, no matter what’s goin’ on.”

“He was just quiet,” I told her.

“He wasn’t quiet, Cheryl. Half the time he wasn’t even here.”

She was right and she was also telling me not to fuck this up.

I was just so good at fucking things up, I didn’t know another way to be.

And the biggest part about that was, Merry’s retreat scared the shit out of me.

Mia Merrick didn’t have it in her to fight for her man and I had no problem pointing that out.

Faced with just a taste of what she’d had shoved down her throat, the acid of it burned.

And if I let my head go there, the scary it was would be terrifying.

“Talk to him,” Mom urged on a whisper. “I’ll tell you this, baby girl, that happened tonight at my table and you have to deal. Because that man’s got a woman in his life now, a woman with a son. And he’s lookin’ for a house. And that says other things. I’m not tellin’ you to get things straight with him because I want my girl’s hooks in a good man. I’m tellin’ you to get things straight for him because I know what he’s got with you. I know what my grandbaby will give him. I know that man is far from stupid. I know he deserves good in his life. And I know he’ll kick his own behind and not bounce back from that, he lets you slip through his fingers.”

I loved my mom. I’d fucked her over like I’d fucked a lot of shit in my life.

But I loved her because I did all that and she still said what she just said, which meant she loved the hell out of me.

I looked into her eyes. Then I nodded.

After that, I headed to the table to get the dishes.