Melina stopped in her tracks. “You’re joking.” Joshua returned her gaze, his face unreadable.
“You. Can. Not. Be. Serious,” Melina stuttered, indignation building in her voice. “When I asked you what kind of car you drove, you said a Porsche, as in, a sweet, expensive, fast, fun car. That’s what I expected, and you never told me the truth, that you’ve got some spackle-covered beater that probably couldn’t outrace a garbage truck.”
Joshua’s mild expression turned defensive, then hurt. “A shiny, new Porsche is what you assumed. I didn’t correct you because you never gave me a chance, considering you are so fixated on driving your own car to meet me for dates.”
“You were hiding that piece of junk,” Melina accused.
“Well then, what are you hiding?” Joshua’s frustration came out in an angry rush. “Why have I never seen your house, since you’ve never let me pick you up? What kind of girl does that?”
“You never told me about Aussie.” Melina jutted her chin out, but she knew she was losing this battle. The fact that Joshua skipped over details about a Porsche that looked like it was a few bolts away from a junkyard heap was nothing compared to what she was hiding about herself.
“Look, Mel,” Joshua said, his voice gentler now. “I’m an open book. You’ve met Aussie, and he’s really important to me. You’ve met my best friends, Mark and Stephanie, at Eric’s party. I’ve met none of your friends. You’ve seen my apartment, or at least a version of it, since it’s pretty much the same as Eric and Juan’s.”
Joshua searched her face as he continued. “I have no idea where you live. You know where I work, where I went to school, and where I like to hang out because I’ve taken you to a lot of those places. But for all I know, you live a hundred miles away. You live on a commune, or you’re married, or you raise llamas in your spare time.”
The sheer ridiculousness of llamas made Melina smile. “I’m sorry. You’re right—I mean, not about the llamas or the married thing. I don’t tend to share a lot of my life when I’m dating because you never know how it’s going to turn out, you know? So far as you know, I’m perfect. I’m the most perfect woman in the world, until you find something wrong with me, and maybe it’s where I live or me having a bad hair day or me having a llama obsession or whatever—but the point is, it’s only downhill from here.”
Joshua faced her, putting his hands on both shoulders. “Melina Avgerakis, do you or do you not have a llama obsession?”
“I do not.” She tried to suppress a smile.
“Do you or do you not live somewhere normal?”
“I do.”
“Do you or do you not like Aussie?”
“I do.”
“Do you or do you not intend to introduce me to your friends?”
“I do.”
Joshua grinned. “I did it again. Got you to agree with me three times, so I guess that means you’re inviting me to your place.”
Melina ducked her head in mock resignation, but let his hands stay on her shoulders. “Fine! I will invite you over since you’re twisting my arm.”
“This is twisting your arm,” Joshua ran his hands down her arms, catching her wrists and pulling them behind her back as he brought his face very close to hers. “So, when am I invited?” his breath tickled her ear.
“When I’m good and ready,” she whispered, but she was done resisting. She closed her eyes and felt Joshua slip one hand behind her ear, gently, his thumb resting on her jawbone.
She waited for a kiss that never came.
Her eyes fluttered open in surprise. Joshua held her face inches from his, still smiling.
“Wrong answer.” He was torturing her.
“OK, how about tomorrow?” Chills rushed up her spine as he trapped her arms and pulled her closer. “I’ll put you to work.”
Joshua didn’t bother getting an explanation. He lowered his mouth to hers, gently kissing as he watched her. She returned his gaze, and then returned his kiss, breaking her wrists away and winding her arms behind his head.
Joshua deepened the kiss, his teeth tracing her lower lip, exploring. Melina felt her breath catch as Joshua planted a slow line of kisses across her cheek, trailing down the side of her neck, and she pressed her body closer to him.
A wet dog rubbed its coat against their legs to interrupt their kiss. Aussie. Joshua broke the kiss but refused to let Melina out of their embrace. “Go away. You’ve already had yours, mister.”
He grinned down at her. “I’m just sorry he got to you first.” His lips traveled from neck to jaw to a sensitive spot just behind her ear.
Melina took a deep, shuddering breath and steadied herself. “Look, I usually don’t invite people over to my place. That’s what restaurants and bars are for—for hanging out with your friends, right?”
Joshua bit her earlobe in warning. “You’re not reneging on our deal already, are you?”
“No, I’m just saying, I don’t usually do this. But I’ll make an exception for you. It’s just that I used to live—in kind of a dump,” Melina admitted. Joshua returned to her mouth, teasing again, alternating kisses that were gentle and then urgent.
“Used to?”
“Not anymore,” Melina felt heat building inside her as she struggled to concentrate. “Now I live in an old house in Wallingford—where all those streets curve and cross. That’s why it got the nickname Tangletown.”
Joshua’s hands tangled in her hair as he pulled back to look at her. “When did you buy it?”
“I didn’t. I was driving one day and saw the for rent sign. It’s a cute little apartment over a garage—you know, like a carriage house.”
“So if you live there, who lives in the main house?”
“Her name is Maureen Callaghan, but she goes by Momo. She’s very old.”
Am I really inviting him over? Or am I crazy to do it, when it will probably spoil everything? A voice of hope piped up: Take a chance on him.
“Joshua Danford, I am officially inviting you over to my house. Tomorrow.”
“Sweet. What time?” Joshua smacked his forehead. “Wait, I promised to build raised beds with Mark tomorrow morning. Stephanie will not take no for an answer.”
“You beg so hard for an invitation and then you’re ditching me?”
“No way, not ditching!” Joshua said. “It’s just—how about I come over in the afternoon?”
“We can do that,” Melina nodded, “but there’s a catch. Momo can’t see very well, so I do some gardening for her and take her grocery shopping every week. I’m helping her tomorrow, so why don’t you come over after you’re done at Mark’s and I’ll introduce you? If you’re lucky, you can help me do some heavy lifting in the garden.”
“More manual labor? How can I resist?” Joshua kissed the tip of her nose. “That’s the first date you’ve asked me on. I guess you really like me a lot.”
“Don’t get a big head. I only hang out with you because I can beat you at racing.”
“That’s OK. I only hang out with you because you’re a better kisser than Aussie.”
FOURTEEN
By midmorning, Joshua and Mark were sweating despite the cold, with three raised bed boxes assembled and the initial layers of rock, sand and soil laid down.
“They look good,” Joshua said, sizing up their project. “What are you going to plant in them, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Mark shrugged and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of grime. “Probably tomatoes, vegetables and some herbs. Maybe strawberries. Stephanie gets to pick, so long as she doesn’t plant squash.”
“What do you have against squash?” Joshua asked.
“Every year our neighbor lady goes crazy with the squash. I mean, we get a bag of it hanging on our doorknob, and zucchini in our mailbox and butternut squash on our porch. It’s out of control. So, we have a deal. I’ll build the beds as long as Stephanie promises no squash.”
Joshua had to laugh. His family never had the
permanence to raise a decent garden, but he knew just the type of neighbor Mark was talking about. No matter what country they lived in, Joshua loved neighbors who were willing to share their overly abundant gardens with his family.
Stephanie peered out the door, delight spreading on her face as she saw her project nearly finished. She originally proposed tackling the project with Mark alone, but with her short temper, Joshua knew his help would make everyone happier.
“Perfect timing. I have serious breakfast for us,” Stephanie beckoned them inside. “While you two slackers were out there gossiping and doing your nails, I’ve been slaving over a hot stove.”
Joshua attempted to take her down a peg. “Woman, where are my blueberry muffins?”
“Ground the flour myself,” she said smugly and swatted Joshua’s rear. He knew she was lying about the flour, but Stephanie’s made-from-scratch muffins were real enough, filling a platter in the dining room. A dish of pineapple, a pile of crisp, thick-cut pepper bacon and steaming potato hash sat next to them. Joshua and Mark jostled each other at the sink, washing their hands, in a hurry to dig in.
“You missed a spot,” Stephanie teased, and sent her husband back to the sink to wash his face.
The dining room fell silent except for the clinking of plates and silverware and the contented hum of three hungry people eating. Once they slowed to a reasonable pace, Josh asked, “What are you two up to the rest of the day?”
“Bent on Annihilation. The new action movie,” Stephanie grimaced. “Mark’s pick, since I got to pick what we did all morning. You want to come?”
“No, I’m going over to Melina’s house.”
“Her house?” Stephanie was shocked. “So this mysterious woman has an address? I thought you said you could never get a straight answer from her?”
“I couldn’t, until yesterday,” Joshua admitted. “Then we kind of … fought it out.”
Mark’s brows knit. “I’m not following you.”
“When I asked her out, she asked me what kind of car I drove, and I told her. And she thought it was going to be some shiny, new Porsche, instead of the one I’m working on. So she got mad—”
“Wait a minute. What kind of superficial, gold-digging bimbo cares about the kind of car you drive?” Stephanie demanded.
“Wait for it.” Mark cut her off.
“Look, she apologized, Stephanie, and she’s smart, not a bimbo. I know you didn’t like her whole act at Eric’s house, but she’s not that snobby once you get to know her.”
“Listen to yourself, Josh. You’re defending her,” Stephanie said. “She’s not that snobby?”
“Let me finish, OK?” Joshua was getting impatient. “We had a misunderstanding. We cleared it up. She gave me her address and invited me over this afternoon to meet her landlady.”
“So. Spill. Gatorade?” Mark asked in code, wagging his brows suggestively.
“Nowhere near, man. But I’ll tell you something, Aussie thinks she’s a great kisser.”
“I’ll bet it’s not just Aussie,” Stephanie said sourly.
Joshua’s expression told them everything. He was smitten.
***
Joshua pulled up to the address Melina gave him, knowing he was in the right place when he saw Melina’s red coupe parked on the far side of the garage.
The Callaghan house was expansive and sturdy, a perfect study in Craftsman architecture that had endured nearly a century. A porch ran the full width of the front of the house, with boxy, fluted columns supporting an angled roof. Two dormers sprouted from the upper story, and in each window a dozen panes of glass reflected spring sunlight.
Two side lights flanked a wide door; with pairs of windows on either side on the first floor. Each element of the house was in symmetry, the front lawn and its box-hedged path sloping gently from the raised front porch down to the sidewalk. A narrow gravel driveway led to a detached garage and an exterior staircase reached the small residence above it. Melina must live there.
Between the house and the garage, an open gate suggested where Melina and Momo might be.
Joshua passed through the gate into an assault of color, texture and scent that could be typical of July, but never April. Every hue of green was represented, from pale yellow-green accent leaves to deep evergreen.
Quince, magnolia and crabapple trees had started new leaves throughout the garden, while on the ground, clusters of yellow and white daffodils put on a show. Mounds of tulips grew in vast waves of color.
Joshua could tell this garden was planted for brilliance even in Seattle’s dreary weather. It felt strangely familiar to him, though there was no way he had ever been to this house before.
Joshua reached out to touch the spiky fronds of an ornamental bush and heard voices from the opposite corner of the garden. There, in a wool coat and floppy hat, sat a small woman on an overturned bucket, pointing to a branch on one of her garden trees. A bird feeder hung from the branch, and beneath it, Melina stretched to her toes, struggling to unhook it from the branch.
“Here, let me help,” Joshua offered. He took the bird feeder down from the tree and placed it on the ground. He flashed Melina a quick smile and turned to the old woman.
“Hello, I’m Joshua Danford. You must be Mrs. Callaghan,” he said formally, extending a hand to shake.
Momo took it and turned on a hundred-watt smile. “Joshua. How nice of you to come over and visit us! It is a pleasure to meet you. I do hope you’ll call me Momo.”
“The pleasure is mine, Mrs., ah, Momo. What did I interrupt? You’re taking down a bird feeder?”
“We’re refilling them,” Melina said. “All fourteen of them. Momo loves to encourage birds to come to her garden and so we do everything we can to attract them—feeders, bird baths and trees.”
“I love my little birds, but I hate the cats!” Momo said with a ferocity that surprised Joshua. “They think I’m operating a buffet here with all these sweet little birds. I have tried everything I can think of, but I don’t know how to keep them away from my garden.”
Joshua looked around, considering the possibilities.
“What if we made the fence really hard for cats to climb?” Joshua suggested, an idea forming in his mind. “If they couldn’t jump over the fence, they couldn’t get in your garden and terrorize the birds, right?”
Melina joined in, ticking off the possibilities. “We could make it so they couldn’t get over. Cats can’t just jump over a fence in a single leap. They have to land on top and then jump down.”
Joshua nodded. “We need something that cats can’t—or don’t want to—land on.”
“I don’t want something ugly on top of my fence,” Momo chimed in, “although I’d be tempted, if it will do the trick.”
“What about wire?” Joshua said, the brainstorm finally hitting full-force. “No cat is going to tolerate a mesh of chicken wire if we roll it in a cylinder; it will be impossible to land on. We’ll put little cylinders around the top of the fence.”
“You sure it won’t look like barbed wire?” Melina asked.
“You mean concertina wire? No, I don’t.” Joshua was confident, eyeballing the dimensions of the garden to calculate how much wire it would take. “It’s so thin, it will blend in pretty well, and you could even train vines on it. The cats will never know what hit them. What do you think, Momo?”
“I love the idea. It’s worth a try,” she said. “How soon can you start?”
***
Melina and Joshua worked side by side in silence, clipping and tying rounds of chicken wire they purchased from a home store.
“So what’s the story with your car?” Melina finally asked.
Joshua looked up, studying her. Yesterday, she was accusing him, and he wondered if she was materialistic enough for his car to matter. Today, she looked merely curious.
“You mean, why does it look like it would lose a race with a garbage truck?” He still smarted a bit from that comment.
“I’m sorry I
said that. I just wasn’t expecting a Porsche with so much spackle,” she offered.
“Well, first of all, that’s not spackle. It’s Bondo. It’s putty you use to fill in dents in the body to even it out before you sand and paint it,” Joshua said. “It isn’t pretty, but my car actually looks a bit better than it used to.”
Melina looked skeptical, but she held her tongue.
“I haven’t really focused on the outside, because I’ve been working on its insides,” Joshua said, stacking wire rounds in Momo’s garden cart. “When I got that car, everything you said about it was true. It didn’t run, it was rusting and its upholstery was toast. Most of its gauges were broken, the back window leaked and the steering wheel was chewed—I mean, literally chewed up, like by a raccoon or a dog.”
Melina kept working, listening.
“I got it from a friend of my dad’s, who lives down by the base in Tacoma. We used to go over to his house; he and my dad would drink beer and work on their cars and listen to sports. That’s how I started learning about engines. Anyway, the car was broken down at his house when I was in high school, but he never got around to working on it. He called me last year and said I could have it if I hauled it away. So that’s why I have a Porsche.”
Joshua and Melina stapled the wire cylinders to the top of the fence surrounding the garden as he explained how he hauled the car up to his old duplex’s garage and worked on it himself, purchasing original nineteen-seventies parts online and getting tips from a local Porsche enthusiasts’ club.
Once he fixed the engine, Joshua rebuilt or replaced virtually everything in the car, including the tires, brakes, steering wheel and rear window. Now, Joshua had the fastest, smoothest, ugliest ride in Seattle. It cost a fortune and took forever, but with limited expenses and an engineer’s salary, Joshua could afford it.
“I’m stuck on a three-month wait with the body shop,” Joshua said. “I’m being picky about the paint because I want to get it custom-mixed in one of the original colors, and they asked me to wait until the big winter rush is over. Pretty soon I’ll have the car repainted and reupholstered.”
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