Free Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas

excitement felt inappropriate in light of Mama’s resignation.
    The only times Mama seemed like her old self were when Miss Marva came to visit. The doctor had commanded Miss Marva to stop smoking or she would eventually drop dead from lung cancer, and his warnings worried her so much, she actually obeyed. Dotted with nicotine patches, her pockets filled with teaberry gum, Miss Marva walked around in a constant low-level temper, saying most of the time she felt like skinning small animals.
    “I’m not fit for company,” Miss Marva pronounced, walking in with a pie or plate of something good, and sitting next to Mama on the couch. And she and Mama would bitch to each other about anyone and anything that had stepped on their last nerves that day, until they both started laughing.
    In the evenings after I’d finished my homework, I would sit with Mama and rub her feet, and bring her cups of soda water. We watched TV together, mostly evening soaps about rich people with interesting problems, like being approached by the long-lost son they never knew they had, or getting amnesia and sleeping with the wrong person, or going to a fancy party and falling into the swimming pool in an evening gown. I would steal glances at Mama’s absorbed face, and her mouth always looked a little sad, and I comprehended she was lonely in a way I could never ease. She was going through this experience by herself, no matter how much I wanted to be a part of it.
     
    I returned a glass pie plate to Miss Marva on a cold November day. There was a frosty snap in the air. My cheeks stung from the occasional whip of a breeze unimpeded by walls, buildings, or trees of appreciable size. Winter often brought rain and flash floods that were referred to as “turd-floaters” by exasperated residents of Welcome, who had long protested the town’s badly managed drainage system. Today was a dry day, however, and I made a game of avoiding the cracks in the parched pavement.
    As I neared Miss Marva’s trailer I saw the Cates pickup parked alongside it. Hardy was loading boxes of artwork into the truck bed, to cart it to the gallery in town. Miss Marva had been doing brisk business of late, which was proof that Texans’ appetite for bluebonnet paraphernalia should never be underestimated.
    I savored the strong lines of Hardy’s profile, the tilt of his dark head. A flush of desire and adoration swept over me. It was that way every time our paths crossed. For me, at least. My tentative experiments with Gill Mincey had brought to life a sexual awareness I had no idea how to satisfy. All I knew was that I didn’t want Gill, or any of the other boys I knew. I wanted Hardy. I wanted him more than air and food and water.
    “Hey, you,” he said easily.
    “Hey yourself.”
    I passed him without stopping, carrying the pie plate up to Miss Marva’s door. Marva was busy cooking and greeted me with an unintelligible grunt, too involved in her task to bother with conversation.
    I went back outside and found Hardy waiting for me. His eyes were such a fathomless blue I could have drowned in them. “How’s basketball?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “Still terrible.”
    “You need more practice?”
    “With you?” I asked stupidly, caught off guard.
    He smiled. “Yeah, with me.”
    “When?”
    “Now. Right after I change clothes.”
    “What about Miss Marva’s artwork?”
    “I’m going to take it to town later. I’m meeting someone.”
    Someone. A girlfriend?
    I hesitated, smarting with jealousy and uncertainty. I wondered what had prompted him to offer to practice with me, if he had some misbegotten idea we could be friends. Some shadow of despair must have crossed my expression. Hardy took a step closer, his forehead scored with a frown beneath the rumpled silk of his hair.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “Nothing, I…I was just trying to remember if I had any homework.” I filled my lungs with the biting air. “Yes, I need more practice.”
    Hardy gave a