She laughed. “I only have ten days left at Linda’s house and way too many shirts with Jon Bon Jovi’s face on it to rotate through.” She took another sip and passed it to me. Our shoulders brushed together. When I placed my lips where hers had been, I remembered brushing my thumb there. Plump and soft. Her breath on my skin.

“It was a really good day,” I said, nodding at the lot.

She gave me a big, toothy smile. “It was the best. Doesn’t this look like the site of a future pocket park to you?”

I crossed my arms. “Paint me a picture. I’m not the artist.”

“If you insist.” She took a step forward, reached her hand out to point. “Eric sent me the designs they used for the garden at their school. So you could have raised beds there. And there.” She moved her finger along the right side and back wall. “Flower gardens too. If you threw in grass, there could be benches there, like the one you built for Eddie and Alice. I’m sure Aunt Linda would let you hang string lights from her back patio. I talked to Natalia today, and she requested a swing set too. You could place that right in the middle.”

Images flooded my brain. Summer beers and fall tailgate parties. Alice hanging her ridiculous Christmas decorations on the back wall. Mom and Midge planting in the garden. Lía and Marco on the swings.

And another one—sitting on that bench with the beautiful woman standing next to me. My arm around her shoulders, my lips in her hair, listening to her tell some funny story in her usual spirited way.

It was a fantasy as pointless as all the others I’d ever had about Tabitha. Made my chest tight for some reason.

“What do you think?” She was looking at me over her shoulder with bright eyes.

“I love it,” I said hoarsely. “Now that the initial problem is gone, I can see it now.”

She stepped back to my side. “I got a ton of great footage from everyone. Eddie and Alice should probably have their own talk show. And I finally tackled those back weeds and tore them out of the ground. Even have the wounds to prove it.”

She extended her right forearm. It was covered in scratches. I acted on instinct, reached for her arm and swiped my finger gently down her skin. She shivered. “You’re okay, right?”