Nick’s eyes darted to a grimy, obviously not factory-installed lever under the dash before returning to the road. “Thanks. I wondered.” Slowly he rolled his window down a crack.

“No problem.”

I opened my mouth to ask, then closed it. Must be a guy thing.

“So-o-o-o-o,” Jenks drawled. “We going to your mom’s?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Want to come?”

He rose an inch as we hit a pothole, hovering cross-legged. “Sure. Thanks. Her Rose of Sharon is probably still blooming. Think she’d mind if I took some of the pollen home?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I will.” A grin came over him. “You’d better put some makeup on that love bite.”

“Jenks!” I exclaimed, my hand going to cover my neck. I had forgotten. My face warmed as Jenks and Nick exchanged looks in some asinine macho thing. God help me, I felt as if I was back in the cave. Me mark woman so Glurg keep his furry hands off her.

“Nick,” I pleaded, keenly feeling the lack of my bag. “Can I borrow some money? I have to stop at a charm shop.”

But the only thing more embarrassing than buying a complexion spell is buying one with a hickey on your neck. Especially when most of the shop owners knew me. So I opted for autonomy and asked Nick to stop at a gas station. Of course, the spell rack by the register was empty, so I ended up plastering my neck with conventional makeup. Covergirl? Don’t you believe it. Nick said it looked all right but Jenks laughed his wings red. He sat on Nick’s shoulder and chatted about the attributes of the pixy girls he had known before meeting Matalina, his wife. The randy pixy kept it up all the way to the outskirts of Cincinnati where my mom lived while I tried to touch up my makeup in the visor’s mirror.

“Left down that street,” I said, wiping my fingers off on each other. “It’s the third house on the right.”

Nick said nothing as he pulled to the curb in front of my house. The porch light was on for us, and I swear I saw the curtain flutter. I hadn’t been there for a few weeks, and the tree I’d planted with my dad’s ashes was turning. The spreading maple was almost shading the garage in the twelve years it had been in the ground.

Jenks had already buzzed out Nick’s open door, and as Nick leaned to get out, I reached for his arm. “Nick?” I questioned. He paused at the worried tone in my voice, easing back against the age-worn vinyl as I drew my hand away and looked at my knees. “Um, I want to apologize for my mom—before you meet her,” I blurted.