“This woman has to do with work?” she asked, shaking her head. “What is it with the men in this family? Can any of your meet a woman at the supermarket?”
“Sure. If Smush didn’t go to the supermarket for us,” I said, nodding.
“So, minus the details you can’t tell me about, you like this woman?”
“It’s complicated, but yes.”
“And she’s ghosting you?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. But I always talk to her at night around nine.”
“It’s ten.”
“Yeah, but…”
“I mean I give a guy a grace period of ten minutes before I turn off my phone. Respect my time, or you won’t be privy to it, you know?”
“I don’t think she’s like that, Valley,” I said, shaking my head. “And there are… reasons we need to be in touch at night.”
“Alright, well, text her and explain then.”
“I can’t. It’s—“
“Complicated,” she cut me off.
“Yeah.”
“On a scale of one to you-getting-shot-and-Josie-getting-kidnapped, how worried are you about her right now?”
“Somewhere in the middle.”
“So, you’re leaving,” she concluded.
“I have to.”
“Okay. I will tell everyone that something came up. Do you want me to find Nino and August?”
“No. They’ll head back when they are done here. I am going to just go and check things out.”
“Okay. Be careful, will you?”
“Always, Valls,” I said, moving closer to press a kiss to her cheek.
“I want to meet her, you know,” she called as I moved down the steps of the porch, wanting to avoid going back into the house. “She’s got to be pretty awesome if you looked twice at her.”
She was.
And I was dying to bring her to meet my family.
I just had to make sure she was okay first.
As it would turn out, all my worrying wasn’t for nothing.