Page 34 of The Difference Between

Those three words jolt me with awareness. I can handle bullshit with ease. I can take an insult and turn it into ammunition. But his full attention is jarring. His persistence is . . . I don’t know what this is. He keeps looking at me and smiling. Pushing the mower back and forth so the blade squeaks. I want him to leave, but if anything, he settles into the yard like it’s his favorite seat in the house.

“Is this your way of flirting with me?”

He bites back a smile. “Guess not if you have to ask.”

“Okay.”

“Okay I can flirt with you?”

I laugh, a genuine sound that’s almost unfamiliar in my ears. “No.” I rake my gaze over him. “You’re, like, twelve. Pretty sure that’s illegal.”

“Thirty, actually.” His brows raise like that changes a damn thing. “And extremely mow-tivated.” He pushes the mower to help the sad state of his puns.

“Still bad.”

It’s his turn to laugh. “Noted.”

The horn of his truck beeps, and the girl—presumably his kid—waves impatiently through the passenger window. There’s no ring on his finger. Probably got married too young and that went the way it always does.

He says, “I gotta go.”

“Right.” Part of me is disappointed. His jokes are bad, he’s so rough around the edges his looks could break skin, but he’s someone to talk to. A little intriguing. Someone who’s never interacted with the human race might call him funny. “Thanks for your help.”

He looks at the mower like he knows how bad the job is. “You wanna go out with me?”

I guffaw. “What?”

“We should go out,” he repeats, cool and confident. Like I’m not a decade older or in a different income bracket than he is. “On a date.”

“A date?” I echo.

He smiles. “A date.”

I don’t know him.

He’s thirty.

I don’t live here.

He looks like a ranch hand and spits and drives the definition of a beater.

But mostly, I don’t know the last time I’ve been asked on a date. The men I meet are the ones who sit on vacant barstools next to mine at an absurd hour after a long day at the office. They buy me a drink. Things progress the way things progress after top-shelf liquor and surface-level conversations. Ties get loosened, looks get heated, a cab gets shared. But a date? It’s so . . . intimate. Intimate in a way I don’t have time for.

Also, boredom must be driving me mad, because I kind of want to say yes.

“What kind of date would you take me on?” There’s no way this guy has any money, he might as well stamp it on his forehead. It’s not even that I care about money—I make enough I could marry a hobo and we could ride off into the sunset—but I do care about how motivated someone is, and based on his grass-stained shirts and shabby looks, he isn’t.

“What kind of date do you like to go on?”

No way in hell I’m admitting that I don’t know.

“How much money do you make?”

If I’m hoping this deters him, it does anything but. He laughs, loud and like the sound of true joy. “Seventeen an hour.” He pauses for me to compute. It’s a low number; computing doesn’t take long. Also, I haven’t been paid hourly since college. “You?”

“Same.” He knows damn well I’m lying. “Give or take.”

His eyes dance as if we are. Despite the frayed edges of his old hat, too-long hair, and patchy beard, his blue eyes are bright, clear, and bottomless.