Jas rocked back on his heels. “It’s . . . being stored here.”
“That’s weird.” Tara moved closer to Jas and reached way up. They all stared at the tiny piece of hay she retrieved from behind his ear. “What kind of work were you doing out there?”
Katrina scratched her nose. FML indeed. “Jas, um, I mean, we had a mishap.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We were . . . making hay.” Was that the right word? Or phrase? Damn it, why had she never read any articles about farming.
“Interesting.”
“Katrina, why don’t you go shower?”
She grasped on to Jas’s suggestion like a lifeline. “Yes, let me do that. I’ll be quick.” She gave them both a wave and escaped, Doodle panting at her side as she accompanied her upstairs.
JAS WAITED UNTIL he heard Katrina close her bedroom door before he yanked the piece of hay out of his mother’s fingers and tossed it aside. “Damn it, Mom.”
Another woman might have scolded her son for cursing, but his free spirit mother had never been a conventional mom. Tara dimpled. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. You’re so cute when you blush.”
“You embarrassed her.”
“By implying you two were rolling around in the hay together? I don’t see why. Surely she knows I am aware my children might engage in sexual activity.”
“Mom.”
“Stop being so uptight, Jas, sex is a natural act.”
He huffed out a breath. “Let’s talk in the kitchen.” He didn’t particularly want to talk at all, but better to talk there than out here in the foyer, if his mom was going to go on and on about sex. Less of a chance of Katrina hearing them.
Tara rolled her eyes and spun around in a cloud of tiny bells on her anklets and a wave of her cotton skirt. His mother had always embraced the hippie aesthetic. When he was a child, he’d follow along behind her to bonfires and prayer circles, clutching her colorful loose clothes. She’d been so young when she’d had him, and until she’d met Gurjit, it had been her and him and his grandparents against the world. Sometimes Jas felt like they’d raised each other.
She was his number one weakness, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get annoyed as hell with her. “You can’t just barge in here. I thought you were an intruder,” he said, when they were in the kitchen and out of earshot of Katrina. The pipes squealed as the water turned on upstairs, and he relaxed.
Tara leaned against the counter. “Don’t be silly, who would break into the little house? It’s safe.”
Normally, that was true. Beyond the fact that it was a safe community, no one, not even a rebellious teen, would dare cross the Peach Prince of Yuba City. “I protect a rich woman, Mom. This is my job.”
“Oh right.” His mom shrugged, though, which told him she didn’t quite get it. “I was surprised when Bikram told me you were here.”
“He shouldn’t have told you.”
She ignored that. “Why are you here?”
His mom was paranoid and suspicious about the internet, convinced it was a tool used by capitalism to spy on her and sell her stuff she didn’t need. Which, given the ads that were frequently served to Jas, he couldn’t entirely defend against.
Tara grudgingly embraced only the parts of technology and the internet that could help her students. He didn’t want to freak her out by explaining how Katrina had gone viral. “Katrina needed to get away. There were some problems for her at home.”
“Oh no. Are they resolved now?”
Katrina had told him this morning that she and her roommates were plotting a counter campaign. He’d been too busy planning his hay/water/snowball fight to ask her how her talk with the other women had gone. “Soon, perhaps.”
“Good! How are your friends in L.A.? Are you keeping in touch with them while you’re here?”
“I’ve only been here for a couple of days, Mom.”
“Yes, I know. But you do have a problem, I’ve noticed, staying in touch with people. You should text them, tell them what’s going on with your life.”
Jas was mildly offended. He knew how to keep in touch with his friends.
Do you? You mostly only kept in touch with Lorne because she provides you with a service.
He rolled his shoulders, disliking how he could kind of see the truth in his mother’s gentle criticism. “I’ll text them more,” he allowed.
“How are you enjoying being home?” Tara asked.
Like he was home. Pleasure. Hurt. The joy of being in his family’s old home, his home.