“She scratches.”

“But she doesn’t bite.” Zachary grinned and watched Tyler pay a little too much attention to his drink. “You like her.”

“She’s twenty-four.”

“So?”

“I also just got finished with a divorce.”

Zachary nodded. “While that is a solid argument, let me counter with, how long have you actually been done with the marriage?”

Tyler’s water really was fascinating. “I don’t like to think about that.”

“We’ll file it under ‘a long damn time’, then.” Zachary gave Tyler an exasperated look. “She was a horrible woman from the start.”

Tyler’s head snapped up. “She was *not*.”

“She’s a materialistic, money-grubbing, pain in the ass.” Zachary didn’t bother to look falsely apologetic. “She always has been.” He shrugged and sipped his water. “I don’t know what you saw in her.”

“She was kind when I met her.”

“Tyler, man, she was scraping a puppy off the sidewalk because she’d just *hit* it. She was drunk when you met her.”

“Maybe I should have kept her that way.”

Zachary leaned across the table so that only Tyler could hear him. “Look, if you want to ask my assistant out to dinner, go right ahead. I’m not going to sit here and damn you to hell for ‘corrupting’ her or some other bullshit. She’s a grown woman, she can make her own decisions.”

“I don’t want to date her!” Tyler realized, from the surprised look that the waitress gave him, that he may have said that a little too loudly.

The waitress held up the water pitcher. “More water?” She sounded neutral, but she was obviously uncomfortable.

Tyler didn’t look at her when he handed her his glass. “Thank you.”

*

When Precocious got home that night, she found a note from Linda saying she had run to the art supply store and that her mother had called. Precocious kicked off her shoes and grabbed the phone off the counter. She pulled away quickly when she got paint on her hand. “Thanks, Linda.” She smiled to herself and wiped the paint off her hand, then wiped down the phone. The last known number for her mother was still in the speed dial, and she pressed the memory button to dial it.

“Warm and Comfy Commune.”

Precocious rolled her eyes at the title of the place but made her voice honestly pleasant. “This is Precocious Grant, is my mother around?”

“You’re Sally’s daughter, right?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

There was a chuckle. “Oh, don’t call me ‘ma’am’. I’m Timber.”

~Of course you are, you hippie.~ “All right, Timber.”

“Let me find your mother.”

Precocious almost laughed when the hold music was a medley from ‘Hair’. She hummed along with a few bars while she grabbed a sponge and wiped paint off the counters. She wondered idly what Linda had been doing that had resulted in her more or less smearing paint all over the kitchen.

“Precocious?”

“Hi, Mom.” Precocious dropped the sponge in the sink and got right to the point. “Chad’s still calling.”

“Have you blown a whistle into the phone?”

“It didn’t work.” Precocious could see her mother in her mind’s eye and could picture her in an open room with lots of natural light and her long gray hair up in a wispy ponytail. She was probably wearing a long, neutral colored dress and sandals. “He’s not calling back when I hang up on him, but he won’t stop calling.”

“Have you changed your phone number, yet?”

“I changed it two weeks ago, and it’s unlisted.” Precocious listened to her mother sigh. “And it’s not considered stalking because he’s staying away. And it’s not harassment because he hangs up and doesn’t call me back.”

“Have you talked to the police again?”

“No. I talked to them three days ago. They say I still don’t have enough.”

“Have you kicked him in the shins?”

Precocious laughed, but it was humorless. “Knowing the luck I’m running, I’d get arrested for assault.” She paced the kitchen and tried a deep breath to clear her head. “Linda left a note that said you called. Everything okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine, Sweetie. I got a call from your father yesterday, and he was looking for your new phone number since your old one isn’t in service anymore. I was just going to let you know that he’s trying to say hello.”

“How is he?” Precocious tried to think back to the last time she had spoken to her father. It had been, at her best guess, almost four months. “Did he ever get that promotion?”

“I have no idea. I forgot to ask.”

Precocious could practically see the somewhat flighty hand-shaking that she knew her mother did when she realized she had forgotten to ask after something. “I’ll find out for you. I’m sure he’ll be around in the next few days.”

“You do that.” Sally’s voice suddenly changed from motherly-sweet to a little conniving. “And who is this Tyler that Linda mentioned to me?”

“No one.” Precocious walked from the kitchen to the living room and sat on the couch. “He’s an old friend of Zachary’s, and we ran into him at Heart Attack the other night. I bought him a burger.”

“And?”

“And nothing, Mom. He just came back into town after a divorce, and we ran into each other at the same place by chance. I bought him a burger.” Precocious sighed in exasperation and rolled her eyes. “And before you start going on about how nothing happens by chance, remember that I don’t believe in that particular cracked theory.”

“It is not a cracked theory.” Sally’s tone was one of patient annoyance. “I wasn’t even going to argue the ‘nothing by chance’ card, although, you should wonder why you brought it up in the first place.”

“Because my mother is a crazed hippie who believes in Tarot and new age stuff.”

“Hey, now, you can read Tarot.”

Precocious couldn’t disagree. “I was never any *good* at it.”

“You read it to the cats. Cats don’t listen to anyone or anything. Not even the power in the cards.”

“How can you deliver a sentence like that and not doubt your own sanity?” Precocious could practically see her mother shrug.

“I don’t know, honey, but I can.” There was a sudden scuffling noise on the other end of the line. “Precocious, I have to go. It looks like the baby chicks got out of their box. Give my love to Lucy.”

“I will. Bye, Mom.” Precocious walked back to the kitchen to hang up the phone and paused at the kitchen table to let Lucy out of her cage. “Mom says hi.” Lucy skittered away from Precocious and headed straight for her food bowl. “I’ll tell her you returned the greetings.” Precocious heard the front door open and walked to the foyer. Linda stood in the doorway trying to manhandle a half-dozen bags into the living room. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Linda gave a solid yank and the bags tumbled through the door. “Are you home early?”

“You’re running late.” Precocious grabbed a couple of the bags from Linda and followed her to the studio. “How’d you get paint all over the kitchen?”

“I have no idea.” Linda set the bags down and started rummaging through them. “Did you call your mom?”

“Yeah. Dad’s trying to track me down. She said you mentioned Tyler to her.”

“Did I? I don’t remember doing that.” Linda pulled a six-pack of silver spray paint from the bag and set it aside.

“You have to come out of her fume-induced haze when the phone rings. You say things you shouldn’t say.”

“Don’t I know it.” Linda looked up from the bags. “I don’t think I told her anything about Tyler other than you thought he was attractive.”

Precocious shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. For a woman who’s all about empowerment, she’s certainly interested in the idea of my settling down as quickly as possible.”

“I think all mom’s are like that. My mother is still fully convinced that I’m going to get my act together and find a ‘real’ job.” Linda rolled her eyes. “I can’t get her to understand that I’m making more per painting than I am at any ‘real’ job I could find.”

“Have you shown her the receipts?”

“She doesn’t believe them.”

Precocious shook her head and backed out of the studio. “Well, just remind her that my forgery attempts have always been bad, and that you can’t forge anything because nothing is abstract enough.”

“Oh, ha.” Linda followed Precocious out of the studio and into the kitchen. She hopped up on the counter and watched Precocious start throwing things together for dinner. “So, are you going to ask him out?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because Chad is still calling me. He called me at work today. I’m not going to ask a guy out when I know Chad is still trying to push my buttons.” Precocious filled a pot with water and put it on the stove to heat. “And before you say anything, I’m well aware that not dating because Chad is trying to keep tabs on me is just the kind of thing he’s hoping I’ll do. I’m working on it.”

“You need to work on it by asking someone out.” Linda shifted on the counter so that Precocious could get into the cupboard behind her. “And you need to do it soon. If you hold off much longer you’re going to start believing the line you just fed me, and then you really *won’t* ask anyone out.”

“I know.” Precocious made a disgusted face and dug into the fridge for vegetables. “I can’t believe I’m letting him play me like this. It’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Linda shrugged. “So why not ask Tyler out? He’s good-looking. He seems nice enough, and considering he just got his ass dropped by his wife, you’re pretty much assured that it won’t go anywhere.”

“Valid arguments, but they’re the wrong ones. I just spent months with a guy when I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. I’m tired of it. I’d like to have a relationship that has a chance to grow past sex and weirdness.”

Linda made a cooing noise like she was looking at a particularly cute baby or puppy. “Looking for a white picket fence and two point five dogs?”

“You’ve met my mother, right?”

“Okay, fine, a neon orange picket fence, four dogs, a cow, and Lucy.”

Precocious shook her head and cut up potatoes into the pot on the stove. “I really don’t know what I want. I just know that it’s not a pointless relationship that ends when the sex gets bad.” She paused in slicing up the potato and considered her last sentence. “Actually, I’d like a relationship where the sex *didn’t* go bad. I don’t think I’ve had one.”

“I don’t think I have, either.” Linda looked up at the small cabinets above the sink as she considered her past relationships. “Well, it never went bad with Michael. Of course, he beat the shit out of me for not doing the dishes after our first romantic dinner, so I don’t think that counts.”

“One does cancel out the other.” Precocious sliced the last of the potatoes and dropped the knife into the sink. “I’ve never gotten the hell beaten out of me, but I think Chad was on the way.”

“Trust me, he was.” Linda’s face hardened as she remembered. “He would have been a slow burn kind of guy, though. Michael just kind of *snapped* one night. Chad probably would have started with a friendly shove or something before gearing up to really let you have it.”

Precocious wanted very badly to change the topic of conversation. She remembered what Linda had looked like when she’d found her at the hospital. She remembered what Linda had sounded like, voice raw from screaming, when she’d talked. She did not like to remember that neither of them had ever had particularly good taste in men. “What’d you paint today?”

If Linda caught the very obvious change in subject, she didn’t say anything. “I think it’s a representation of my female ways.”

“Lots of red?”

“Two tubes of it. It looks vaguely like a vulva.”

“Careful the estate of Georgia O’Keefe doesn’t find out.”

Linda chuckled. “I don’t think they’d mind. It’s still under debate whether Georgia O’Keefe meant for her paintings to look like flowery vaginas.”

“Do you think that’s where the tampon companies got the stupid idea to scent everything with ‘fresh scent’ and ‘summer breeze’?”

“I have no idea.” Linda hopped off the counter and opened the fridge to find something to drink. “The whole thing is preposterous, anyway.”

Precocious didn’t bother agreeing. They were into an age-old conversation that they had whenever they needed to distract themselves or were on their periods. “They could at least make them smell like something good. Why not ‘chocolate sprinkle’ tampons?”

“Because there are people out there who would try to eat them during the PMS craving period. It would end badly.” Linda grabbed a bottle of water as a thought hit her. “Or, maybe not. They could eat the tampon, and it could absorb some of the water from the bloating.”

Precocious laughed. “Oh, man, I’m going to block the last few sentences that you just said from my head. That’s too disturbing for words.” She grabbed a handful of carrots and started cutting them into the pot. “Change the subject now, please.”

“Sure. When are you asking Tyler out?”

“I didn’t mean change it *back* to what we *were* talking about.”

“You didn’t specify. Sorry.” Linda hardly sounded sorry. “But I think you need to pick a day to ask him to dinner so that I can stop pestering you about it. I have other things to worry about, you know. Some of us make art on a deadline for a living.”

Precocious rolled her eyes. “You’re obnoxious.”

“And you’re indecisive. Pick a date.” Linda watched Precocious finish cutting up the carrots. “Pick a freakin’ date.”

Precocious glanced at the calendar on the wall. “Your exhibition is in a week?”

“Yeah.”

“I could invite him to that.”

Linda nodded. “Very good. Don’t forget to warn him that I paint abstracts about my girly bits. I wouldn’t want him to find out mine look better than yours.”

“Jesus Christ. It’s a date to your crazy art exhibition. It’s not first-date sex.”

“As far as you know.” Linda grinned at the look Precocious gave her. “He’s cute. He’s a good conversationalist. He likes the double-decker burgers. Maybe he’s good in bed. It couldn’t hurt.”

“I don’t need to find out on the first date.”

“Says you.”

“I have to run it by Zachary in the first place. He’s known Tyler for a long time, and I don’t feel right about asking him out before Zachary finds out that I might. It would be rude.”

“Like you care about being rude.”

Precocious pointed her knife at Linda. “The guy signs my very healthy paycheck every two weeks. I do so care about being rude.” She finished with the carrots and picked up the celery. “What if he says no?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just go uber-girl on me and ask such a stupid question. If he says no, he says no. They’ll be plenty of starving artists with multiple piercings looking for action at the show. I’ll set you up.”

“Oh, gee, when you put it that way, how can a girl say no?” Precocious tossed a bit of celery at Linda and gestured to the freezer. “You want to get the bread out and throw it in the microwave to defrost? It’ll go good with the soup.”

“Got it.” Linda opened the freezer and retrieved the bread. She tossed it into the microwave, set the timer for ten minutes, and walked over to sit at the table in the far end of the living room that served as the dinette. “So, if he’s coming to the exhibition in a week, you’ll want to ask him out a few days in advance so that he’ll have time to pencil you into his schedule.”

“Thank you, Helen Gurley Brown. Gee, how could I have figured it out for myself without such a “Cosmo”-esque bit of advice?”

Linda balled up a napkin and threw it at Precocious. It landed in the soup pot. “Leave it there. It’ll be good for the taste. And stop being an ass.”