Friday Mornings at Nine by Marilyn Brant

hear.
    She punched in the Austin phone number and waited for her son’s answering machine to pick up. “Hi, y’all. This is Ben. Sorry I missed ya. I’m probably at the library studying right now—” This was followed by a few loud guffaws from his roommate. “But if you leave me a message, I’ll call you back soon. Thanks for calling, and hook ’em, Horns!”
    Despite a pang of loneliness so strong it nearly made her double over, she couldn’t help but be flooded with warmth at his message. Her Benji (so he’d abbreviated himself and was “Ben” now?) was growing into a man. With a voice so deep, so adult. But best of all, he sounded so very happy with his independence. He was free from all parental constraints. The world was a playground of possibilities. And he knew it.
    She clicked off without leaving a message. She didn’t want to embarrass him with an unnecessary call from Mom when he came home from whatever he was really doing that night (one thing she knew for sure, it wasn’t studying at the library). He’d gotten into the habit of calling her on Sundays and, a few times in the past few weeks, when she’d gotten really lucky, he was inspired—or bored—and called her on a random weeknight. She lived for all of those calls.
    Meandering outside again, she picked up her Weed Extractor and began a full-fledged attack on those malicious thistles.
    “Listen up, you prickly bastards, I’m gonna get you. Don’t think you can hide from me, scratch me or infiltrate something I love and not feel the wrathful blade of my sword,” she informed the thorny weeds in her lowest and most vengeful tone. She brandished her tool, pointed a chipped index fingernail at the nearest thistle and added a threatening, “Prepare for battle.”
    Just as she lunged toward the first villainous clump of barbed leaves, she heard a masculine chuckle behind her and a voice rich and resonant saying, “En garde.”
    She swung around. Oooh. Young Neighbor Guy. Still in that sweaty T-shirt, too. “Uh, hi, Aaron.”
    “Tamara,” he said with an amused nod. “I’m afraid I’m interrupting your…your, um…” He motioned toward the garden.
    “Crusade against the Evil Thistle Empire,” she finished for him. She grinned and forced herself to project the kind of cool confidence a “woman of her type” (a circular description Jon once used to categorize her) was supposed to project.
    “Exactly. It sounded like you were gonna kick their spiny little asses,” he said, wiping a few drops of perspiration from his brow. She was about to lob back some flippant reply when his amused expression morphed into a compassionate one. “Frustrating day?”
    Before she could verbalize it, her body was saturated with a combination of emotions befitting a woman on a Big Day in her life, not a random Wednesday. A day, perhaps, of either her marriage or her divorce—but not a simple day of weeding. She knew she shouldn’t feel so affected by his concern. And, yet, she was quivering just beneath the surface, and she could honestly say:
    Hell, yes, she was frustrated.
    She missed her son.
    And her husband was such a callous, insensitive jerk sometimes. Why couldn’t he have been the one to ask her about her day instead of this (very) cute but uninvolved neighbor?
    She tried to sweep away every thought but the one of her own image—the veneer she’d polished until she all but sparkled with self-assurance. “Yep,” she answered with practiced carelessness. “Broke a nail fighting these suckers. They’re gonna pay.”
    He shrugged and laughed briefly with her, but his empathetic look still lingered, and she hated that he didn’t completely buy her charade.
    “Well, I saw you out here and had a favor to ask.” He paused as if waiting for permission.
    “Of course,” she prompted, her imagination running like a cheetah through the possibilities. Did he want to borrow a cup of sugar? Was he hoping she’d collect his mail while he was out