My dog is in love with a sheep.

Despite my worries, I can’t wait to show Diane. To share this moment with her. To make her laugh. She’s usually editing this time of day, so I take the back stairs two at a time to the bedroom. Her computer is there, but she’s not. Back downstairs, I follow the sounds of female voices to the parlor and slide the pocket door open a fraction.

Once again, I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing.

Ethel Bedd, the woman who in most of my childhood memories is sweating away in the kitchen or being run ragged by five kids, is wiping tears from her bright pink cheeks, and she—along with every other woman in the room—is howling with laughter. It takes me a moment to figure out what’s so funny, but when Colleen steps to the side to reveal Diane tangled up in what looks like an entire skein of yarn, I get it.

Diane’s got Gran’s knitting club under her spell.

Closing the door before anyone notices me, I head out the front door and down the lane to the barn. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so angry. Am I jealous? Maybe. But is it that I don’t want to share Diane in what little time we have together? Or is it that she so easily fits in around here, while I never have? Not wanting to think about either scenario, I grab the basketball that always sits in the barn office. It’s only when I head back outside that I notice the hoop is gone.

I need to throw things right now, and chucking a basketball at a backboard is definitely safer than anything else I could hurl at the moment. Ball on my hip, I search for Ethan, but he’s not in the barn or the equipment shed. The tractor’s parked, so he’s probably not out in the field. Hoping he’s moved the basketball hoop to his driveway, I continue down the lane. When I get to his house, I don’t see a hoop anywhere, so I bang on his front door until it opens.

Ethan rubs his eyes like I woke him up. “Where’s the fire?” he asks grumpily.

“Where’s the fucking basketball hoop?” I shoot back, matching him grump for grump.

“I took it down. There’s a new one in the barn by the side door. Haven’t had time to install it.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

Without further ado, I stomp back down the lane. After reading the installation instructions for the new hoop, I call my dog and teach him the words for wrench, tape measure, and bolt, just in case I drop something.

After I locate the studs and drill the pilot holes, it’s a little tricky to haul the mounting bracket up the ladder and screw in the lug bolts, but I manage it. I’m just trying to figure out if Gomer could help me get the backboard up the ladder, when a voice startles me from behind.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I catch my balance by grabbing the bracket and the top of the ladder before craning my neck to find Ethan’s scowling face. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Hanging off the side of the barn like an idiot. And why didn’t you put it where the old one was?”

Naturally, Ethan has to criticize the placement of the hoop.

“I thought it’d be better under the side roof. That way we can play when it’s raining.”

I nearly fall off the ladder again when he agrees with me, but I catch myself just in time. He helps me lift the backboard and then holds it in place—claiming that he’s stronger than me—while I screw in the bolts. We hang the net, and while Gomer helps me put away the tools, Ethan looks around with a frown on his face.

“I have no idea where the basketball went.”

“No problem. Gomer, fetch the basketball.” I have no idea where I left it either, but Gomer trots around the corner of the barn and returns nosing the ball in front of him.

Ethan jogs over to grab it. Gomer barks, miffed that he didn’t get to bring me the ball, so I yell, “Good boy! Come get the tool bag, Gomer.”

Happy to have another job, he gallops back, takes the handle in his jaws, and proudly returns the tools to the office.

Ethan shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Game of HORSE?”

“You’re on.”

It kills me that he barely even has to try to make his shots, just heaves the ball willy-nilly, while I have to go through my whole routine every time. Place my feet, do a mock arc with my hands, three dribbles, and then shoot.

“Overthinking it, like always,” Ethan mutters before making yet another easy basket.

Hmm. Overthinking. Is that because I’m autistic or I have OCD? “What happened to the old hoop, anyway? Did it get rusted or something?”

“It was headed that way,” Ethan says as he tosses me the ball. “And I realized I could use it to make a grate for the fire pit Lia asked me to put in.”

“That’s an impressive reuse.” Feet, arc, dribble, shoot.

I can’t shoot a fucking basketball without going through a ritual.

A grunt from Ethan snags my attention, but his expression’s as unreadable as always. “Thanks.”

“You should’ve gone to school for engineering, Ethan.”

He narrows his eyes at me, like he thinks I’m making fun of him. “Right.”

“I mean it. You’re, like, a mechanical genius. That thing you made to plant the strawberry starts? And the changes you made to Gran’s basement greenhouse so she can use it all year round? Diane told me how you rigged a clamp so Gran could film Baabara from above. I mean, at the very least you could take some courses at the community college. You could learn how to patent and sell your inventions.”

“Like I have time to get to Climax every day.”

“From what I heard, you’re getting to climax every damn night,” I mutter, but he just laughs.

“You’re just jealous.”

No way am I confessing that I’m getting some too, so I circle back to my original point. “There are night classes. Designed for working people.”

He passes the ball to me, hard. “Sam, I was never like you. Sitting in a classroom just made my brain clog up. I figure things out when I’m moving. Driving a tractor, digging in the dirt, mending a fence, even shoveling shit. That’s when ideas come. That’s how I tease out the solution to a problem.”

I’m about to point out that there are accommodations for non-traditional learners, but the irony of it stops me. Biting my tongue, I take my shot, which bounces off the rim. Gomer races for it and noses it back to Ethan.

“Anyway,” Ethan continues after taking his own shot, which drops in effortlessly. “I already looked into patents. You can learn anything on YouTube these days. I might file one for my strawberry toboggan.”

“That’s a good idea,” I say, meaning it, as I run after the ball, Gomer chasing me.

Just as I’m lining up to shoot, Ethan says, “You know the other way I learned? From listening to Pop and Grandad. I know you think they were idiots, but⁠—”

“I didn’t say that.” I’m too irritated to shoot now, so I dribble a few more times.

“Well, they were old-fashioned in their thinking,” Ethan says.

I fumble the ball, I’m so surprised at this admission, but I don’t look at him as he continues.

“And I’ll allow that they were wrong about some stuff. But they were right about the basics. The… What’s that word? Tenets.”

I lift a pinky finger and employ the fake British accent we always employ when someone uses a big vocab word or ridiculously correct grammar. “Oooh, fancy word.”

“Shut up and give me the ball,” he says. “I’m trying to agree with you.”