Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN GREG ASKED if he could change his Thursday shift for Friday, Ezra only texted back, “No.”
Greg was at the machine shop today. He’d already cleared his Friday schedule on the grounds that Ezra would swap with him, since Ezra always did. This time, thought, it was just, “No,” and nothing more. Nothing to argue with, there.
Greg had a reasonable plan, he’d thought. Swap his Thursday shift for Friday, and he’d be working the night when Shelly was delivering. Now that they had Rowan sorted out, he had no more excuses to talk to her. He didn’t need an excuse to talk to her if they were working, though, and Shelly did the Friday night deliveries.
It was such a perfect solution that Greg refused to give up on it. “Why not?”
Ezra replied, “I’m not blind. I know you’re hitting on my sister.”
Greg frowned at his phone. Ezra never was one to pull punches, but even so, this was more than a bit of a leap. Greg started typing something to the effect of, “What?” when Ezra’s next text arrived.
“This is not going to end well. You and she will crash and burn in a matter of weeks, and I don’t need the hassle of dealing with you two afterward. You’re going to make me take sides. Lacey and I will be wrangling the schedule to keep you apart. So—no.”
Greg backed up over his own typing. Where to go from here?
Greg replied, “Shelly’s an adult who makes her own decisions.”
Ezra texted, “Agreed. But she’s also my sister, and I’m going to protect her from those decisions. No shift change.”
Ezra and Shelly both had the same zero-to-sixty responses, but Greg had gotten pretty good at de-escalating them. “I wouldn’t hurt Shelly. She’s rock solid and level-headed.”
Ezra replied, “You’re closer to me than my brothers, so pay attention. You’d hurt her by being careless, and you’d never even know you did it.”
Greg replied, “Cold.”
Ezra sent back a thumbs up.
A moment after, “Pizza.”
Greg went back to work on the purchase orders, punching numbers on the keyboard harder than he had to. “Careless.” Ezra must have a different definition of that word because Greg was not, as it turned out, sloppy about details. It’d be one thing if Ezra walked into Loveless half the time to find the door unlocked and flour all over the equipment. Greg didn’t leave his key stuck in the door. He didn’t get a takeout coffee and forget it on top of his car. He’d never lost a phone.
You could also break it down as care-less, as if Greg didn’t care about anything. Again, not true. Hadn’t he shown he cared about Rowan? He cared about Loveless Pizza, which for years had seemed like the only thing Ezra cared about. Ezra cared about Shelly, of course, but Greg cared about her, too.
He broke his invoicing rhythm to type, “Careless how?”
Also, that “you’d never know you did it” sounded ominous, as though Greg tromped across the Maine landscape leaving a trail of bloodied hearts in his wake. He’d had a few girlfriends, sure, but they’d broken up amicably. It always came out of the blue, a total surprise, as if one day each had awakened and thought, “Okay, end of chapter. Send invoice. Close file.”
Greg sent an invoice and closed the file, then opened the next.
You know, if Ezra refused to let Greg work with Shelly on Friday, he would order a pizza and have her deliver it. It would have to be to the shop, though. His house was just outside the delivery zone.
So there.
Or…and this was more to the point…Greg could go to Loveless and hang out there because it was a public location, and he’d see Shelly that way.
Either they’d gotten a bunch of orders at once or Ezra was ransacking his brain for ways Greg was careless. Eventually, though, he sent an answer. “Your last two girlfriends dumped you because you never paid attention.”
Greg sent back, “Not true.”
“Entirely true. You pride yourself on being easy-going, so whenever they brought up an issue, you blew them off.”
Ezra hadn’t been there, so Ezra wouldn’t know. He was just guessing based on Greg having had no idea it was coming.
Anyhow, better to be easy-going than always turning everything into a catastrophe. Ezra always had his eyes wide for danger.
So, for that matter, did Shelly. If he could do anything for her, he would love to be able to dial her down from a constant 10 to maybe a five or a six. Lower her expectation of doom and danger. Like with Rowan: she assumed something like he was being trafficked and they’d need a SWAT team to kick down his apartment door, and instead she’d only needed to call the school and get someone to talk to him.
Living life like that must be so stressful. Most of the time, things worked out fine.
Greg finally replied with, “I disagree.”
Ezra replied, “Of course. But if you get together with Shelly, you’re going to screw things up by Valentine’s Day.”
That was uncalled for. “I would never.”
“It’s a whole month away,” Ezra sent. “No way you’d last that long. She’s not going to let you ignore her.”
Which, since Greg had no intention of ignoring her, wouldn’t be a problem. “I like that she stands up for herself.”
“Oh, she will.” Ezra texted a wicked smiling face. “Then I’ll have to schedule you on opposite shifts for the rest of eternity.”
Greg didn’t reply. Ezra sent, “Just because we sell loveless pizzas on Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean we need an actual broken-up couple to top them with spite and regret.”
Yes, that was perfectly rational. Greg sent, “What if I were able to keep her happy until Valentine’s Day? I bet I can do it.”
Ezra replied, “I won’t take that bet. I know your track record.”
First off, there was nothing wrong with Greg’s track record. Secondly, Ezra was talking which meant Ezra was teetering. If Ezra accepted the bet, that allowed Greg free access to Shelly for the next month.
And third—Shelly was a grown adult who wasn’t going to be begging her brother for permission to hang around with her coworker. That made it just a matter of getting Ezra out of the way.
Ezra replied, “Don’t mess up her life.”
Ezra couldn’t really mean that. He’d back off once he saw how happy Shelly could be.
Back to sending invoices, then. If Greg couldn’t be getting together with Shelly this Friday, then at least some local businesses ought to be getting together their bank accounts with the machine shop’s.
And then, from Ezra: “Did you promise a half price pizza to a kid named Rowan?”
The instant the phone screen lit up with that, Greg’s heart stuttered. “He came back?”
Ezra replied, “Says you promised some kids a pizza if they brought him, so he came solo to get a pizza for bringing himself.”
Greg sent, “He likes ham and pineapple, and you need to get Shelly there right now. If not, I’ll come.”
Ezra texted, “Interesting.”
Followed by, “He doesn’t actually like pineapple.”
Greg rolled his eyes.
Loveless was fifteen minutes from the machine shop. Greg could get there before the kid left. But should he? Would that just scare Rowan off? What should Ezra ask the kid? Should he warn him to look out for signs that the kid was hungry or neglected?
A text came from Shelly: “HE’S HERE!!!”
Greg laughed. He didn’t have to go after all.
He texted, “Go get ‘em.”
Nothing came for a while, as Greg expected. Shelly would talk to Rowan while Ezra made the kid’s pizza. Shelly would feel better because everything was fine, and the school would have intervened by now. All that for half the price of a ham and pineapple pizza, or whatever the kid actually liked.
Plus, no matter what Ezra said, Greg could get Shelly talking about how she’d helped. Her eyes would light up, and she’d get animated about all the possibilities. Greg could keep her talking, and it would work out. It always did.
Greg hadn’t quite hit the bottom of the stack of invoices (he was past the “second notice” invoices and into the “we’re about to take legal action” letters that went out in pink envelopes) when Shelly replied. “He says he’s fine, but I don’t believe him.”
Greg texted, “Why not?”
She sent, “More later, but we gave him free pizza, and I’ve got a bit more information. I’ve got a delivery now. Talk to you later.”
He sent a thumbs up.
Two minutes hadn’t passed before Ezra sent, “You’re impossible. Now Shelly’s on my back.”
Greg texted, “About the kid?”
“I don’t even know what’s going on with the kid. No, about you.”
Greg sent a question mark.
Ezra replied, “She asked me to put her on for Thursday night. I should just have swapped you to Friday, and then put her on Thursday. I outsmarted myself.”
Greg texted, “Ooh, Shelly would be mad,” and as he sent it, Ezra’s text arrived, saying, “Shelly would have been so mad.”
Hah. See, he did know her well.
Ezra sent a laughing emoji.
Greg replied, “Put me on for Friday. I’ll bet you a tank of gas that I don’t screw things up before Valentine’s Day. You get out of the way, and I’ll treat her well, and then you fill up my tank.”
Ezra replied, “I’m going to win this because you can’t pay attention for that long, plus I have a sixteen gallon tank and yours is only twelve.”
Greg sent, “It could be a hundred gallons, and it wouldn’t matter. I’m not going to lose.”
Ezra added, “You don’t have to tell me to stay out of this because you’re going to crash and burn all on your own.”
A moment later, “Plus, I’ve already warned her about you.”
Greg sent, “Thanks.”
“No problem. You’re on for Friday, and may God have mercy on your soul.”