Elsie
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Emails, Andrew?” I muttered under my breath, staring at my laptop screen. “Seriously?”
Apparently, my lack of response to his phone calls, texts, and Facebook messages didn’t alert him to the fact that I wasn’t quite in the mood to catch up with my former fiance, just yet.
I closed out of my email and switched over to the tab I’d been writing in. My personally imposed deadline was closing in on me, which was the only thing forcing me to work tirelessly on my manuscript.
Once the three months were over, I’d cut my losses and move onto the next phase of my remodeling my life plan. It wasn’t like I had any other choice, really. I’d be out of money for rent by then, anyway.
But God, did I want to at least finish this before I left. This was the only thing I was letting myself do for me, and if I couldn’t accomplish that, then it would feel like I’d given up on myself and my dreams.
With the date on the calendar surging me forward, and a cup of disgustingly decent instant coffee to caffeinate me, I sat down at the kitchen table to write.
When I’d left Ellie and Hugh, they’d been in the middle of one of their arguments. They had them a lot, mostly because they were the most exciting part to write about.
I could get into each character’s headspace pretty easily, figure out the driving force behind each of them. Their dialogue came naturally, their banter second-nature.
I laughed as they got closer and closer to each other’s faces, both adamant on standing their ground against each other.
And then he leaned his head in and kissed her—
“Wait, what?” I said, fingers pausing as I stared at the words I’d just written.
Backspace. Backspace. Backspace.
“Okay, that was weird,” I muttered, trying to figure out what would possess me to even consider that for them.
I shook the thought of it out of my head, fingers coming down against the keyboard to write them off in a different direction at the same moment a faint thud came from outside.
I paused my fingers, listening intently, but all was quiet.
Resuming position, I typed another sentence right as the noise started back up again.
Once more, I ceased typing, trying to tune into what the hell was making the thudding noise in the distance.
I knew it wasn’t Creamsicle wreaking havoc somewhere, because he was curled up on the chair beside me.
But infuriatingly, the noise stopped once more in sync with my own pause.
I waited a moment, then two, and slowly brought my fingers down to the keyboard to type, snatching them away right before they hit the keys, at the very moment the noise picked back up again.
“Aha!” I jumped to my feet in victory before running to the kitchen door. “I knew I heard something. Trying to make me feel crazy.”
I threw open the door, taking the time to shrug on a hoodie and slippers before running out to the yard to investigate the noise.
The source became immediately evident.
“I should’ve guessed.” I laughed dryly at the sight of Will scaling the side of my house. “Can I ask why you’re on a ladder?”
When he turned to look down at me, the headlamp strapped to his forehead nearly blinded me.
“Geez.” I threw a hand up, squinting at its brightness. “Don’t mind my eyes. Not like I need them for life or anything.”
“Go back inside,” he said before turning back to my roof. “It’s cold out.”
“Right,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “Which is why I’m wondering what you’re doing out here in the dark like a creep?”
“I’m cleaning your gutters.”
“You’re cleaning my—what?” I nearly stuttered at the absurdity of it all.
“They’re pretty backed up,” he said. “I figured I should take care of it before it gets too bad.”
“Isn’t that a job for, I don’t know, the daylight hours?”
Eight o’clock wasn’t technically late, but with New England fall being cursed by a 5:00 PM sunset, it had already been dark for hours.
And it just didn’t seem safe.
I watched Will’s steady form as he pulled out leaves and debris and wondered if there was more going on with him than just having an urge to clean out my gutters on a cold November night.
“Where did you even get a ladder?” I asked him, trying to distract myself from how high up he was. “Is that the one I found in the shed?”
“No,” he said, gloved hand pulling out a handful of gunk from the gutters. “I always keep one in the back of the truck.”
I took a step closer, not wanting to distract him, but feeling a strange anxiety at the thought of him working up there in the dark, when he could slip or fall or…
“Will, please get down from there right now!” My words came out in a hurried rush, sounding panicked even to my own ears.
“I’m fine, Els,” he said. “Go back inside.”
But it was clear from the cadence of his voice that he was not, in fact, ‘fine.’ If anything, he sounded like he was barely suppressing rage.
At me? I doubted it. It wasn’t like I’d filled Mr. Briggs’s gutters with leaves and forced Will to come out here and clean them.
No, there was something deeper going on, and I intended to find out what.
But Will could be as stubborn as I was, so I formulated a plan that would make it impossible for him to ignore me.
I ran back inside, grabbed the key I kept in a drawer, and headed straight for the shed. Inside, past cobwebs and an overwhelming smell of must, I dragged out the ladder I had found in there the first day.
It was heavier than I expected, but I managed to throw it up against the house, right beside Will’s.
“Elsie,” Will warned when he saw what I was doing. “Don’t you dare—Elsie, get off the damn ladder right now.”
I climbed up, testing its stability while I was still close enough to the ground for a fall to be bearable. It seemed sturdy enough, so I continued the ascent, eyes focused only on my own movements.
“Jesus, you’re going to kill me,” he breathed out, and I was vaguely aware of him climbing down.
“Not fair,” I called out, pausing midway. “I went through all this trouble to talk to you, and you’re going down now?”
He jumped off his ladder and held firmly onto mine, a lethality creeping into his voice as he ordered me to climb down.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong if I come down?”
“We’re not debating this,” he said. “Just climb down. Carefully.”
“Geez.” I grinned down at him. “Relax, Will. I’m not doing anything you weren’t doing yourself.”
“I’ve been on a ladder since I was ten years old.” He seethed. “And I can bet you’ve never stepped foot on one in your life. Now, get down.”
“Bossy,” I remarked, climbing down. “I like it.”
“That’s it,” he said. “Easy.”
And then, right as I neared the bottom, I felt his hands at my waist, holding me steady as I made the last of the descent.
I froze, unaccustomed to his touch, feeling like a fall-risk now from the sudden dizziness it evoked.
“Thanks,” I breathed, turning my head to look at him. His face was inches from mine. Close enough that I could’ve leaned in and kissed him, if I thought he were the type of person who wouldn’t mind that.
But he was Will, grumpy and solitary, and I was the girl who was only passing by as a short blip in his life, so I sucked in a breath and let him guide me off the ladder instead.
I’d climbed down expecting his fury, but found only relief against an uncharacteristically pale face.
“Wait, did I actually scare you?”
“What the hell do you think? You could’ve broken your neck.” He ran a hand over his face, and for a second I felt bad. I wanted to piss him off, not terrify him, but I couldn’t deny the warmth that bloomed in my chest at the thought that he cared about me getting hurt.
Or just didn’t want you to die. That’s the bare minimum, Elsie. Get a grip.
“And you’re in slippers.” He looked down at my feet in horror. “Jesus, Elsie. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“I guess I didn’t really think about it,” I admitted.
“That’s the problem! You don’t think through anything. You can’t just run headfirst into a situation, wing it, and expect everything to be okay! That’s not how life works.”
I winced, feeling his words deeper than he could know.
That had always been my problem, hadn’t it? My whole life, I’d been too impulsive, too unstructured, too…much.
I just didn’t think someone who had known me for such a short time could already see all my shortcomings.
I mean, here I was in Colbridge, no plan other than my stupid goal of writing a novel. I showed up with minimal savings, and nothing but a dream to sustain me in an unfamiliar town.
I turned, ready to go inside and reevaluate all of my life choices when his hand shot out and grabbed my shoulder, forcing me into place.
“Wait.” His hand shot out, clamping down on my shoulder. “Elsie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No, you’re right,” I told him, barely able to meet his eyes. “I don’t think things through. That’s what Andrew said, too.”
“Andrew?”
“My ex—” fiance. The word almost tumbled out. But that would be more humiliating to admit. That I’d had a future secured, I had a plan, until he decided I wasn’t good enough.
So, I just left it at that.
“Ah.” Will nodded, apparently understanding anyway.
“Anyway, thanks for…that.” I glanced up at the half-finished gutters. “But really, you don’t have to worry about it. I’ll call someone if it’s that important to you.”
“Elsie, please don’t walk away.” He followed me as I moved toward the steps leading up to the side door. “I’m sorry.”
“You already said that.”
“I didn’t mean it. I was just—” He paused, long enough to make me turn to see the anguish written on his face. “I was worried about you. You scared me and I lashed out. I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.”
And then, he collapsed into a sitting position right there on the steps, dropping his head into his hands.
“I’ve just had a really shitty night.”
I shifted, hyper-aware of the fact that I was in pajamas before I came to sit down beside him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He laughed dryly.
“No, but I feel like you won’t accept that answer. Will you?”
“You know me well, William.” I smiled.
“I had dinner at my parents’, and it went shittier than usual, if you can imagine.”