Chapter Fifteen Barrett #2
“She cheats at Scrabble, apparently,” Dad filled in. “Your brother has a lot of feelings about it.”
I stood up. “I’m leaving.”
“Makes amazing cookies. Best I’ve ever had. He doesn’t like it when I eat those either.”
“She beat you in Scrabble, didn’t she, Barrett?” Griffin asked. “Hot damn, I wonder if she’d give me some tips.”
I wasn’t even sure where I was going, but once I was out of the room, I shoved my feet into my boots and snatched my coat before I could second-guess anything, marching into the garage as my chest heaved.
Was I so transparent?
No one had ever called me that in my entire life. It was always the opposite. Every inch of me felt hot, my family’s notice of the last thing I wanted anyone to notice ratcheting up my internal temperature by a solid fifteen degrees.
Next to the door was the big snow shovel I’d bought in the fall. We had a snowblower, but I’d always preferred the act of shoveling the driveway myself if I had the time and we weren’t talking a foot of snow.
Overnight, we’d accumulated a few inches, the flurries done by the time the sun rose.
It was as good of a distraction as any, even though I’d already worked out that morning.
I punched the button to open the garage door and peered out at the fresh blanket of snow, a deep sigh escaping my pursed lips, resulting in a visible cloud in the brisk air.
It was perfectly still, perfectly quiet, the branches of every tree coated in white. The sun was up, the cloud cover broken up enough that the snow glittered. I almost hated interrupting such a perfect moment.
Thump.
Scrape.
Thump.
“Son of a bitch, this should not be”—a pause, a grunt—“so fucking hard.”
I closed my eyes. Apparently Lily did not have those same feelings.
I walked a few steps until I could see the front of the house next door. She stood in the middle of the driveway, one squiggly line of cleared driveway behind her, a dinky little plastic shovel in her gloved hands.
With her face screwed up in a determined expression, she shoved the plastic edge down into the snow.
Thump.
Using her arms, she lifted the snow and dumped it straight ahead, then dropped her head back and groaned. “Why do people live here? This isn’t normal.”
Retreating back into the garage held no small amount of appeal, but the sight of her was too much to resist. Admitting that felt like a certain kind of victory, after days of finding myself unable to unscramble my thoughts when it came to her.
Maybe I couldn’t define Lily. Even worse, maybe it was a fool’s errand to indulge whatever I felt climbing through my chest when she came into my head. That I’d end up hurt and missing her when she inevitably left.
Every other part of my life felt like a struggle, but while I stood there watching her battle with the snow and curse up at the sky, the answer was surprisingly simple.
Go. Talk to her. Get to know her.
It didn’t have to be anything more than that, and it didn’t have to be perfect.
It was easy to take a step in her direction.
Then another. And another. Easy to admit to myself that this was what I’d wanted almost the entire time.
Sometimes fighting an inconvenient truth causes us more suffering than just living with the fallout of saying that truth out loud.
Of taking action to make it part of our reality.
And I should’ve known that my struggles, my inability to uproot her from my mind, stemmed from a different kind of truth. I was just a guy who didn’t remember how to approach a woman. Flirting was a language I didn’t speak, and I didn’t really have the inclination to try.
Her back was turned, attempting her inefficient snow-removal technique in a different direction, but at the sound of my boots crunching through the snow, she froze.
“Morning,” I said. My voice felt loud with the snow muffling everything around us.
Lily straightened, fidgeting briefly with the white knit hat on her head before she turned to face me. “Morning,” she said, eyes not meeting mine. “Do you often lurk around the corner like that?”
“Only on Thursdays,” I answered evenly.
She didn’t appreciate my attempt at humor. See earlier statement about flirting. Somehow I had a feeling that she’d jab me in the throat before she’d be receptive to any attempt in that department.
I peered out by the road, then lifted my chin toward the shovel, if you could call it that. “What’s that?”
She arched her dark eyebrows. “I believe some people call it a shovel,” she answered slowly.
I hummed, keeping my face even, holding out my hand and gesturing for her to give it over.
After the slightest pause, Lily sighed and passed it to me. I tilted my head as I stared at the red plastic handle. The shaft was made out of flimsy wood, and as I imagined saying that out loud, heat crawled up the back of my neck.
“This is not a shovel.” I held it out to her, but she didn’t move to retrieve it.
She looked at it in my hands. Looked at my face. Looked back at the shovel. “Then what the fuck is it?”
“May I?”
“Uh . . .”
I gripped it with both hands and snapped it clean in half.
“You broke my shovel!” she wailed.
“I’ll give you mine,” I told her. “That was a toy. Not any sort of effective tool for . . . whatever it is you were doing.”
“You know, you winter people are awfully judgy,” she huffed, taking the broken pieces and walking them over to the garbage bin.
“Look, I couldn’t find the real one, and all Scott had was this giant scary machine with a lot of buttons and knobs, and there’s no way in hell I’m gonna try to use that thing.
” She slammed the lid shut and wiped snow off her gloves as she walked back in my direction.
“I grabbed the first one I saw at the hardware store. It was cute.”
I gave her a look, and she rolled her eyes.
“If you say one stupid man thing about buying something because it’s cute . . .”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You’ve got that violent look in your eyes.”
“Of course I do. I paid five bucks for that thing.”
“Also a sign it wasn’t a real shovel.”
“I cannot tell you how glad I am you came all this way to say hi.” She crossed her arms, and with a mutinous tilt to her chin, she studied my face. “When are you leaving again?”
“I can help, if you want,” I said. Attraction spread like wildfire once you gave it the right conditions. What mine for Lily needed was something exactly like this: permission to grow.
“You broke my shovel,” she said, like I hadn’t heard the first time she said it.
“Better let me make it up to you, then.”
The offer had an unintended subtext to it, and her eyes flickered briefly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I glanced into the garage. Scott had the same machine I did. “I can teach you how to use the snowblower, if you want.”
“If that’s a euphemism for something else, you might want to work on your game,” she said dryly, but her glittering eyes gave her away. They flicked to my mouth and then away again.
Somehow I managed not to smile. “I think you know by now that I have no game to speak of.”
“Lord, if that ain’t the truth.”
“May I?” I said, gesturing to the open garage.
She blew out a harsh breath. “Is it hard?”
“Nope. It is loud, though. And your arms might feel a little wobbly when you’re done, if you’re not used to the feel of it.”
Lily shook her head, peering over my shoulder toward my house. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I can continue this conversation. My mind is too dirty.”
“What?” Then I thought of what we’d just said, and I cleared my throat. No wonder I was single. “Ah. Up to you, if you need to go somewhere and need the driveway cleared out.”
“No. Just . . . trying to get some energy out, and apparently exercise is good for you. Or whatever they say.”
I studied her face, a smile tugging at the edge of my lips. “They do say that,” I murmured.
“Does it ever snow during daylight here?” she asked, staring up at the sky. “I swear it doesn’t.”
The change in subject had me blinking. “Um, yeah. But I guess maybe not since you’ve been here. Why?”
She sucked in a deep breath, avoiding eye contact again. “Nothing.”
“You sure you don’t want me to show you?”
Lily glanced at the snowblower, then back at me. There was nothing to glean from her expression, the curtains carefully drawn again. “No, thanks. Me and big machines don’t really mix, no matter how hard and loud they are.”
I held her gaze. “You always react this way when someone tries to help you?”
“Yes,” she answered with a tight smile. “Especially your version of help, which is both unhelpful and mildly destructive.”
I cleared my throat and broke eye contact. “Right. Sorry.”
Just before I turned to go, she took a step closer, and I found myself holding my breath. “You’re not working today?”
“I am,” I said. “Just finished watching some film with my dad, but I’ve got stuff to do at the office later today.”
Her teeth dug into her bottom lip as she stared at the house, eventually giving a distracted nod.
Before she could say anything else, I turned and marched back into my own garage, staring at the line of shovels mounted on the wall. A couple were older, that I’d taken from our old house, even though we rarely needed them there. The brand-new one leaned against the wall next to the garage door.
I grabbed it and strode back over to Lily.
Her eyes widened as I approached, and her jaw went slack when I thrust the new shovel in her direction.
“Take it,” I said gruffly. “Use your legs when you lift the snow, and toss it farther out of your way.”
She blinked. “Oh.”
My cheeks felt like they were on fire, and her stunned eye contact only seemed to make it worse. I nodded, cursing my own ineptitude, which multiplied whenever she was around. Then I spun around and marched back home, wondering, not for the first time, if I’d ever get laid again.