Chapter 10
The beer in my hand is going warm, which tells you how long I’ve been sitting here.
The common room at the Stocking is quiet in that particular way that only happens when most of the residents are out—fridge humming down the hall, a clock ticking somewhere I’ve never bothered to find, and the ceiling fan clicking on its lowest setting, barely stirring the July heat.
I haven’t taken a sip in maybe twenty minutes.
The can is sweating a ring onto the coffee table, one of those IKEA hand-me-downs with the wobbly leg I’ve been meaning to fix for a year.
The ring is getting bigger, slow and patient, and I can’t bring myself to wipe it or move the can or do anything about it at all.
Maddie’s face keeps replaying. Not her words, not the fight…her face, right at the end, when I asked What about loving me? and she just... didn’t answer. Her jaw went tight, her eyes went somewhere else, and the silence filled the whole kitchen like floodwater. I left before the silence drowned me.
My thumb taps the can. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound bounces off the empty room. The clock keeps ticking. My jaw aches from clenching it.
“Rough night?”
Roz drops into the armchair across from me, pulling one leg under her.
She’s got her own drink, something clear with lime, and doesn’t bother with the fake casual, the oh-I-didn’t-notice-you-sitting-here-with-your-soul-leaking-out-your-ears routine.
That’s Roz. She’s lived upstairs for four years and has never once pretended not to see what’s right in front of her.
“Something like that,” I say.
She nods, takes a sip, but doesn’t push.
Dev appears in the doorway a minute later, one shoulder propped against the frame, arms crossed. Their hair is buzzed close to their scalp, and they’ve got that look, the one that says they’re about to say exactly what they think and they’ve already decided it’s worth the fallout.
“You’ve been asking her to plant herself while you keep one boot out the door,” Dev says. Not a question. A fact, delivered with the precision of someone who’s been watching the whole slow-motion train wreck from the cheap seats.
I don’t brush them off. I don’t argue. Something about the way they’re standing there, not even fully in the room, like they’re ready to retreat if I snap—but they said it anyway.
Dev drifts into the room and parks themselves on the arm of Roz’s chair, and the three of us sit in a triangle of mismatched furniture while the house creaks around us.
Roz sets her glass on her knee. “Look,” she says, gentle but not soft. “Someone who’s spent years feeling like a guest somewhere doesn’t need to be convinced to stay. They need proof they won’t be left.”
My throat tightens. I keep my eyes on the floor.
“The Burlington job,” she continues, “it’s not just bad timing to her. It’s evidence. It’s you showing her you can disappear whenever things get complicated.”
“That’s not—” I start, and then stop, because what am I going to say? That’s not true? The words die in my mouth.
Dev leans forward. “You know what you’ve been doing? The exact kind of half-in living you’ve been criticizing her for. Picking up out-of-town work whenever it suits you, dropping it when it doesn’t. Keeping your bags metaphorically packed while asking her to unpack hers.”
The words land like bricks. Not because they’re cruel, but because they’re right.
I’ve been running this town like it’s mine for years, fixing chimneys and patching roofs and showing up for every damn thing that needs a hand, but the minute something good comes along somewhere else, I’m halfway out the door.
And I’ve been standing in Maddie’s kitchen telling her she belongs here while my own duffel is by the stairs, mentally packed for the next job to call.
I don’t argue. I sit with it. My elbows are on my knees, my hands loose between them, and the weight of what they’re saying settles into my chest, heavy and real and overdue.
“You love her,” Roz says. It’s not a question.
“Yeah,” I say. The word comes out rough.
“Then stop making her guess about it.”
The house is waking up around us. Someone’s footsteps on the stairs, heavy and familiar. A door opens and closes upstairs. The water pipes knock as someone turns on a faucet. Life filtering back in, the Stockings’ particular symphony of creaks and voices and people moving through shared space.
I pick up the beer. It’s fully room temperature now, flat and pointless. I drain it in one go because the alternative is admitting I sat here for forty-five minutes holding a warm beer I didn’t want.
Dev watches me, mouth quirking. “Classy.”
“Shut up.”
They laugh, and the sound loosens something in my chest. That’s the thing about the Stocking—the walls are thin, and the bathroom schedule is a blood sport, everyone is in everyone else’s business, and sometimes your roommates tell you exactly what you don’t want to hear, and it’s the most honest thing in your life.
My phone is on the coffee table, screen dark.I reach for it, swapping the empy glass for the annoying little device, thumb hovering over the contact I’ve been avoiding. Maddie. The name sits there, simple and terrifying.
“You gonna text her?” Roz asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Think I am.”
Dev nods once, sharp. “Good.”
I unlock the phone and the screen glows blue in the dim room. My thumb finds the message thread, and I start typing before I can talk myself out of it.
The words come faster than I expect. Not polished. Not careful. Just the truth, stripped down to its bones. I read it once, my heart hammering against my ribs, and then I press send before my brain can intercept.
The message flies. Delivered. No take-backs.
I set the phone down, face-up, and wait.
The house creaks. Someone laughs upstairs. The fridge hums. And I sit in the quiet, lighter and more terrified than I’ve been in years, waiting for whatever comes next.
Needing a distraction while I wait for whatever comes next, I pick up my phone again and send the other text I have been avoiding.
I type the message declining the Burlington job with my thumb hovering over the screen long enough that the thing dims to save battery, and then I press send anyway because if I don’t do it right now I will talk myself out of it, and we will be right back where we started, which is nowhere I want to be.
The money panic hits approximately 1.7 seconds later, which is a new personal record.
Two weeks of work, solid cash, the kind of payday that covers rent and groceries and maybe even that brake job my truck’s been whining about since March.
Gone. Poof. Vanished into the ether because I pressed a button on my phone while sitting on a wobbly IKEA coffee table with a beer ring permanently etched into the veneer.
I set the phone face-down on my thigh and let the panic wash over me.
It’s loud. It’s specific. It has spreadsheets and due dates and the exact amount I owe on my credit card right now ($427.
63, thank you for asking). I breathe through it.
In. Out. The ceiling fan clicks. Someone’s shower is running upstairs.
Roz and Dev whisper across from me in a poor attempt to pretend they aren’t laser-focused on my every move.
The weird thing is, underneath the panic, there’s something else.
Something lighter. Like I’ve been carrying a backpack full of rocks for years and just shrugged it off onto the sidewalk.
I’m lighter and more terrified than I’ve been in my entire adult life, which is not a combination I recommend to anyone with a weak stomach.
I push myself up off the couch and then just stand there, hands at my sides, looking around the room like I’ve forgotten something.
I haven’t forgotten anything. I don’t know what to do with my body.
Dev watches me with their chin in their hand.
Roz has stopped pretending to look at anything else.
The two of them let the silence stretch just long enough to be pointed, and then Roz sets down her glass and says, simply, “Go.” I pull on my flannel and walk out the front door.
The night air is thick and warm, the kind that sits on your skin like a blanket.
Main Street is quiet, most of the shops dark, just the diner still glowing at the far end and the Brew House with its windows lit amber.
I cut through the alley behind the bank because it’s faster and because right now, speed feels like the only thing keeping me moving.
My boots hit the pavement, steady and too loud in the quiet. Three blocks to Maddie’s. Three blocks to figure out what the hell I’m going to say when I get there.
I don’t figure it out.
I’m on her porch before my brain has produced a single usable sentence.
The yellow porch light spills over the steps, catching the roses along the walk—Drew’s roses, pink and stubborn and beautiful because they don’t know they’re supposed to be anything else.
The house is dark except for the kitchen window, a soft gold rectangle against the night.
I stand there. One hand on the railing. The other in my pocket, fist clenched around nothing.
I don’t knock.
My nerve, which has survived chimney fires and raccoon nests and one truly disastrous encounter with a sump pump, deserts me completely.
It packs a bag, catches the first train out of town, and leaves me standing on Maddie Weiz’s porch with my heart hammering so hard I’m pretty sure the neighbors can hear it.
I dig through my jacket pocket and pull out a crumpled hardware-store receipt from Springs somewhere a dog barks.
I can hear her shift, her breathing soft and alive. I turn.
Maddie stands there barefoot, paint-splattered sweats and an oversized T-shirt slipping off one shoulder.
In her hands, she holds the receipt like a fragile treasure.
The porch light catches the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, the blue of her eyes—six years I’ve pretended not to notice.
She reads the note, looks at me, then back at the note.
“Jordan,” she says—just my name—and it lands in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.
“Yeah,” I whisper, because what else is there?
She steps forward—one, two steps—until I can smell jasmine lotion and a hint of turpentine that never quite washes out of her skin. The receipt is crumpled in her fist against her chest.
“You turned down Burlington,” she says, not a question.
“I did.”
“Because of me.”
“Because of us,” I correct. “I’ve been asking you to put down roots while keeping mine packed in a duffel bag by the door. That’s not fair.”
She studies me, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. My chest twists in that complicated, painful way I’ve learned to dread.
“Come here,” she says, opening her arms.
I cross the porch in two strides and she meets me halfway.
Her arms wrap around my neck, mine around her waist, solid and warm and real.
Her face presses into my shoulder, her breath hot through my flannel.
I hold her tight—one hand cradling the back of her head, fingers tangled in her wild hair—and she holds me back like she’s afraid I might disappear.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur into her hair. “I’m so sorry, Maddie.”
She pulls back just enough to look at me, palms flat against my chest. Tears shine on her cheeks, but she’s smiling—that real smile she never offers to strangers.
“Shut up,” she says, then kisses me.
It’s not gentle. It’s urgent and desperate and perfect—her mouth hot against mine, her hands fisting in my jacket, pulling me closer as if to prove I’m really here.
I kiss her back with everything I have, one hand at her jaw, thumb brushing the wet track of a tear, and she makes a soft sound against my lips that goes straight through me.
When we break apart, both of us breathing hard, she’s still clutching the receipt. She glances down at it, then back at me, her smile wide, bright, and a little wobbly.
“Temporary, huh?” she asks.
“Not even a little,” I say.
She laughs—clear and light in the summer dark—and pulls me inside. The door closes behind us with a sound like settling, like something finally coming home.