Chapter 4
brEWER
I’d thought the “girthy” vanity incident on Monday would be the end of it. That my client would finally start to trust me so we could cohabitate in peace while I focused on finishing his renovation and finding a new place to live.
By Friday morning, I was forced to acknowledge that peace wasn’t really an option when dealing with Delaney Monroe.
Delaney, who used a complex system of color-coded sticky notes for different purposes and had rearranged my grandmother’s teacups on his kitchen shelf five times in six days to achieve the right “visual harmony.”
Delaney, who I’d overheard speaking to his sister for six uninterrupted minutes about an article he’d read on the importance of baby-wearing, as Tam’s expression had morphed from shock— Delaney reads articles on baby-wearing? —to offense— Does he think I’m not meeting Tierney’s “psycho-emotional needs”? —to concern— Is he still talking ?—to reluctant admiration— Holy shit, he memorized fourteen sling-wrapping techniques? —to fond amusement, while I’d nearly fallen off my ladder while repairing the living room ceiling and brained myself, trying not to laugh.
Delaney, who, it turned out, had strong views that there was one correct way of folding towels and spent forty-five minutes explaining to me why the subway tile pattern I’d suggested for the downstairs shower was “pedestrian”… before changing his mind an hour later and deciding it was “preferable, Brewer, please proceed.”
Delaney, who apparently wore slithery green silk pajamas that had stopped me in my tracks when I’d spotted them peeking out of his hamper and which had spawned a dozen fantasies since.
Delaney, who toyed with his glasses, and stared at my chest in an abstracted way all the fucking time, and left me glass containers of food neatly labeled with my name when I’d started avoiding the kitchen during mealtimes to minimize how much time I could spend staring back at him.
Delaney, who was cranky and unexpectedly sweet, cocky, and anxious, like a double-sided puzzle I couldn’t help trying to put together, who’d invaded my brain to the point where I’d had to jerk off in the attic this morning before getting to work—not a thing I’d had to do when working with other clients—and who was the primary source of the low-level tension I felt crackling in the air like?—
“There’s a big storm a-comin’, Brewer!” Hen said gleefully. “Good thing Delaney’s cabinets came in this morning, eh?”
I shook myself physically and mentally, realizing I’d been woolgathering in the middle of the hardware store—another thing I didn’t think I’d ever been reduced to before Delaney.
“That’s why I’m here,” I agreed. “I did hear there might be flurries tonight, but?—”
“Flurries.” Hen scoffed. His chest puffed up. “You sound like my grandson. I keep telling Everett TV meteorologists don’t understand the unique microclimate around here. My leg’s been aching something fierce, so I’m saying we’ll get a solid foot.” He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Maybe more.”
“Tell you what, Hen,” said a voice behind me. “I’ll bet you a coffee and a cheese danish at Fanaille we get less than three inches.”
I turned to find Reed Sunday approaching with a smile, carrying a tub of spackle and an armload of paint rollers. He and his husband had bought a new house around the time Delaney had but were doing most of the renovations themselves. I was scheduled to work on their kitchen after I finished at Delaney’s place.
Hen’s eyes lit as he extended a hand for Reed to shake. “You’re on, son. You bet against the leg at your own peril. I can taste that danish already.”
Reed laughed as he set his purchases on the counter, and Hen began to ring him up.
“Best to be prepared, that’s what I say!” Janice Plum breezed out of the Seasonal aisle carrying three huge bags of Ice Melt… and wearing what appeared to be a wicker cornucopia on her head, decorated with silk flowers and miniature plastic fruit. “Right, Brewer?”
I was momentarily so blinded by her… hat-thing I couldn’t process her words. “Er. Y-yes. Definitely.”
“Tricky for other folks to be prepared when you’re buying out the store.” Angela Ross, Theo’s mom and the leader of the local gossip tree, came up behind her carrying a mop propped over her shoulder like a rifle.
“I’m buying for the neighborhood , Angela,” Janice said primly. “Some folks from my book club have banded together to form THWAC—The Helpful Wintertime Association of Coppertians—to do snow removal for folks who need help.” She threw her head back proudly.
When she did, a fake orange fell off her head, plopped on the floor, and rolled under Hen’s counter.
For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Then Angela broke the silence. “Janice, honey, what on earth are you wearing?”
“Oh, this?” Janice tweaked a cluster of grapes dangling by her ear. “Why, it’s a historic harvest crown. Obviously. In honor of the Council for Historical Happenings’ Harvest Festivals Retrospective.” Janice leaned toward me and added with a wink, “Tuesday night, 7:00 p.m., at the library.” Then she straightened and said, “I decided this would be a… a visually striking way to draw attention to the event. Do you like it?”
Reed and I exchanged a glance, and I bit the inside of my cheek.
“It’s definitely striking,” I offered.
“Yes,” Reed agreed. “I can say that I, personally, feel struck.”
Hen stroked his mustache, I was pretty sure to hide his laughter.
Janice blushed and ducked her head slightly. “You’re too sweet. To be honest, it was Delaney’s idea,” she admitted. “Delaney Monroe.”
“ Delaney told you to put a harvest on your head?” I demanded. I felt my cheeks go red. “I mean…”
“Not exactly. I gave him one of our event flyers the other day, and he suggested I might get more engagement if I wore a historical costume. He suggested a hoop skirt, but hoop skirts are impractical?—”
“Whereas fruit bonnets are the very soul of practicality,” Angela cut in.
“Harvest. Crown .” Janice narrowed her eyes at Angela. “Anyway, at first, I was a bit put out with Delaney. I mean, that’s not the way we’ve ever done things at the Council. But… well, then Hardison’s had a sale on craft notions, and I thought, ‘Why not live a little, Janice? You didn’t know you liked fig jam until Chris Sunday moved to town and put it on a charcuterie board.’” She gave Reed a knowing wink. “So here I am.”
“Here you are,” Hen agreed.
“And I’ve had no less than thirteen people approach me this morning to ask about our event!”
I nodded politely, though I was confident that hadn’t been why they’d initially approached her.
“I’m sure Chris would be honored that his charcuterie played a role in this transformation,” Reed said solemnly. “In fact, I can’t wait to get home and tell him.”
“Aw,” Janice sighed. “You’re such a delight, Reed Sunday.”
“I’m gonna tell Chris that , too. Can you believe he once thought I was a grumpy bastard?” Reed grinned. “Speaking of which, I’d better get going before my beloved sends out a search party.” He picked up his purchases and slapped my shoulder. “Hey, Brew, you should come with us to the Hive tonight. There’s a local alt-country band playing. You’re a country fan, right?”
I blinked. I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten that idea since I was actually a lot more Lin-Manuel Miranda than Luke Bryan, but it didn’t bother me, really. People made assumptions about me all the time—look how they’d explained to themselves why I chose to live so far out of town—and it was easier to just nod along and let it ride. No need to make people uncomfortable by explaining they were wrong.
If I got really introspective about it, I knew I let them believe what they wanted because it made things simpler for me, too. Because if they didn’t really know the real me, they couldn’t judge the real me, and I got to kinda coast along.
The truth was, though I liked Reed and most Coppertians a lot, I didn’t feel close enough to any of them for it to matter whether they truly knew me or not. At some point, they might get something so wrong I’d need to correct them, but that hadn’t happened yet.
“I like lots of things,” I agreed, which wasn’t a lie.
“So come out with us,” Reed said. “Chris and I are going. And Jasper and Watt. You probably need to blow off steam after everything with your camper.” He grimaced sympathetically.
Whatever he’d heard through town gossip, Reed didn’t know the half of it. Losing the camper had been bad enough. Living with Delaney meant I was losing my mind, too.
Still, even if the original Broadway cast of Rent had been in town, it would have been a hard sell to get me to go out in a crowd with loud music playing. What I needed right now was peace, quiet, and solitude.
Not that I was likely to get any of those things when I was just a few feet from Delaney.
“I don’t think so. If Hen’s knee is right and that storm’s coming…” I shrugged.
Reed smiled easily. “Well, we’ll be there if you change your mind.”
Since I was officially done with small talk for the day, I simply nodded. Then, waving a goodbye to the ladies, I met Hen’s eyes and followed him to the back room to collect Delaney’s cabinets and get back to the work I loved.
Four cabinet doors, sixteen screws, and countless muttered profanities later, I was about ready to say fuck it to home renovation and see if the Foreign Legion was taking new recruits.
I stared at the metal cabinets leaning against Delaney’s kitchen wall and tried to tamp down my frustration.
For three hours, I’d been wrestling with them—measuring, leveling, remeasuring, and cursing under my breath—and I’d managed to get a few of them hung… sort of. But the gap between the cabinet and the ancient wall was uneven—nearly an inch in some places—and would need to be caulked to hell and back. Even with shims, I couldn’t get them perfectly level because on a house this old, the floors and walls weren’t square.
I’d promised Delaney I’d give him exactly what he wanted, though—that I’d be the perfect, opinion-free contractor—so I kept fucking going.
I was tightening a particularly stubborn screw when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Startled, my hand slipped, and the screwdriver jammed into my palm.
“Son of a bitch !” I shook out my hand, a bruise already forming at the base of my thumb.
From the hallway came the faint sound of Delaney typing furiously on his laptop. He’d been holed up in his office all day with his headphones on—not that I was keeping track—working on his article or avoiding me. Probably both. But he didn’t seem to have heard my outburst, at least.
I pulled out my phone to find a text from my cousin.
Hayes
Dinner and drinks tonight? You, me, Kel?
My first instinct was to refuse. I was tired, sore, and in a foul mood, and the last thing I wanted was to hang around with my much younger cousin and his frat-bro bestie.
But then I reminded myself that Hayes had moved to Copper County at least in part to be near me, despite my aunt giving him the hard sell to move back home to Southbourne. Since his arrival, I’d tried to see him every week, though it ended up being more like every other. We’d managed what he’d called a “Bros Weekend” at the lake last summer. But I’d barely talked to him the past week, though he’d texted several times to express his concern.
Was I getting to be like my father, putting work and all the mixed-up feelings that came with it ahead of my family?
The cabinet door I’d just installed swung open violently and smacked me in the shoulder.
“What the—?” I pushed it closed, and it immediately swung back open.
Because it wasn’t plumb. Because these cabinets were never going to work right in this house.
Frustration boiled over into anger, all the hotter for me trying to push it down.
I could have made Delaney cabinets. Beautiful, custom ones. But he didn’t want to talk about alternatives. He wanted his fucking metal cabinets that were dead wrong for the space.
And, I realized, I needed to get out of this house before I marched down the hall and shouted that to his face.
Instead, I texted my cousin back.
Sounds good. Meet me at the Hive in 2 hours?
I left the cabinets exactly as they were and headed for the attic. I fed Teeny dinner, then took her for a longer walk than usual since I’d be leaving her alone for a few hours. Spending time with her made me feel slightly less like a volcano about to erupt as I headed downstairs for a shower.
But the sight of the old vanity I’d reinstalled in the bathroom—my boss hadn’t made up his mind about a new style yet, despite me providing him with five choices that were all fairly similar to the girthy one—amped me up again.
This whole situation was my own fault, and I knew it. I’d agreed to do things Delaney’s way, hoping it would teach him a lesson, but I was the one suffering the consequences. If anyone in town saw those cabinets, my reputation would be toast… which was why I’d begun including design clauses in my contracts to prevent this kind of disaster.
I stalked out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist and promptly collided with Delaney—still wearing his fucking noise-canceling headphones—in the hall. It was at least the fourth time we’d smacked into each other that way in the past week, and it did nothing to improve my mood.
“Oh!” Delaney jumped. One hand flew to his glasses while the other pulled off his headphones, and his eyes came to rest on my bare chest. “Sorry. I… I didn’t hear you.”
He looked tired—dark circles under his eyes, hair mussed like he’d been running his hands through it—and despite everything, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask if his article was going okay or if there was anything I could do. But I stopped myself.
If Delaney was trying to control the whole world and holding on so tightly it looked like he was about to crack, that wasn’t my problem.
I tightened my own hold on my towel and my patience. “No problem. I’m done for the day.”
“You are? Awesome.” His cheeks flushed with excitement that made my stomach tighten. “You were working in the kitchen, right? I can’t wait to see what you’ve done. Tam’s coming over to see the progress, and I was going to order pizza. If you want, I can?—”
“I’m going out.” I stepped around him.
Delaney blinked, clearly taken aback by my tone. “Okay. They’re, uh, predicting flurries tonight, so?—”
I didn’t bother to share Hen’s predictions. I could imagine how that conversation would go.
“Have a good night, Delaney. Enjoy your new cabinets.”
I headed for the attic, telling myself the flash of hurt in his eyes was my imagination.
The Hive was packed when I arrived, the crowd spilling from the bar to the tables and country music blaring from speakers near a small stage where a band was playing.
I tugged at the collar of my new navy henley—one of the few items I’d purchased to replace my burned wardrobe—feeling oddly self-conscious as I scanned the room.
I stopped at the closest table to the door and greeted Reed, who offered me a ride home if I wanted to drink, and Chris, who was already a little glassy-eyed from the single beer in front of him and kept glancing up at his husband like Reed was some kind of superhero. They pointed out Jasper and Watt, who were standing at the bar, pressed together by the crowd, ostensibly grabbing a fresh round… but with Watt’s hand tucked in Jasper’s back pocket, it was pretty clear that wasn’t the only grabbing on their minds.
When they invited me to join them while I waited for Hayes, I hesitated, deeply regretting my choice to come out. Finding a spot in this crowd would be annoying, but for some reason, I didn’t think I could handle being surrounded by loved-up couples tonight.
I was grateful when I spotted Hayes waving at me enthusiastically from a table he and Kel had already claimed at the back, and I could make my excuses.
“Brewski!” Hayes stood for a quick hug, his lanky frame rising above the crowd. Though my cousin was shorter than me by a good four inches, he wasn’t exactly small, and with our matching eyes and similar jawlines, there was no mistaking we were family.
Kel, whose muscular frame always seemed weirdly disconnected from his ever-present Birkenstocks—like he was half gym trainer, half laid-back delivery driver—gave me a wave and an easygoing smile.
“You made it!” Hayes said. “I worried you’d bail.”
I slid into the empty chair. “Said I’d come, didn’t I?” I flagged down a server and ordered a local favorite beer. “Two Hayburners, please.”
Hayes’s eyebrows shot up, and he and Kel exchanged a look.
“Whoa,” Kel said. “Save some for the rest of us.”
Hayes smacked Kel’s shoulder and laughed like Kel’s comment had been hilarious in the extreme. “Or wait for the wings we ordered. You eaten yet?”
I hadn’t, but when the beers arrived, I immediately took a long pull from the first. “I’ve had a day,” I told them, “and Reed just offered me a ride home if I need one.” I paused. “I mean, to Delaney’s place. Not… not home .”
Hayes leaned forward. “Yeah, how’s that going? Staying at Delaney’s, I mean?”
I took another long drink, and Hayes and Kel exchanged a look.
“You know, you could totes stay with us, Brew,” Kel offered. “Hayes and I usually take turns on the pull-out and the actual bed, but we don’t mind doubling up for a while if you need a spot to crash. You could play DragonBlood4 with us! We just started a tournament, but you could get in on it?—”
“Don’t worry about me. Let’s talk about you,” I interrupted. “How’s work, Hayes? Still loving it?”
“Oh, shit, yeah.” Hayes smiled eagerly. “Let me tell you about my new client!”
While I sipped my beers, Hayes launched into a long, detailed explanation of the app he was developing. I understood about half of it, and I was pretty sure Kel didn’t understand much more, but he watched Hayes with a kind of appreciative fascination and hung on his every word, anyway.
Eventually, the two of them fell into their own conversation about the video game they’d been playing. I couldn’t help noticing the easy rhythm they had, finishing each other’s sentences, punctuating points with physical contact—a punch to the shoulder here, a headlock there.
Watching them dance around each other was arguably worse than being with the loved-up couples I’d left behind.
“Dude, you should have seen Kel’s face when that dragon horde broke through,” Hayes crowed, throwing an arm around Kel’s neck and ruffling his hair. “Like a wittle baby seeing a clown.”
“Fuck off, dude!” Kel shoved Hayes with a laugh, but his hand lingered on Hayes’s shoulder. “You were the one who screamed like a child.”
“Did not.”
“You so did. And your face was doing that thing, too.” Kel reached out to poke Hayes’s cheek. “Where your tiny, baby dimple pops out, and?—”
It was exhausting watching two people so clearly in denial, so completely oblivious to what was obvious to everyone else.
Between this and Delaney’s stubborn refusal to see what was right in front of him with his damn house, it felt like I was surrounded by people determined to make life harder than it needed to be.
“Can you two cut it out or get a room?” I snapped.