26. Renee
Renee
Early Friday morning, Ben began his pitch for Renee to stay in Oakview.
He showed up at the house with breakfast from her favorite shop: Sugar’s Donuts.
Sugar was a lithe Vietnamese woman who ran the store with her two daughters and never stopped moving, fluttering constantly between the pickup window, counter, and kitchen.
They say never trust a skinny cook, but Sugar proved that a lie.
Sugar made the best donuts Renee had ever eaten. They put everything in Baton Rouge to shame. They were always warm, just the right sweetness, and the yeasty dough was so soft the donuts melted in your mouth.
Point for Ben and Oakview. Renee certainly couldn’t get those donuts anywhere else.
He’d told her to dress comfortably in long pants and clothes she didn’t mind getting dirty. So she wore an old pair of joggers and a band T-shirt she’d found in some of the stuff left from when she used to stay there.
Renee had taken the whole day off for this.
It wasn’t too hard to shift things around.
She was waiting for information from her new client to move forward with her case, and she was wrapping up two others and just had to invoice one.
Plus, there was surveillance to do, but that had been moved to next week because of the storm.
She really needed to hustle new business some kind of way.
Renee was blaming it on being in Oakview, but deep down, she knew she’d have the same problem if she were staying in Baton Rouge.
She would have to devote some energy to finding new advertising streams. With business being slow now, it shouldn’t be too hard to find time to figure that out.
When they finished their donuts, Ben ushered her into his car and drove away from the house. They’d spent the day before picking up the branches that had fallen in her yard, but the damage wasn’t bad at all. They’d been lucky. Most of the town had been lucky, really.
And she’d been lucky with the company she had, too.
The evening had been so much fun. Jessica had fit in seamlessly with Renee and Ben.
But every time she thought about what might lie ahead for them, she felt this incredible surge of anticipation.
Like she was at the top of a roller coaster.
It was a fun ride, and it was about to get even more thrilling, but there was that overpowering fear that this thing wouldn’t go up again.
That the coaster might topple off the rails.
Ben, of course, told her she was being ridiculous. But she couldn’t help but worry about all the ways this could go wrong. It was unfamiliar territory for her, and she still wasn’t sure it was the right move.
What she did know was that she wanted to take that chance with Jessica.
They drove through Oakview with Renee taking it all in with fresh eyes. She’d promised Ben she’d give his mission a fair shot, so that’s what she was going to do.
And she couldn’t deny Oakview had its charm.
It was technically a small city, but it felt so homey that everyone called it a town, anyway.
It was small enough to have only one high school, but big enough to have a tattoo and piercing shop.
Oakview had been a great place to grow up. She couldn’t deny that.
When they reached the other end of downtown, Renee realized where they were going.
“This is your neighborhood,” she said.
“Ding, ding. You get a prize.”
They parked in front of his townhouse, then they got out of the car and walked over to the house next door, where a large sweet gum tree lay on the ground, cracked in the middle.
“That’s Mrs. Jade’s place? Jeez, she’s okay, right?”
Mrs. Jade was a lovely older widow who always brought everyone in her neighboring townhouses pralines for Christmas. Ben would bring her a basket of her favorite sugar-free candies and help take down her tree every year after Twelfth Night.
“She’s fine. Stayed with her son during the storm,” Ben said. “Just got herself a mess she obviously can’t take care of.” He reached onto his back seat and handed her a pair of thick work gloves. “We’re going to help.”
Renee took the gloves, never one to be afraid of a little hard work, and always glad to help a friend. As she slipped them on, she assessed the situation. So many people had showed up. Renee figured they’d have that tree handled and hauled off in no time.
Ben joined up with two men wielding chainsaws and making quick work of the sizable branches on the ground. They were just finishing up as Renee approached, and they moved on to tackle the trunk, while Ben waited to haul off chunks to the side of the road.
A bustling line of people moved to and from the massive pile of branches, dragging them in bundles to the road, then returning for more. Renee slipped into the flow, getting right to work.
A tall woman next to her asked, “Neighbor?”
“Friend of a neighbor,” Renee said through a grunt as she yanked a beefy branch free from the pile. They walked together toward the front of the house.
“I’m Cindy, a niece.”
“Renee. Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” Cindy said. “If you’re around later, we’ll be ordering pizza for everyone.”
“Thanks. I imagine we’ll still be here. Unless Ben has to be somewhere, I can stay the day to help get this done.”
“We really appreciate it.” They walked back together, then Cindy aimed a thumb at the house. “Taking a bathroom break. Water’s in the cooler by the door. I’ll see you again in a bit.”
Renee continued clearing the endless mounds of branches until her arms were screaming at her to take a break. While it was late October, she was still sweating under the lingering heat as the breeze from the storm was long gone.
She took a sip from the half-finished water bottle she’d left near the back of the house. Ben, looking even more sweaty from helping haul trunk chunks in a wheelbarrow to the road, walked up to her with his own water in hand.
“You ready to hit the road?”
Renee looked around at the mess in dismay. “But there’s all of this.”
He nodded toward a group of people walking up to the house from more cars parked all down the street. “Next shift is here.” He examined her face. “And you’re red. You need a break before you pass out.”
“I can go inside and rest for a little while.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “We can come out tomorrow if you want. They’ll still be cutting on that trunk.”
Renee stood, and her head felt woozy. Maybe it really was time to leave.
“Hey, Ben!” A sweaty man near a pile of cut-up wood on the ground called them over. “You two take some with you.”
“Oh, I don’t use my fireplace,” Renee said. She hated the thing. Made her anxious, plus she wasn’t fond of the upkeep.
“Fire pit?”
Ben presented her with a pleading look. “Now that sounds like a great idea. You’ve got the perfect yard for it. And I know who we could invite.”
She gave him a gentle slap on the arm. “You mean your date last night?”
“Nah,” Ben said. “He was a one-and-done deal. Not my type.”
Renee hadn’t met the guy, so she couldn’t argue either way. But she had to agree that a fire pit sounded nice. Maybe a quiet evening outside one night after the craziness of the celebration was all over.
Maybe even a quiet evening with Ben and Jessica.
They thanked the man and gathered some wood to take back to Ben’s car. The smell of freshly cut gum tree filled the interior with its sweet, woodsy scent.
“Thanks,” Renee said as he started the car. “For today.”
“Thank you for helping Mrs. Jade.”
“Of course. Glad you brought me. Felt good to help.”
“I figured you could use a chance to get out of your head before tomorrow and all.”
Renee nodded. It really had been nice to be fully in her body for a while, not worrying about the celebration or all of the people she’d have to greet and entertain.
And as happy as she was to be on some sort of path with Jessica, the stress of not knowing how this was going to look had been part of what kept her up last night.
As much as she was glad she could help Mrs. Jade, this had been just what she needed, too.
“What’s up next?”
Ben laughed. “You’ve still got energy?”
“Some. Depends.”
“My original plan involved bowling, but after hauling all of that wood, I don’t think I could even hold a ball, much less throw one in a desired direction.”
“No bowling. Definitely not.”
“So I was thinking maybe swinging by that bookstore and coffee shop on the other end of town before dinner. What do you say?”
“Sounds perfect.”
“But one thing first.”
“What’s that?”
Ben laughed as he pulled away from the road and headed towards Renee’s house.
“Showers.”