14. Bethany
Chapter fourteen
Bethany
The coffee carrier bites into my palm as I balance it against my hip, six cups wedged into cardboard slots.
I have my project notebook pinched between my arm and my ribs.
Cold parking lot air needles through my jacket while I fumble the door handle, and I catch myself scanning the cups for the one marked "T. "
It's there. Regular drip, one cream, no sugar. I've already checked it twice before I hit the porch.
This is purely practical, I tell myself. A good project manager can provide her workforce with coffee.
A good project manager probably does not know the exact shade of Timothy's cream-to-coffee ratio by heart.
I have a problem, and it is not caffeine-related.
Inside, the lodge the guys descend on the coffee tray like raccoons who've recently acquired gym memberships. Strong and crazy.
"That one's mine," Shane says, grabbing a cup very clearly labeled with someone else's name.
I distribute three cups before I notice I've been holding Timothy's back, tucked a little behind the others. He reaches for it last, of course, because I've engineered that without meaning to. Or so I pretend.
"Regular drip, one cream, no sugar," he says, turning the cup.
"Lucky guess." A lie so thin you could read a newspaper through it.
"You don't guess anything," he says, and there's something warm under the words that I decide not to examine.
Somebody should really study my memory for coffee orders. It's borderline diagnostic.
His fingers brush mine as the cup changes hands. Warm cardboard, warmer skin, and my nervous system short-circuits without asking my permission first. That stupid little zip travels all the way up my arm like I licked a battery.
"Jonah, why is your latte in Shane's cup," I snap, too loud, entirely unrelated to anything Jonah has done in his life.
Jonah blinks at me. "Because he took mine!"
Deflection is a survival skill. I should put it on a resume.
I announce I'm doing a house check, mostly so I can put a wall, a hallway, and ideally a load-bearing door between me and Timothy.
Somewhere behind a door, the dryer is making a horrible noise.
This house has a sixth sense for my emotional confusion and responds accordingly.
I follow the noise, notebook still in hand. The dryer drum groans and clanks, spinning something that should not be spinning that way.
Within seconds the doorway fills with hockey players offering theories.
"Just hit it," Wesley suggests.
"That's not how physics works," I say, kneeling to peer into the drum.
Timothy stands at the back of the group. Not offering advice. Just watching. Which is somehow worse.
I find the culprit: a belt worn thin as an old rubber band and a roller that's seen better decades. This house apparently runs on commission, breaking down just enough to keep me perpetually employed.
I straighten, dust my hands on my jeans, and deliver the verdict.
“Dryer’s dead until someone replaces this.”
I hold up the frayed piece.
Five hockey players stare at it with the blank concentration of men trying to identify an artifact from a lost civilization.
“You’re all going,” I say.
Five faces turn toward me.
“Someone needs to drive. Someone needs to carry the old part. Someone needs to make sure Jonah doesn’t buy the first thing with the word dryer on the package.”
“Hey,” Jonah says.
“Admit it, you need supervision.”
Timothy’s mouth twitches.
“Take a picture of this,” I continue, holding up the damaged piece. “And bring back something that looks exactly like it.”
Shane pulls out his phone.
Timothy steps closer to look over Shane’s shoulder.
His arm brushes mine, barely there, but my skin reacts.
“Do you need anything else?” he asks me quietly.
The question is practical. He means another picture, another measurement, another mysterious piece of dryer anatomy.
My heart, which has apparently stopped respecting context, hears something else entirely.
“No,” I say, too quickly. “That’s everything.”
His eyes stay on mine for half a second longer than necessary.
Maybe he hears it too.
“Smooth,” Maxon mutters.
Timothy’s ears go faintly pink.
Part of me wants to shove them out the door before anyone says another word.
Maxon looks around the room. “All of us?”
“It’s a hardware store,” I say. “Not an expedition across the Arctic.”
Jonah studies the broken piece. “If you say so.”
"Got it," Timothy says.
I turn back to the room and start dividing up the assignments. I have my clipboard and no patience for feelings.
“Hardware store first. Snow clearing when you get back. Rink prep after that.”
The collective expression suggests I have sentenced them to hard labor instead of shopping and shoveling.
“Shane drives,” I add. “The rest of you keep him from buying something that merely looks persuasive.”
The room erupts into motion. Coats come off hooks. Boots thump against the floor. Jonah asks twice whether they need the whole broken piece or only the picture.
Timothy is the last one through the doorway. He pauses with one hand on the frame and looks back at me.
“You sure that’s everything?”
Again, the question is perfectly ordinary.
Again, my heart refuses to treat it that way.
I tighten my grip on the notebook. “Bring back the right part, and we’ll call it even.”
His smile comes slowly.
“We’ll do our best.”
From outside, Shane shouts, “Brenton, unless you plan to walk twelve miles, get in the truck.”
Timothy’s eyes stay on mine for one beat longer.
Then he turns and goes.
The front door closes behind him, and the sudden quiet in the lodge feels much larger than it should.
I look down at the broken dryer part in my hand.
This is ridiculous.
Five grown men have just left to buy one piece of rubber, and somehow I am standing here wondering whether Timothy’s question had meant anything more than it should.