30
My hands ache from gripping the metal wrench—slick with the sweat from my palms—trying to turn the screw, under the water valve, to the left. At this point I’m sure, when I pull away, some of my flesh will remain on the tool.
Dainese, behind me, says, “I told you we should just call a plumber.”
“Do you have plumber money?” I say through gritted teeth, trying to turn the damn screw for the millionth time. We have three new dogs to groom, and the pipes decided this was the perfect time to stop working.
“I might if someone hadn’t purchased brand-new monitors for the cages,” Dainese counters.
“You can’t live without falling asleep to TV,” I shoot back. “The dogs deserve the same.”
“Touché.”
I suck in a breath and twist.
In a violent burst, the screw completely loosens, the pipes buckle, and water shoots from them, smacking into me. Dainese yelps, and we scramble to shove them back into place on the walls.
“Find the screw!” Dainese shouts, and I drop to the floor, feeling around for it.
We’re drenched by the time I find it, and nearly drowned by the time I position it back where it belongs and screw it shut. The water eases but still leaks from sporadic areas of the pipes.
Dainese, hair so matted it looks like a second skin, deadpans, “Should I call the plumber now?”
“I think that’s a great idea. I wish you had thought of it before.” She shakes her fist at me, then leaves me at the grooming station.
It was the only place we haven’t renovated since I purchased a share three months ago.
Partly because it was the most expensive quote, and partly because I wanted to focus on the dogs’ living areas—extending the walls for more space, clear glass so it felt less like a prison and more like shared area, grade-A cushions for dogs with arthritis—then getting a new POS system, hiring a permanent assistant for when I wasn’t around, buying the supplies to onboard more dogs, and gathering quotes for potentially building an addition for private vet visits for dogs who don’t do well traveling, so we could have vet techs do what they needed here.
Business ownership is exactly what I thought it’d be: challenging, scary, overwhelming, and entirely rewarding. Though the rewarding part is the animals outside or watching HD dog TV, and not housekeeping work that tends to pop up each time I think we’re finally settled.
My phone buzzes in my overalls pocket.
I answer Valerie’s FaceTime, and she grimaces in rollers and an unfinished face of makeup. Taina peeks her head in and waves, then grimaces too. “Gross.”
“Thanks, you’re both so sweet,” I say to the girls, who have become incredibly close since Taina began visiting every other week in between traveling around, trying to find “what place calls to her; what place feels like home.” Close enough that Taina’s doing her wedding makeup tomorrow.
“You better get your ass dried and presentable, rehearsal starts in three hours.”
“Do you really need me there?” I ask.
Valerie narrows her eyes. “You’d have to see Anders at the wedding anyway, wouldn’t it be better to get it over with before then?”
I scoff. “That’s not what I meant.”
Taina snorts. “Sure it’s not.”
“Wow, betrayed by my own flesh and blood.”
“Be honest,” Valerie says, “have you really not heard from him all this time? Is this going to be your first time seeing him in months?”
“It is,” Taina answers. “Lucy, don’t forget to pluck your eyebrows. You can’t see him looking like that. Have some dignity.”
I slap the phone to my forehead.
It’s true, I haven’t spoken to Anders in months.
Stalked online? Searching his social media every single day, waiting for a new post (he never posts), watching to see if he uploaded any stories?
(He only did three times, all covers he was working on.) I typed up his name to call, then immediately turned off my phone, then immediately turned it on, and dialed from a private number to hear him say “Hello?” enough times that he thought it was spam and stopped answering.
Drove by his house a couple of times trying to see if his car was there, pretending I had the courage to go up and knock on the door and say hello and sorry and bring up all the unresolved emotions that keep me up at night and raise my water bill when I’m in the shower for way too long—stuck on an endless cycle as permanent as day turning to night and night turning to day.
Yes, humiliating. Yes to all the above.
Has my heart stuttered every time my phone rang, hoping it was him, feeling endlessly disappointed when it wasn’t?
Also, embarrassingly, yes, of course.
So the thought of having to see him again is invigorating and terrifying and embarrassing because, even though I was the one who pulled away first, I can’t help but feel like he’s completely finished with whatever we were building. Which is totally fine, for him.
And yet I spend so much time thinking of ways to reach out, then finding reasons to pull away instead, and cycling these useless thoughts over and over again instead of facing it head-on.
“Earth to Lucy,” Valerie says.
“I’ll go,” I mumble. “See you later.”
I hang up and head out to the entryway, larger now, with new, easier-to-clean floorboards and a fresh coat of light-blue paint on the smooth walls. Dainese frowns as she hangs up the phone from behind the desk.
“No luck?” I ask her.
“Too much luck,” she says. “Ever since you moved here, everyone is . . . nicer when I call?” She shakes her head. “That’s not the right word; it’s not that they weren’t nice, but they’re almost too eager to help. And their quotes are way lower than they used to be.”
“Are you sure?” I frown. “I don’t know anybody, so I wouldn’t warrant any special treatment. Maybe they like you and you don’t realize it.”
She counts off her fingers. “The vet charges way less for visits. Our bulk orders have been discounted fifteen percent each time, the carpenter didn’t even charge us for the floorboard changes, and this plumber just quoted me two thousand less than when the pipes first broke.”
“Well”—I point to my drenched appearance—“I’m not often lucky, so whatever is happening, I say we don’t question it.”
“I guess,” Dainese says. “But if you’re sleeping with any of the vendors, you can be honest, I won’t judge you for it.”
“Excuse me? Most of them are, like, sixty years old.”
“Nuh-uh,” Dainese says. “The plumber is our age, and he’s genuinely the sexiest man I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“No way!” I say. “I’ve never seen him.”
“Please hold.” She brings up her phone, types for a bit, then pulls up a photo of him. “Sexy, right?”
Blond isn’t normally my type, but he’s got sharp, defined features and a movie-star smile. Not at all what comes to mind when I think plumber. I usually pull up a Super Mario Bros. visual.
“Sexy, but still, not sleeping with him.”
“Then it’s not too late for me.”
“On that note,” I say. “I have to head out early.”
“Rehearsal,” she remembers, grabs the towel she used on herself, and tosses it over my face. “Hope you clean up beforehand.”
“Is this a roast?” I snap, grabbing it and drying my face off, leaving her to her laughter.
The air is crisp and sharp as the light autumn wind slices into my skin, made worse by the water still clinging to my hair and clothes. It’s been an abnormally warm fall, but being wet in the wind makes my teeth chatter as I walk home.
My route is familiar now from all the times I’ve walked back and forth from the shelter to my condo. It’s a fifteen-minute walk, longer before I found a shortcut through a cemetery that shortened the time by ten minutes.
Creepy sometimes, but also safe, knowing nobody here cares at all about me. And since my condo overlooks it, the price is significantly lower than any other place so close to the beaches.
As I walk, I think about what Dainese said. About the weird luck. The way things have somehow fallen into place here, even when I was too busy to notice.
And I think about Save a Paw.
For years, that was the dream. The only dream. The thing I worked toward every second. And when it began slipping out of reach, all I could feel was this dread of inevitable failure.
But I didn’t love the shelter because of the name on the building.
I loved it because of the dogs I cared for. The ones I cleaned, and fed, and sang off-key to. I loved it because I loved what I was able to do for them.
That’s what I’ve found here, accidentally.
Maybe because I stopped trying to force things. Or maybe because I finally looked up and realized this life—this business, this place, and the people that I’ve fallen in love with—wasn’t a backup plan.
It was an evolution of a dream I’ve always had.
I quicken my pace as the cold starts to seep into my bones, and a few too many sneezes rack through my body. If I get sick the day before her wedding, I’m pretty sure Valerie will remove the nails from my fingers and toes.
My teeth are chattering by the time I make it out of the cemetery, turn the corner to my house, and hurry up the path. Then I see someone leaning by the front door, arms crossed over his chest.
I trip over my own feet, save myself from a complete face-plant with my sore hands, and right myself just in time for Anders to look up and notice me.
He’s in dark jeans and a black sweater that makes his hair even darker, his eyes even brighter, even at this distance.
He’s got a little five o’clock shadow and a tiny wrinkle between his slightly furrowed brows.
The wind has swept up stray strands of hair that fall on his forehead, his cheek, and it’s slightly longer—just a couple of centimeters—than the last time I saw him.
My heart pounds as he pushes himself from the door and approaches me with long, purposeful strides. His scent hits me first—sandalwood and mango and pure comfort. He stops an arm’s length away, and I tilt my neck to meet his gaze.
His is without heat or coolness. Unreadable.
“Lucinda,” he says, and hearing his voice in person, instead of a generic greeting from the phone speaker, makes my stomach flip.
I open my mouth, feel a sneeze coming on, and then hold a hand to my lips. He looks handsome and sexy and amazing, and I look like a drowned rat that got resurrected only to be drowned again.
“Why are you here?” I shout without meaning to, then suffer three sneezes back-to-back.
“Why are you so wet?” he asks, moving forward, then immediately moving back. “You’re going to get a cold; you should go inside.”
“But you’re outside,” I point out, “at my place—how did you know it was my place? What are you doing here? Why are you here? You have the worst timing ever.”
“Will you get inside and change?” he snaps.
“Will you answer any of my questions?”
“Once you’re dry.”
“What if I like being wet?”
At that, we both pause, and his expression wavers as his eyes flicker, and I slam a hand to my mouth twice in punishment for being the most idiotic thing about me.
“Oh my God.” I move around him, fumble with my keys, and take three tries before being able to actually unlock the door. “Pretend you never saw me,” I call out to him, gripping the door. “Erase this from your memory. I don’t look like this. And I didn’t say that.”
He opens his mouth, and I slam the door and lock it.
I’ve wanted to see Anders again so badly, it’s ruined my critical thinking skills. I’ve lost track of thoughts, dozed off mid-conversations, because I thought of him somehow and have had to actively reposition myself into reality.
And, of course, he sees me looking insane, saying insane things, while being vastly underprepared.
Too much luck.
Yeah, right.
I take over an hour to get ready. I shower twice.
Shave three times. Drench myself in lotion and body oils.
I start my makeup, hate the base, wash it all off, and start again.
I flatten my hair too perfectly, then curl the roots for volume, but it gives it a weird lump at the top, so I straighten it all over again.
I exhaust myself until I become an annoyingly beautiful version of myself and make it to the museum with only five minutes to spare.
This is how I wanted to see Anders again. I make my way into the venue, hurry past the entryway and into the largest hall with enough room to fill the fifty guests coming tomorrow along with the bridal party and groomsmen.
And somehow, I’m still earlier than everyone aside from Bethany, Olive, Taina, John, and Valerie.
“There she is,” Bethany says when she hears my heels clicking on the floor.
Olive waves at me. “I knew you weren’t going to chicken out.” She points a thumb toward the group sitting on one of the benches wound with flowers and hand painted by Anders with floral designs Valerie picked out. “They bet one hundred dollars you’d pretend to be sick to get out of it.”
I hold out a hand as I approach. “Well, I hope I get a hundred dollars for the embarrassment.”
Taina stands. “Great timing, I have to use the bathroom.” She links her arm through mine and leads me away.
“You needed my company to go potty?” I ask as we move. “This brings me back to the good old days.”
When we exit the hall, she lets me go and blocks my path, her arms crossed against her chest. “I overheard—”
“You snooped.”
“—Valerie on the phone with Anders. He said he had a migraine and wasn’t coming to the rehearsal. What happened?”
I keep my features blank. “What do you mean? You answered your own question. He has a migraine.” Then something clicks into place. “You little rat, you gave him my address.”
“Duh.” She shoves me. “He asked me for it months ago, and I’ve been waiting for him to do something about it forever. Valerie said he mentioned trying to see you before the wedding, that it might make you feel less awkward.”
I rub my eyes. “And now he didn’t come because I shouted at him to erase me from his memory.”
“What?”
“A misunderstanding.” I slap a hand on her mouth to quiet her down. “I wanted him to erase the way I looked then. And restart now. Not that I didn’t want to see him at all.”
“I really can’t stand you sometimes.”
“You and me both.” I sigh.
“Well”—Taina links her arm with mine again—“let’s go out tonight. Can’t waste how hot you look on nobody.”
“Me drinking before a wedding?” I ask. “Bad omen. Let’s keep it sober.”
“Booo.” She thumbs me down.
And that’s the image I play in my head all night. The sound of a sitcom’s booing track echoing in my skull over and over.
Hopefully, I find my luck again.