8. Wade
8
WADE
It was a few hours before sunset, but the skies had darkened enough that August had thoughtfully turned on her back porch light for me, guiding my way across the water-logged courtyard toward the apartment door. I managed to unlock it one-handed, two bags of ice balanced on my other arm. The rain had been steady for hours, but it looked like the brunt of it had finally arrived. Hurricane Pain-In-My-Ass.
I knew the drill. If weather was coming, it was best to be prepared for anything. Tornados. Power outages. Flooding. We had it all on tap here. We also had a population with memories like goldfish, since most of them forgot the basics and panicked as soon as anything bigger than an afternoon thunderstorm rolled in. I’d seen them at the store, emptying shelves of bread and toilet paper while ignoring the real staples like ice, water and batteries.
Ice was at the top of the necessity list, because if the power went out, you didn’t want your food to spoil. And rain was no guarantee that things would cool down, though I could wish it was. This month had already been like a fever that refused to break .
Like her namesake, August Retta wasn’t breaking either. She hadn’t answered a single text from me all day.
You could knock on her door.
Not after the way we left things yesterday.
Inside, I stepped on the tiny square of a welcome mat that had obviously been made for a doll’s house and toed off my work boots. Since I moved in, I’d been careful about washing up before I left the garage, but I still went out of my way to keep this place as clean as I could. Lease or no, I couldn’t help feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Bernie and Phoebe’s house had never been this…feminine.
When my phone rang, I walked over to the kitchen area and put the ice bags into the cooler I’d brought over yesterday. Then I hit the button on the bone-conduction headphones Phoebe had given me for my birthday. She’d told me to think of them as practice hearing aids. Because I was old.
I hoped her baby was as mouthy as she was.
“Hudson.”
“I have an idea,” Kingston said immediately.
I stripped out of my wet clothes and tossed them into the small stacked washer in what should have been a pantry. “You always do. Are you hunkered down at your folks’ place yet?”
“Yeah. I told them my place already lost power and I’ve been a New Yorker for so long I’ve forgotten how to ride out a storm.”
“They bought that?” I said, pulling on the dry shirt and thin sweats I’d left on the bed this morning.
“You know how egotistical Texans are about their hurricane survival skills.”
Considering what I’d just been thinking, I couldn’t argue.
“What’s this idea you’ve had since the last time I talked to you three hours ago?”
Thunder cracked loudly above me and I rifled through the refrigerator, looking for the deli salad I’d brought home from H-E-B last night. Had I already eaten it?
“The Lemons race.”
“What about it?”
“That’s the idea. I’m filming it. If it doesn’t turn out the way I think it will, I’ll use it as a teaching tool in my class next semester.”
There went my appetite. “No.”
“Want to try that again?” he invited in a deceptively mild tone.
I blew out an aggravated breath. “Okay. That doesn’t sound like the usual Kingston Haywood topic, buddy. What makes old dudes roleplaying in cars sound interesting to you?”
“That’s better. For future reference, you should actually listen to an idea before you shoot it down like a domineering dickhead. Didn’t you read the link I sent you?”
“Yes, and fuck you very much for that.” It had taken me to a group of threads with the title Am I the Asshole? He’d made his point, but I might never forgive him for it. How were there that many people masochistic enough to post their petty, and occasionally disgusting, personal problems online for the entire world to see and discuss?
Some of us knew how to keep shit to ourselves. I didn’t bother my friends or perfect strangers with my conflicted, fucked-up emotions. I kept them locked up in a fireproof box, buried in a mile-deep hole and protected by explosives. Like a normal person.
Keeping things to yourself got you here, dumbass.
Here was close enough to see August through a window, or through an open doorway every day as she thanked me for taking out the garbage. Close enough to give me half a dozen opportunities for conversation I’d managed to waste, while suffering with nightly hard-ons on a bed made for Lilliputians. If my fails with August were anything to go by, I was more than rusty at chatting up women.
You could try to be less subtle .
Sure. I could take off more of my clothes or tell her flat out that I was interested, but I’d kept my distance for so long, I thought she might need some convincing first. Which was why the first part of my plan had revolved around rekindling our neighborly friendship. Moving past the last few years of silence and regaining her trust by making myself useful. Giving her time to get to know me again.
It was decent, as far as plans made up on the fly went, and then yesterday happened. I’d stuck my foot in it so deep, I wasn’t sure I could get it out again.
“I told you about my problem so I’d have someone to bitch to,” I groused. “Not to give you ideas.”
“And yet I still have them, because I’m a creative genius.” He was typing in the background as he talked. “I’m sick of my usual topics. There’s too much shit in this world, and I’m tired of giving both it and all the pompous pricks who demand more suffering that kind of oxygen. This, on the other hand, has the potential for dramedy gold.”
“Dramedy?”
“A burnt-out mechanic who wants to quit the only interesting thing he ever does. The only thing that gets him out of his small, backwoods neighborhood and boring-as-hell little life. All so he has more time to potentially date. Not that I’m against that last part. I told you last week I’d set you up with my neighbor. But you had to be particular.”
I shook my head. “Burnt out. Backwoods. Boring as hell. I see your time living spitting distance from the UN headquarters has really fine-tuned your diplomacy skills. And it isn’t only to date. I was thinking I could learn to cook. Build a deck by hand. Maybe play some golf.” Anything that wasn’t related to cars or racing them.
I’d volunteered to work on one vehicle, for one race, five years ago to celebrate Gene’s successful treatment and remission. To raise money for the group that helped him get through it, because I’m a good friend and I hate fucking cancer as much as everybody else. And yeah, the race and those idiots’ antics were always a good time.
But it had been going on for so many years that it felt more like a job than a hobby at this point. I spent my days fixing cars for a living and most of my free time doing the same. The thrill, and the challenge, was gone.
“Golf?” Kingston asked in disbelief. “Fine. So potentially your last race for golfing reasons. The team’s fifth anniversary. A new car and driver, both of which have emotional resonance for everyone on the team, including the grouchy mechanic who wants to hit that complicated hotness.”
I didn’t deny it. “It isn’t a given that she’s getting behind the wheel yet.”
Mostly because of you.
“Gene started the team to celebrate surviving cancer. August obviously wants to do it to honor her mother. There’s a symmetry there that a blind man—or, say, someone that wasn’t an asshole—could see.”
He was going to keep pouring salt in those wounds. I shouldn’t have told him anything, but I’d needed to talk to someone. My other best friend was on a cruise halfway across the world and she wasn’t the right person to be sharing this with. My niece was aware of my living situation, but since I’d changed her diapers and held her while she puked up her baby formula, that didn’t feel right either. Lucy and Rick were out of the question. They’d laugh in my face, and then try to reach Gene overseas to share the joke. Kingston was my only option. And he didn’t “do relationships.”
“That, my friend, is hope and humor in the face of grief. It’s taking risks and healing wounds along the way. That’s a filmmaker’s dream and I’m going to capture it.”
“That’s me regretting covering for you when you took two dates to the prom,” I returned sarcastically. “Gene might not give the go-ahead to film this.”
“Think about who you’re talking about.”
Getting to race a car he wanted while cameras recorded him for posterity? “Damn it. He’ll say yes.”
“But you wouldn’t?”
“I told you I was worried she might regret it later.”
“Are you more worried about her regrets or the car?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions.”
Kingston snickered. “I had to, man. You always take the cars you work on seriously. And you worked on that one a lot.”
Yeah, I had good memories attached to the VW, but if it made August happy, I’d tear it down to scraps in a heartbeat. That’s how far gone I was.
“She’s not like Bernie,” I told him. “She’s never been a daredevil. This isn’t like her.”
“I wish I’d said yes more often.”
And now I wanted to kick myself for knocking her down the first time she’d reached out and tried. Overreacting instead of encouraging her to be a part of something again. Even if it was Lemons.
Hell.
“I am the asshole.”
“At least you’re willing to admit it,” Kingston said, still typing. “And old enough to learn from your mistakes. So, when are you going to make your move, player? You’ve been there for days now.”
“You said it yourself, it’s complicated.”
“You want my advice?”
No, but he was going to give it anyway.
“Apologize and then help her with this race. Think of all the time you’ll be up close and personal if you agree. You have shitty fashion sense and you’re not funny, but ladies seem to like you when you make an effort. She’ll hit that.”
“You really know how to build up a man’s confidence.”
“All I’m saying is give her what she needs and she’ll give you what you want.”
The transactional sound of that left a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted more than a few nights that came out of gratitude. But giving her what she needed had the right ring to it. And what she needed right now was somebody on her side. “You might have one, abnormally microscopic part of a point.”
“No one ever complains about the size of my parts. Now what about my documentary?”
“That’s Gene’s circus.”
Kingston cheered as if he were his own stadium standing ovation. “I’m in, baby. That man doesn’t have a shy bone in his lily-white body.”
“He’s crazy, but Morgan loves him,” I said in amused resignation.
“So do I. Dude knows how to live. You’re the only killjoy going to this party.”
The rumble of thunder and cracks of lightning were almost continuous, and then the power went out with a sizzling pop, cloaking me in darkness.
“Now it’s a party,” I said flatly, flicking on my cell phone flashlight.
“I didn’t miss this weather while I was gone. I need to unplug my shit. Call you tomorrow?”
“Sounds good.”
I hung up and, after searching through the bag I still hadn’t unpacked in the bedroom, took out my portable charger and set it on the island with a battery powered lantern and an extra package of batteries. Then I took out my tablet and opened the ebook I’d been wanting to read. I was ready for anything, but I’d be fine if nothing happened tonight besides me getting a few chapters deep and distracting myself from trying to text August again .
Fifteen minutes later, the explosive sound of a tree cracking and then crashing into something close had me dropping my tablet, jumping to my feet and struggling to get back into my wet boots. That was right on top of us.
“Fuck.” I looked out the window. The rain was knife sharp and sideways. The gusts had to be close to seventy-five miles an hour. Even for Texas, that was crazy. A Cat 2 behaving like a Cat 4.
The tall pines in the neighborhood were no match for those gusts. As soon as I saw the tree—a fifty-foot monster broken off like a matchstick and laying on the roof of the one-story side of Gus’s house—I grabbed my headlamp and ran outside.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
She opened her kitchen door as I reached the overhang, instantly drenching herself. I had a moment to appreciate the way her clothes clung to her body before she started yelling.
“Are you kidding me with this shit?” she shouted at the sky. I hooked an arm around her waist to keep her from running into the storm in her bare feet. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”
Was she trying to start a fight with a hurricane?
“Are you hurt, Gus?” I skimmed my palms over her arms and head, looking for blood or any sign of concussion.
“I’m dandy.” She was still yelling. “There’s a hole in my ceiling with a damn tree in it, but I’m fantastic.”
“All right. Okay. Let’s get you inside.” I tightened my grip for the three seconds she resisted, then heaved a sigh of relief when she let me push the door shut and guide her backwards into the relative safety of her kitchen. “Why do I hear barking?”
Merlin didn’t bark. He grunted, grumbled and growled, but he hadn’t barked from the day they’d moved in.
August looked like she might cry. “I texted to check on Ann last night, and this morning she dropped them off with me until the weather passes. She said her neighbor had a generator and a hotspot, and she needed to be close to her house in case of flooding.”
Hell. “Tilly and Angus are here?”
Hearing their names, they bounded into the room together, barking exuberantly in recognition and jumping on the both of us.
“I gave them some of Merlin’s treats a few minutes ago. They should kick in soon.”
I cursed silently, clicking the headlamp back on. “Let’s go take a look at the damage.”
When I started toward the living room, I heard a quickly muffled laugh behind me.
“I know shock does strange things to people, but are you laughing right now?”
I supposed it was better than her silent treatment.
Another chortle escaped her. “You have a flashlight on your head.”
I turned, careful not to aim at her eyes. “It’s called a headlamp. It keeps my hands free.”
“You look like a coal miner.”
“It’s practical,” I said, eyeing the thick branch poking through her ceiling like a spear and the rain sliding down it like a mini waterfall. “We might need to call backup.”
“Give me a number.” She fumbled and cursed beside me, tapping the screen on her phone. “My phone isn’t working.”
“It isn’t?”
“There’s an X where my bars should be. Chick called me an hour ago.”
“I talked to Kingston fifteen minutes ago; mine should work.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “Damn. A tower must have been hit.”
I pocketed it and braced myself. “Looks like we’re on our own. Got any empty buckets or one of those big storage containers?”
“I…I think so. In the garage.”
I took her arm and led her to her overstuffed chocolate- colored couch. Thankfully the branch and the rain were aimed at an empty corner of the room. The two collies jumped on the cushion beside her as if we were covered in bacon and I sighed. “Stay here while I go shopping.”
She looked up at me with a confused frown. “ Where are you going shopping?”
“There’s a hole in your roof, and the cavalry isn’t coming. I'm going to the garage to see what you've got to work with.”
She reached under the chipped blue coffee table to pull out her sneakers and then got back to her feet. “I’m going to the garage,” she said firmly as she stepped into her shoes. “Tell me what we need and I’ll bring it back.”
“Gus, you don’t?—”
“My life may be a disaster area, but it’s still my life,” she said, determination in every line of her face. “I’m going.”
It was pointless to argue and frankly, I didn’t need another mark against me at the moment.
“Fine. We’ll go together. That way I won’t have to make more than one trip.” I strode in the direction of the hall closet. “Where’s your raincoat?”
“I don’t have one.”
I stopped and turned, reminding myself not to blind her with my headlamp. “How can you not have a raincoat?”
“Because I lived in California and the songs say it never rains there,” she snapped, reaching up to give my wet shirt a tug. “Where’s yours?”
I’d left my slicker in the shop. And here I’d thought I was prepared for anything.
“We won’t melt. Let’s get those buckets before your house floats away.”
I tucked my head and pulled her in close as we ran through the rain, shoes splashing in the several inches of water on the concrete courtyard. She fumbled with the wet doorknob for a second and then the wind blew the door halfway open, slamming it into whatever was behind it.
When we squeezed into the dark garage, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d be doing this if I weren’t here. I imagined her alone with no phone, no power, Niagara Falls in her living room and three animals to wrangle, and it made me see red. Logically, I knew she would have managed and that it was none of my business. But what I was feeling wasn’t logical. I wouldn’t have known she needed help, the same way I hadn’t known she was sick and nearly hospitalized until Morgan mentioned it in passing over dinner, after the fact. The way I hadn’t known she was having money problems and making plans to leave until that app pinged on my phone.
Whose fault is that?
Mine.
I’d been the one waiting for an opening to magically fucking appear instead of making my own and being the friend she needed, regardless of whether or not there could be anything more between us.
Digging around in the garage, we managed to come up with a hammer, some rusty roofing nails, a paint-splattered blue tarp and even a fan. When I spotted the extension cord and a battery-powered chainsaw near the lawnmower, a plan started taking shape. I quickly grabbed two power packs off the charger and hit a button on the battery to check the charge. “Jackpot.”
“No buckets,” August shouted over to me, holding up three clear storage tubs and wincing when another blast of thunder cracked through the rain.
“Even better.”
She moved closer and frowned at my pile. “What now?”
Her face in the lamplight looked pale and drawn, like she was holding herself together with Scotch tape and sheer will. I resisted the urge to drag her into my arms and focused on the first problem in front of me.
“Now I go into the attic and try not to get myself killed.”
Her attention snapped to what was in my hand. “Tell me you’re not planning to take a chainsaw up there in the middle of a hurricane. Because that’s either the start of a very bad horror movie where the heroes are too stupid to live, or a blooper reel that ends bloody.”
“Think of it as emergency surgery. I need to cut that branch before we can cover your new skylight. Don’t worry, I’ve added insulation and replaced shingles at Bernie’s place more than once. I can manage this.” Probably. “Help me get everything into the house and then you can dry off while I make sure your ceiling doesn’t cave in before you call your insurance agent.”
When I looked at her, she answered before I could ask.
“I have insurance, Wade. Despite what everyone believes, I’m not completely incompetent.”
And now she was pissed again, pushing back her wet curls and tossing the things we’d collected into one of her storage tubs.
“I never said you were,” I said mildly. “Let’s go.”
After another soak in the blinding rain, she dumped the tubs on the kitchen floor and rushed into the laundry room down the hallway.
I followed a few paces behind her, grimacing at the sound my boots made as I dripped all over the wood floor. “Attic access?”
She tossed a towel over my shoulder and pointed up to the ceiling’s trap door just behind her. “Don’t fall through when you’re up there. One hole is enough for today.”
“Your concern is duly noted.”
I dried my hands and face, then stepped over to the hallway and pulled down the folding ladder leading to the attic. Clicking my headlamp on bright, I climbed the first few steps and lifted the chainsaw to slide it into the attic ahead of me.
“You really had a headlamp just lying around?”
“I brought it from work. I like to be prepared.”
“For what? Spelunking?”
“For climbing into attics with chainsaws, smartass.” I looked down, giving her my best charming-even-in-the-face-of-weather-catastrophes grin. “Admit it. You’re jealous of how good this looks on me.”
Her laughter was all the incentive I needed to propel myself heroically up into the attic to survey the damage.
Well, hell. I’d need to watch where I stepped up here—there was no plywood over the wooden joists. The rain lashing on the roof outside and the wind shaking the house added an extra fun factor as I turned my head slowly, letting my headlamp pierce the gloom around me.
It didn’t take long to spot the intruder, and I bit back a curse. A professional might say it wasn’t that bad, but I wasn’t a professional, and that limb on the far side of the attic was at least half as wide as I was.
I called down to August to take a few pictures down there while I stepped gingerly across the joists with the heavy-ass chainsaw. Then I set it down and snapped a dozen pictures of the damage with my phone, giving myself a mini pep talk. A helper would have been nice, since I hadn’t spent much time balancing on two-inch-wide boards while working with motorized blades in the dark, but the space was too cramped and it wouldn’t have been safe. I’d just have to be careful. I could do this for August.
The storm sounded like an inbound freight train as I shouted a warning for her to clear the area below me. When she let me know she was safely in the hall, I balanced on two joists and revved up the chainsaw, drowning out the storm. I worked quickly, making the first cut as low as I could on the thick limb without cutting into the house. As soon as the blade was through, the bottom part of the tree slid through the insulation and busted sheet rock to drop heavily to the floor below.
“One cut down, one to go,” I called.
When the saw sliced through the section jutting through the mangled roof, the log fell my way. I barely had time to brace myself for the pain, much less jump out of the way, but mercifully, it only struck a glancing blow to the side of my boot before landing across two joists.
I gave an adrenaline-fueled laugh of relief. I hadn’t lost a limb or added another unintentional skylight.
Now that the hard part was done, I set the saw down and quickly surveyed what was left before digging out my pocketknife to cut some usable pieces off the tarp. I nailed one piece all around the dinner plate-sized hole in the roof, and the other I attached to the attic floor to cover her ceiling. When I called down again, she handed up the tubs and I placed them around the hole to catch any leaks, just in case.
It was sloppy work. Not a long-term fix by any stretch of the imagination, but that was all I could do tonight to keep most of the rain out. The rest would have to wait until our phones had service again.
My soggy boots and sweats were covered with insulation when I landed on her floor again. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. This place is already a mess.”
“It doesn’t look like the tree got anywhere near the upper level, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a look upstairs to be safe.”
She sucked in her lower lip. “I forgot about that. Good thing we have your trusty headlamp to guide us,” she teased as we headed upstairs.
“You keep mentioning it. I have extras at work if you want your own.”
She followed closely behind me as I scanned the ceiling for any water damage, poking my head in the cluttered guest room and bathroom.
“All clear.”
“That’s a relief.” She started back down the stairs again and then turned to look at me. “Grab something to change into and bring it over in a bag if you want it to stay dry. I have enough cold pizza for the both of us.”
I wasn’t saying no to that. “I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure.”
“Great.”
The part of me that wasn’t exhausted, soaked to the bone and itching from the insulation wanted to strike a victory pose. Not only was she talking to me again, but Hurricane Pain-In-My-Ass had just given me the opening I’d been hoping for.
When I carried the heavy tree branch out of the living room and dumped it in the backyard, I decided I might have to rename this damn storm. Hurricane Saving -My-Ass?