Chapter 10
Covey
As soon as I send the text, I wonder if it’s a mistake. I know she feels something towards me, but I don’t like putting myself on the line like that. I don’t like to feel vulnerable.
Cici: Careful or you’ll make me think Friday is a date.
Covey: What if I already think it is?
I quickly exit out of my texts and pull up the website of the best Mexican restaurant in the city. I'm not sure if I’ll be able to get a reservation on such short notice, but I want to take her to the best of the best. I want to see her all dressed up, knowing it’s for me and no one else.
I fist pump the air when I’m able to get a reservation on their website with no problem. This is perfect. I can’t wait to see her on Friday night.
Cici: I guess I better start looking for the perfect outfit.
Covey: No matter what you wear, you’ll be the most beautiful woman there.
Wow, if the guys heard me talking to Cici like this, they’d never let me live it down. I'm already a goner and she isn’t even mine yet.
I let out a loud groan when I wake up late on Friday morning. I had things I wanted to get done today. A million errands to run and an overdue call to my agent.
I trudge into the bathroom and quickly get ready for my day. There are bags under my eyes, making me look at least five years older than I did yesterday. We had a difficult game and it went into overtime last night. I didn’t get home from work until almost midnight. It was exhausting.
I glance at the clock to see it’s already almost noon. I don’t know the last time I slept this late, but I guess my body needed it. I’ve learned to listen to my body over the years and pay attention to what it needs. I won't be able to play baseball for long if my body can’t keep up.
Our reservation at the Mexican restaurant is for six o’clock. When I texted Cici to let her know, she asked if we could meet at the restaurant. She doesn’t think she’ll be finished work early enough to come home.
As much as I wanted to pick her up and drive us, I understand where she’s coming from and I’ll happily do whatever makes her life a little easier. I know Scott, Powell, and Coleman is only two blocks away from the restaurant anyway.
“Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I'm just not sure I want my image attached to that company,” I murmur as I unlock my front door after running my errands for the day. I have about thirty minutes before I need to leave for dinner. That should be plenty of time to shower and get changed.
As I step through the door, my shoes squish against the floor. I frown down and my eyes widen. There’s water everywhere.
“I want you to take a few days to-” I cut off my agent, not really caring about what he’s saying right now. I already know I'm going to turn down this offer and nothing he says is going to change my mind.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I growl.
“Covey? What’s going on?”
“My first floor is flooded. I need to go deal with this.” I hang up before he can even respond.
Running a rough hand through my hair, I try to figure out what to do first. I guess I need to figure out where the water is coming from and try to get it turned off.
Stomping into the kitchen, I tug open the cabinet under the sink and peer in at the pipes.
There doesn’t seem to be any sort of leak in here.
I move to the hallway bathroom and when I don’t find a leak there or in the laundry room, I head straight to the master bedroom.
When I'm still coming up empty, I head to the bathroom on the other side of the house, the one for the spare bedrooms.
My carpet squishes beneath my shoes, making my anxiety grow and my patience shrink. I’ll have to rip this up and try to dry the place out. I’ll probably have to rip up the flooring throughout the entire house. I'm sure it’s all damaged at this point.
I don’t find any obvious leaks and it has my annoyance growing to an all-time high. I scrub a hand down my face and try to think this through. I could call a plumber, but I’d rather have someone I know in my house, than a complete stranger. Plus, I want someone I know will fix this correctly.
“Hello?” Wyatt answers his phone on the third ring. I breathe a sigh of relief. I thought he wasn’t going to answer my call and then I don’t know what I would’ve done.
“Hey, can you give me your dad’s number?”
“Sure, what’s going on?”
“I just came home and my house is flooded. I can’t figure out where the leak is coming from.” I scrub a hand down my face and try to reign in my anger. Getting frustrated isn’t going to solve anything.
“Let me call my dad. I’ll get him over there as soon as possible.”
“Thanks, man. I want someone I can trust to do this right.”
“I get it. I’ll give you a call back if he can’t get over to you for some reason. Most likely he or Charlie’s dad will be on your doorstep in the next hour.”
“Thanks.”
Wyatt says goodbye and we end the call. I spend the next twenty minutes trying to move anything I don’t want ruined off the floor. I have no clue how long this leak will continue for and there are a few things I don’t want destroyed.
A knock on my door has me rushing towards the front of the house. I swing the door open and come face to face with two huge guys. One of them has an easy smile stretched across his face and the other stares at me like he can see deep down into my soul.
“Hey, Covey. I'm Blake, Wyatt’s dad, and this is Wes, Charlie’s dad. Wyatt said you were having a little leak?”
“There’s nothing little about this leak,” I groan as I run my hands through my hair again. At this point I probably look a mess.
I motion for them to follow me into the house and Blake lets out a low whistle. Wes grimaces and shakes his head as he looks around.
“I hope you aren’t attached to these floors. They’ll all need to be torn up.” He motions to the floors I just had replaced last year.
“Awesome. Those are practically new.” I shake my head and stare up at the ceiling. This can’t seriously be happening.
“Did you turn off the water?” Wes asks.
“…No. I was looking for the leak and couldn’t find it. I never thought of turning off the water to the house.”
“No one ever does.” Blake chuckles and he pats me on the shoulder. “I’m assuming it’s in the basement.”
“I think so? I don’t really know.” I grip the back of my neck, feeling more than helpless in this situation.
“Dang, these baseball players think they’re hot stuff because they can catch a ball and they don’t even know where the water shuts off in their own home.” Blake rolls his eyes as he opens the door to the basement and disappears out of sight.
“I feel like such an idiot,” I murmur.
“Don’t. He’s just busting your balls. It’s what he does.” Wes shrugs. “What work have you had on the house recently?”
I open my mouth to respond, but Blake calls for us to come down to the basement. I turn on the flashlight to my phone and use it as a light to walk down the steps. There’s at least two feet of water down here. I don’t know how I didn’t think to check the basement at all.
“I turned off the power to the house. There’s no way of knowing if the electricity is compromised and with your entire house being wet, I don’t want you to get electrocuted.”
“Only took it happening to him once for him to learn his lesson.” Wes smirks.
“Anyway,” Blake ignores Wes and continues. “It looks like there’s a leak inside your wall. I’m assuming that’s where your bathroom is.” He points up and I mentally map out which room we’re under.
“Yeah, I just had my spare bathroom renovated a few months ago. They went down to the studs and replaced all the plumbing and electrical.”
“Who did it?” Wes folds his arms over his chest and watches me carefully.
“Blackstone Renovations.”
“Ha! You’re lucky your house is still standing.
” Wes lets out a humorless snort of laughter and shakes his head.
“We’ve had more jobs than I can count because of their failure to handle things correctly.
I'm not joking when I say you’re lucky you haven’t had an electrical fire or more flooding.
They cut corners and their guys take no pride in their work. All they care about is making money.”
“Their contract only covers their work for thirty days and most people don’t realize that. They make sure the work will last for at least thirty days, but after that, they don’t care what happens to your house. They already made their money.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groan.
“We can handle this if you want us to. Your floors are ruined. They’ll have to be ripped up. Down here will have to be drained and dried up, but I don’t see much that will need to be replaced.” Wes glances around the basement. I don’t keep much down here and that’s probably a good thing.
“How often do you come into the basement?” Blake asks slowly.
“I haven’t been down here in months, why?”
“Is this your master bedroom or spare bathroom?”
“Spare bathroom.”
“I have a feeling this has been slowly leaking for a while. You probably didn’t notice because the water was going under your vinyl hardwood floors. They’re good at soaking up water and you don’t notice a leak until it’s too late.”
“Awesome.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, more than done with this already.
“Your molding will probably need to be replaced. There’s a chance the drywall will also need to be replaced.” Wes winces.
“Will I even be able to live here?”
“Did you check if the other side of the house is wet? Your master bedroom is on one side of the house and the spare bedrooms are on the other, right?”
“Yeah, they renovated the spare bedroom. I don’t remember my master bedroom carpet being wet when I checked that bathroom. I called Wyatt as soon as I couldn’t find the leak. I wasn’t really thinking straight.”
“That’s what we’re for. If the leak is on the opposite side of the house from your master bedroom, I don’t see any reason you can’t stay here. Did Blackstone only renovate your spare bathroom, or did they do more?” Wes arches a brow.
“They renovated the entire house,” I whisper.
“Ok. We’ll take care of this.” Blake clamps a hand down on my shoulder and squeezes gently. “Don’t worry about anything. We can handle ripping out everything that’s damaged and fix it all. I think we should check all of the plumbing and electrical to see what else they screwed up.”
“Can we just rip everything down to the studs again? I don’t want to constantly worry about a fire or something else leaking.”
“We can do whatever you want, Covey. This is your home. If you want us to check everything the best we can and not take down walls, we will.”
“No, just gut everything.”
Wes and Blake glance at each other. I swear they’re having a silent conversation and it’s killing me. I want to know what they’re thinking.
“I’ll see if Titus is free this weekend. He’s a huge Pit Bulls fan so I'm sure he’d love to help you out… Maybe you can give him some tickets too.” Blake smirks at me.
“I’ll get him as many tickets as he wants.”
“Well, don’t tell him that. He’ll already get paid overtime to come over the weekend.” Wes rolls his eyes.
“We’ll have him and a few other guys work over the weekend to pull everything out. You want us to gut the kitchen too?”
“Yeah, I'm sure the cabinets are damaged.”
“We’ll check them out and see. Your flooring doesn’t go under your cabinets so if they’re not damaged, we can just rip up the floors.
Let’s check it out and get a game plan in place.
” Wes begins climbing the stairs to the main floor.
I go to tuck my phone in my pocket and it ends up slipping out of my hand and falling into the water.
“Man, this really isn’t your day, huh?” Blake winces as he grabs my phone and shakes it a few times. The screen cracked and it flickers before going black. “This was backed up, right?”
“Thankfully, I backed it up last night. Let’s hope I can get a new one quickly.”
I follow Blake up the stairs and am basically his and Wes’ shadow for the next two hours.
The leak was in the wall of the shower in the newly renovated bathroom.
All of the carpet in the bedrooms need to be ripped up.
The vinyl plank hardwood floors are destroyed and will need to be replaced.
That entire side of the house needs to be gutted and redone.
We get to the kitchen and Wes quickly pulls up one of the planks. He lets out a sigh and stands to his full height, shaking his head.
“This has been leaking for a while. The cabinets have a lot of water damage.”
“How did I not notice this?”
“Do you wear shoes most of the time?” Blake arches a brow.
“Honestly, I'm normally rushing around, trying to get to work on time or get other things done on my days off. I'm not sure the last time I walked through here without shoes on.” I shake my head. I still should’ve noticed.
“If you were wearing shoes and rushing around, you wouldn’t notice it. Give yourself a break, Covey. You’re insanely busy during the season, it’s understandable. We’ll handle all of this and you won't have to worry.”
Without another word, I grab my keys and remove the key to the house from the ring. I hand it over to Wes and sigh.
“You might as well take this. I'm not home enough to open the doors for people.”
“Our guys will treat your home with respect. We don’t hire people we don’t trust. That being said, if there’s ever an issue, please let us know right away.”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”