Chapter Eleven
I was right about academic job postings, and by the first week of October, half a dozen full-time jobs in my field have been listed.
No one is specifically looking for a specialist in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European history, and only two of the jobs are tenure-track, with the others one- to three-year lines with no guarantee of a contract renewal, but all six are general enough that I have the expertise to fit the job descriptions.
Despite my continued reservations about reentering academia, I go ahead and apply for all six.
I toss back a couple of shots of rum after I submit the final application, attempting to celebrate after spending two long weeks on CV adjustments, individualized job-specific cover letters, DEI statements, teaching statements, carefully worded reference requests, write-ups about my research goals and accomplishments, assembling of student evaluations and syllabi and peer reviews of my teaching, and otherwise generating massive application packages, all so a search committee can look at a few lines of my CV and decide whether to interview me.
The rum feels more like a consolation than a celebration.
October also brings a change in the weather as days grow shorter, colder, and wetter.
Dylan and I establish a routine of placing buckets under every leak and keeping a stack of old towels at the ready on the third floor, where most of the water trickles in.
At the first crack of thunder, we’re off, knowing precisely where each bucket goes, grabbing from corners, closets, and sideboards where we keep the buckets tucked away until we need them.
He had this down before I moved in, but it’s more efficient with two. Sometimes we even make it a race.
However, I am not prepared for the storm that hits a week before Halloween, when I get caught halfway home from Blue Hill with my backpack full of groceries and the wind whipping at my clothes.
The sea crashes to my right, spitting salt spray in my direction, though I can’t tell the spray from the rain.
I’m soaked through in mere seconds, chilled to the bone, and yet warmed by adrenaline as I stagger-run the remaining mile home, praying the house isn’t completely flooded.
“Dylan!” I shout as I fling open the door, my voice barely audible, even to my own ears, with the sea lashing the rocks behind the house and rain pummeling every window. “Dylan!”
“Up here!” His voice reaches me from the third floor.
I drop my peacoat and backpack and race up the stairs.
He’s in his bedroom with the door open. His mattress is on its side, leaning against the wall by the wardrobe.
He’s standing on the empty bed frame, one foot on each side beam, in jeans and nothing else, holding a balled-up T-shirt against the ceiling in the middle of the ugly brown stain I should’ve heeded like an omen while water runs down his raised arms and naked torso, puddling on the floor.
He sees me enter. “Towels! Pail! Quick!”
I fly to the third-floor bathroom and grab an armload of towels, rushing back to hand one to Dylan before tossing the others on the floor so they can soak up the worst of the rainwater and crumbled plaster that’s rapidly turning to mush.
Then I fetch a bucket, and Dylan lets the wadded shirt and towel drop with a loud splat, centering the bucket under a steady stream of water.
I’m already off, pillaging for another receptacle by dumping a dried palm leaf arrangement onto the floor and returning to Dylan’s room with a large brass pot.
For the next twenty minutes or so, we run two-person fireman’s drills, alternating the pot and bucket while Dylan collects water from the ceiling and I dump it into the bathtub, returning for the next round.
It’s manic and stressful, and we’re both cursing throughout the entire ordeal, too busy triaging for either of us to split off and go check on the rest of the house.
By the time the deluge abates enough for us to shove aside the bed frame and set the brass pot on the floor so Dylan can shake out his arms while I catch my breath, the hole in the ceiling is about two feet in diameter, still letting in rain from the crawl space above this section of the house.
“Didn’t anticipate that,” he says as he massages a shoulder.
“It’s my fault. I knew the roof was a disaster. I should’ve made it my first priority.” I blow out an exhausted breath, swapping the pot for the bucket. “Glad you saved the mattress.”
“It’s wet on one side, but I got it moved before the water broke through the ceiling.”
I empty the pot and return with a dry towel, handing it to Dylan.
He runs it through his hair before hanging it over his shoulders and glancing around at the mess.
Wet towels. Broken plaster. Furniture askew.
Rain still battering the windows. I don’t see his laptop, so hopefully he put it somewhere safe before the flooding started.
He might not think the hard drive contains anything of value, but now that I’ve read his writing, I’ll fight him on that. Hard.
“You got it covered here if I check the rest of the house?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He tips his head toward the stairs. “Thanks. Go.”
I make a round, grateful to discover that Dylan placed the usual buckets and bins before dealing with his bedroom ceiling.
I empty each receptacle and mop up puddles as needed.
After confirming that the attic is no worse off than usual and the most valuable antiques are still safe, I return to the third floor, where the storm is doing its worst.
Dylan’s bent over, swapping the bucket for the pot.
For a moment, all concerns about rainwater and roof repairs vanish from my mind.
I stand in the doorway and stare, rapt by the movement of his back muscles and the wet jeans that hug his ass.
This is not the time to let lust overwhelm me.
The house is literally falling apart around us, and the storm might continue for hours yet.
But my skin heats up. My breath hitches. And I lose all control of my thoughts.
What would he feel like if I just . . . ?
What would I feel like if he just . . . ?
A held hand. A thumb brushing my skin. Friendly.
Or maybe more than friendly.
Storm-cloud eyes. Deep dimples. A smolder. A sigh. A reluctant smile.
I want. I wish.
What if? What if? What if?
Dylan carries the full bucket over to where I’m standing. A very quiet, very distant voice in the back of my mind tells me to take the bucket and empty it for him, but I’m too lust addled to move, my brain even hazier with him only a few feet away.
I assume he’s about to tell me to stop staring at him as though I want to do obscene things with him in dark places, but my face must not reflect my thoughts, because he doesn’t look at me as though I’m making him nervous or uncomfortable. He looks . . . concerned.
“Hey.” He puts down the bucket and sets his hands on my arms, gently, the way someone might comfort a shock victim. “It’ll be okay. Nothing important was damaged beyond repair. The rain will stop eventually. We’ll get the roof fixed. We’ll look back on this and laugh.”
Relief washes over me, followed almost instantly by another wave of emotion, one way too strong and too complicated to make sense of.
Maybe I’m responding to his calm, deep voice.
Maybe it’s his gentle hold on my arms. Maybe it’s his repeated use of we.
Maybe it’s the surprise of someone providing kind reassurance instead of giving me shit for not making smarter choices so all of this would’ve been avoided, lessons I seem to have internalized so deeply they’ve come to define my adulthood, and define it to such a strong degree that when my carefully laid-out life plan fails, I’m consumed by shame, even while I try to hold myself together.
Whatever it is, something inside me cracks, and I fling my arms around Dylan’s neck.
“Thank you,” I say, and the break in my voice betrays the tears that threaten to fall.
He hesitates for a second, startled maybe, or unsure, but soon, his hands slide around my back, and he holds me against him, quiet and calm, while I sniffle in his arms, no longer thinking about his rippling back muscles or the fit of his wet jeans.
All I want is this. Kindness and comfort.
Warmth. Strength. A stronger line between lonely and alone.
“Sorry.” I pull back to wipe at my nose. “I had no idea I was on the brink.”
He dabs at my eyes. “Need me to get another shirt to staunch the leaks?”
I snort out a laugh. “No, but you might want to get a shirt anyway.” I step back and flap a hand at him. “This is kind of distracting. Not in a bad way. But . . . just . . . yeah.”
“Ah. Um. Okay.” He spins away, practically diving at his dresser, where he tosses aside the towel around his neck and takes out a T-shirt.
His neck flushes, like it so often does, and I’m not sure which of us is more embarrassed, but it’s too late to take back my words now.
Also, despite what I texted to Amelia, and despite Dylan’s welcome misinterpretation of my staring just now, I’m pretty sure he already knew I was attracted to him.
I’ve never been able to hide what I feel.
While he puts on the shirt, I grab the bucket off the floor and empty it in the bathroom, buying myself a moment to blow my nose, wipe my eyes, and clear my head.
I don’t know how I went from panic about the house to a fireball of desire to a blubbering, clingy tangle of gratitude and affection, all in a matter of seconds, but the onset of a tempest seems like as good a time as any to be all parts of myself at once, without reason or regulation.
Dylan gestures at the T-shirt he’s wearing as I reenter his room. This one says Temple of Joy, with a little bird carrying a sun across a cloudy sky, holding tight with its tiny claws.
“This better?” he asks.
I nod, because better is relative, and I can’t articulate a clear reply.
His eyes drop to my chest as he takes the empty bucket from me.
“You might want to change, too,” he says. “You know. If we’re avoiding distractions.”
I look down to see that my thin white Henley is soaked through, revealing every contour of my bra and breasts, most notably, the distinct, dark peaks of my nipples.
Dylan’s tone wasn’t suggestive—more you have spinach stuck in your teeth, less I want to run my strong hands over every inch of your hot, naked body—but for a moment, I consider embracing the circumstances and suggesting we distract the hell out of each other while the storm rages around us.
But only for a moment. Then I head downstairs, rein myself in, and change into dry clothes.
The rest of the day is a wearying relay race of keeping up with the buckets, tacking thick plastic sheeting under the gaping hole in the roof now that we can reach right through Dylan’s ceiling to do the temporary patch job, wringing out towels, and running wet linens through the dryer.
Worried the electricity might die any second, we gather candles and flashlights, and we get a fire going in the living room fireplace using the offcuts of our July pruning efforts.
Then we drag Dylan’s heavy, wet mattress downstairs and lay it in front of the fireplace so the side that got soaked can dry out.
By the time the storm dies down shortly after 8:00 p.m., all I want to do is curl up in a very dry, very warm place and sleep for days.
Instead, I get out my laptop, which miraculously still has internet, so I can research home loans that might help me buy a new roof.
Out of sheer habit, I skim my inbox first and find emails about two of the jobs I applied for, one in Colorado and one in Iowa, requesting my availability for video-call interviews with the search committees. I’m not as excited as I should be, and I leave the emails unanswered. For now.
I’m sitting in the kitchen, fruitlessly filling in the umpteenth preliminary loan application for which I have to list unemployed as my job title and estimate my income and assets with little to go on, when the electricity goes out, as expected.
As I light a big pillar candle I preemptively set nearby, Dylan pads into the room in his quiet sock feet and sets a hand on my back.
“Dinner?” he asks.
“What’d you have in mind?”
He wraps his hand over the lower half of his face, hiding a smile.
Right. Dumb question. Even if we had a working stove.
“Can we at least add cheese or vegetables?” I ask. “And maybe a salad?”
“Sure. Whatever goes well with this.” He sets a bottle on the table in front of me. Rum, of course. The bottle’s still sealed. The liquid inside is a beautiful dark amber. A simple parchment label notes the brand, with the words Gran Reserva. “I think we’ve earned this tonight.”
I glance up at Dylan, trying to read his expression, failing utterly.
“Okay,” I say. “Just one drink, though.”
He gets a look on his face I’ve never seen before.
It’s subtle, like most of his expressions, but for the first time ever, I could swear there’s a hint of mischief in it.
But he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he walks over to the fridge, finds my chickadee magnet, and places it squarely under Dare, folding his arms over his chest as he turns to look at me.
I choke out a nervous laugh. “I told you I—”
“I know.”
“I might get all—”
“Fully understood.”
“Even if I—?”
“Even then.”
I eye him suspiciously. “Is this because—?”
“No. Maybe.” His eyes dip down and then return to my face. “But not just that.”
For several seconds, I stare at him with my mouth hanging open, frantically analyzing the nuances of his words, his stance, his tone, and the all-but-imperceptible shifts in his expression.
Then I get up and put his smiley face under Truth.
“You first,” I say as I cross my arms, too.
He takes a deep breath, massaging his chin where a few days’ growth has left a dark shadow. I wait, and I’ll continue to wait. If he expects me to make a fool of myself with my grandmother’s best rum, he’s giving me something.
“Okay,” he says. “Shoot.”
I’m tempted to ask if he’s attracted to me at all. Knowing would help me decide how to proceed. I’m also tempted to ask him about the story I read, if he really had seven tiny wars with someone who left him heartbroken. And maybe I can ask him, but one step at a time.
“What does the H stand for?” I ask. “In D. H. Sterling?”
His hand drops to his side, no longer massaging his face, as the air of challenge falls away, replaced by a shifting stance and a bobbing Adam’s apple.
“Which stories did you read?” he asks.
“Just one. About the couple with the toothbrush holder.”
He nods, taking this in, studying my face while the seconds tick by, and I wonder if he’ll wriggle out of answering, requesting a dare instead. But then he blinks, swallows, and says, “Harley. The H stands for Harley. My parents were bikers.”