Ten.
Shea
Callie shows up at the suite with a bottle of wine, a bag of kettle chips, and the excitement of a best friend whose been dying for this conversation for five whole days.
I let her in with a look that has her squealing as she shimmies past me—Hulk hot on her heels with his big head and cute blue service dog vest on.
The suite is lived-in in a way I didn’t expect after only a week. Tyler’s hoodie is slung over the back of the couch. My sketchbook is open on the coffee table beside a half-empty mug, and the camera sits charging on the end table.
Callie takes it all in with a small, knowing smile. “Homey.”
“It’s a mess,” I correct, gathering the throw blanket off the couch to make room for us, then promptly plop onto it. “How was California?”
She sets the wine and chips on the coffee table, taking her spot at the other end of the three-seater couch.
We turn to face each other, feet comfortably between us.
“It was good. Long. The studio wants reshoots on the third act, so I was in a windowless room arguing about a kiss for four days.” She uncorks the wine with ease.
“Beau flew out for the last two. He complained about the traffic the whole time, and then he bought a pair of fifty-dollar sunglasses he refuses to admit he loves.”
I snort. “There’s no way Frugal Beau spent that much.”
“Aviators. He looks like a divorced dad at a Costco.” She pours two generous glasses and hands me one with a smile. “It’s honestly the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
I take the wine, tuck my feet under me, and for a second, it’s just this—the two of us, a bottle between us, the mountains going purple through the big suite windows.
I’ve missed her so much it’s physical, a tightness under my ribs that only loosens now that she’s here.
A true best friend will have that effect on you.
And ever since she moved here, I haven’t wanted to admit how terribly I need her most days.
“Enough about me.” She takes a sip, watching me over the glass rim. “How’s the house?”
That’s a deceptively safe question if there ever was one.
Monday was the first day of restorations at—what I’m now also calling, thanks to Rhett—the Hargrove Place. It’s now Friday and…well, we’ve made a lot of progress in five days of a few hours in the mornings and a few more in the evenings.
“Good,” I say, nodding as I speak. “Really good, actually. We got the whole main floor bared this week. The original oak was under all of it. Cals, it’s gorgeous. Rhett thinks we can refinish rather than replace, which saves a fortune, and we plan to take the kitchen partition down on Sunday—”
“Mhm.”
“—and Tyler’s actually been filming, like properly filming, he’s got a real eye, I didn’t expect—”
“Mhm.”
I stop, eyeing her. “What?”
“Nothing.” She reaches for a chip. “You just said we four times, but please, continue.”
“I did not.” Did I?
Callie pops the chip in her mouth, insufferably serene. “So. Rhett.”
“So. Nothing.” I take a sip of wine that’s more of a gulp. “He’s my contractor. He’s good at his job. We work well together. That’s the whole—” I wave a hand just as Tyler’s door opens, stopping me short.
He emerges in a fresh hoodie, his hair actually brushed, and… I sniff the air as he passes. Is that cologne? He’s got his phone in one hand and his shoes already on, which for Tyler is basically a formal announcement of intent.
“I’m going downstairs,” he says.
I blink. “Downstairs where?”
“The arcade by the pool.” He’s already edging toward the door. “There’s these kids. We’re gonna play the racing game or whatever.”
“Kids.” I sit up straight. “What kids? Since when are there downstairs kids?”
“Since I’ve been going down there all week while you’re at the house.” He says it like it’s no big deal, but it is a big deal.
In the evenings? I mean, yeah, I’ve let him stay back, but mainly because the lighting in the evening stinks and his hired tutor for homeschooling finally caught up with us. “You were supposed to be doing school work with your tutor.”
He ignores me. “Their parents work here. There’s like four of them. One of them is homeschooled, too, so.” He shrugs, as if that was a full explanation.
“Hi, Ty,” Callie offers, delighted.
“Hey.” He gives her a nod that is nearly polite. Growth. “Can I, like, go now?”
I open my mouth to run through the list: phone charged, back by ten, text me if you leave the building, do NOT let anyone talk you into the hot tub after hours.
Then I catch Callie watching me with her eyebrows halfway up her forehead, and I hear it.
I sound like his parent when I’m not. He’s my stepbrother.
I can be the cool stepsister, can’t I?
“Phone on,” I say instead. “Back by ten.”
“Cool.” One word and he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him before I can add a single caveat.
I stare at the door. “He met people,” I say faintly. “He brushed his hair and put on cologne…”
“I bet there’s a girl down there,” Callie says matter-of-factly.
“Gotta be.” I groan dramatically, “I don’t have time for this.”
“It’s a good sign, Shea.” Callie’s voice is gentle. “He probably needs to be around, you know, normal, average kids for once.”
“I know, I know. I just—” I press the cool glass to my cheek.
“His mom left him with a stranger in a state he’s never been to and he’s fifteen.
I keep waiting for him to fall apart, and instead he’s…
thriving? Helping at the house without much complaining, and now he’s making friends, too?
” I shake my head. “One of us should be thriving, I suppose. Feels rude that it’s him, though. ”
She laughs, but she’s watching me with a soft, patient look. “And you’re not thriving?”
“I’m thriving professionally,” I say. “The pilot footage is better than I hoped. Tyler’s shots, the house, the whole thing. It’s coming together.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she deadpans.
“I know it’s not.” I smirk and drink my wine.
She waits. Callie has always been able to out-wait me; it’s her single most annoying quality.
I cave far too fast. “Fine. Fine.” I set the glass down harder than necessary.
For the plot, of course. “He’s…not what I expected.
Any of it. I thought he’d be this gruff, grunting mountain man who’d nod at my plans and tell me what things cost, and instead he listens.
He redrew a whole kitchen island because I said the light mattered more than the counter space.
He taught Tyler to use a shop vac and tear up old flooring.
He shows up at six in the morning and still works a full day, then comes back and does more, and he never once makes me feel like I’m crazy for buying a hundred-year-old house, he just—” My voice does something embarrassing and I stop to breathe.
“He makes it all feel possible. Like my dreams are possible.”
Callie doesn’t say anything. She just reaches over and refills my glass, which is somehow worse than if she’d gloated with a typical, “Called it!”
“But it doesn’t matter,” I say, faster now, gathering the loose ends of my emotional spiral off the floor.
“Because I have too much going on, Cals. I don’t have room for romance or love or even a fling right now.
I’ve got a show to pitch and a house to beautify and a teenager to keep alive and a father who will find a way to make all of it my fault if it falls apart.
So, no, it doesn’t matter that he’s—” I gesture vaguely at the air. “—you know.”
Capable. Sexy. Steady. Handsome. Patient. Has arms of steel.
“Shea.” Callie sets her glass down, setting her hand on my knee. “It’s okay to want something for yourself, you know. Even if that something is a person.”
And there it is. The thing I’ve been outrunning since that slow song on Saturday night.
Because the truth, the one I won’t say even to her, even now, three glasses deep with the mountains gone dark outside, is that it isn’t the wanting that scares me.
It’s that Rhett sees me.
Not the designer, not the resort mogul’s daughter, not the girl who shows up and handles wardrobe malfunctions so nobody has to worry about their biggest day. Just me. Wild ideas and big dreams and a heart three sizes too big for its own good.
Nobody has ever just stopped and seen me before. And I have no idea how to feel and not fall completely apart.
“Okay.” Callie claps her hands together, and just like that, the air lightens. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
I eye her warily.
“We are going to finish this bottle.” She refills both our glasses to the rim to prove it.
“We are going to eat these chips for dinner like the grown, functional adults we are. And we are not going to make any romantic, potential rendezvous decisions about tall, competent contractors tonight, because your judgment is legally compromised.”
“My judgment is fine.”
She stares me dead in the face. “You bought a house on the internet, Shea.”
I roll my eyes. “That was one time.”
“It was three weeks ago!” she cackles.
I throw a chip at her. Hulk, who has been a model of professional restraint this entire time, tracks its arc across the room with his whole soul, looks at Callie for permission, and lets out a snoot-huff.
“See, he gets it,” Callie says, scratching his ears. “Nobody in this room is thinking clearly.”
We laugh, and it’s easy, and she launches into the reshoot drama—some actor who won’t stop improvising, a director on his last nerve—and I let her voice wash over me, warm and familiar, the mountains dark and my best friend finally, finally on the same couch as me.
For a little while, it’s enough.
“One last thing,” she starts, holding a wagging finger between us as her phone rings, indicating her fiancée is here to pick her and Hulk up.
I giggle as she downs the last drop of her glass. “Oh, boy. What is it now?” I follow her to the door, Hulk trailing our every move.