Caleb
The problem with honesty is that once you let it out, it doesn't go back in the box.
I didn't sleep. I lay there replaying the trailer on a loop, the way she'd stepped closer instead of backing away.
If she'd retreated, I could've written it off as one-sided.
She hadn't, and that contradiction is living rent-free in my head as I drive to the Union Hall for the monthly safety meeting.
Gus runs these with zero tolerance for distraction, and I make it through most of it before he calls my name and I realize it's not the first time he's said it.
"Sorry. Long week."
"Your site's getting a reputation for taking safety seriously," Gus says, dry but not unkind. "Word is you've got a consultant who actually knows what she's doing."
"She caught a ground stability issue before it became a problem," I say, keeping my voice neutral. "Anyone who can do that earns my respect."
After the meeting, Gus intercepts me on the way to my truck. "Walk with me." It’s not a request.
We head to the courtyard behind the hall, and he lowers himself onto a bench with a controlled grunt. "You're wound tighter than usual."
"It's been a complicated week."
"The consultant," he says. "You're attracted to her."
There's no point lying to Gus. "Yes."
"You get that look your mother used to get," Gus says, not unkindly. "Right before she'd decide something and not look back. Difference is, she was running from something. You look like a man running toward it for once."
I don't have a response for that. Gus doesn't push, just lets it sit there.
"She feel the same way?"
"I think so. But we both know it's complicated."
"Everything worth doing is complicated," Gus says.
"Question is whether you're going to let complicated become impossible, or figure out how to navigate it.
" He doesn't tell me to keep my distance, which surprises me.
"I'm seventy-two years old, son. Attraction doesn't follow HR guidelines.
You can pretend it's not there and make yourself miserable, or you can handle it like an adult.
Ignoring it never works. It just festers. "
"We already said it out loud," I admit. "Both of us. Yesterday."
"Then you're ahead of where I figured you'd be.
" He claps me on the shoulder as he stands, joints cracking.
"Saying it once means something. Saying it twice in two days means you're nervous it didn't land.
" He studies me a beat longer than I'd like.
"You're a good man, Caleb, but you've been carrying everything alone for too long.
If this woman makes you think about something besides work, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Just don't smother it trying to make sure she knows. "
By the time I get back to the site, I've turned that over enough times to actually hear it.
I already said my piece yesterday. Standing in that parking lot repeating myself isn't honesty, it's insurance, and Rena's not the kind of woman who needs the same promise handed to her twice to believe it the first time.
So I don't go looking for her with another speech ready.
I find her instead crouched near the western trench, marking something on her clipboard, and I detour past Marlene's on the way, because I know for a fact City Hall's coffee is barely fit for stripping paint and she's been living on it for three days.
"You look like you're about to write me up," I say, holding out the second cup.
She glances up, surprise flickering before she covers it. "For what?"
"Undecided. I figured I'd bring evidence of good behavior preemptively." I nod at the trench. "Anything I need to know about?"
"Minor shoring issue. Nothing that can't wait until after you drink your coffee and stop hovering." She takes the cup anyway, wrapping both hands around it the way she did that first morning at the counter. "This is from Marlene's."
"It is."
"You drove into town for this."
"I was already headed that way." I wasn't. She knows I wasn't, judging by the look she gives me over the rim of the cup, but she doesn't call it out, and I don't explain it either. Some things don't need narrating.
"Thank you," she says, quieter than the moment probably calls for.
"Don't read too much into it," I say, even though we'd both know I was lying.
"Wouldn't dream of it," she says, and there's a smile underneath the words that she's not quite letting reach her mouth.
We both stand there looking at each other, waiting for the other to say something. The noise of the site disappears from around us, and then I see her coming back to reality.
"I've got a report due to the city by Friday," she says eventually. "Shoring specs, load calculations. Riveting stuff."
"Sounds it. I wait a beat. “You could come by the trailer later. Pretend to check on the pour schedule again." There's a challenge in it, light enough to be a joke, honest enough that it isn't quite one.
"Might do that," she says before looking back at her clipboard, and I go back to my rounds. Nothing's been promised that wasn't already true yesterday. But something's shifted anyway, the kind of shift you only notice because the ground under it feels a little more solid than it did this morning.
I've got the uneasy, unmistakable feeling that solid ground and Rena were never going to stay separate concepts for long.