Rena
Caleb picks me up at seven, and I spend an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to wear for a date in a town I've never heard of.
"You went with the green dress," he says when I climb in, appreciation naked in his voice. "I was half convinced you'd show up in your hard hat out of spite."
"I considered it. Wanted to see if you'd still take me seriously."
"That's either the most romantic or the strangest thing anyone's said to me on a first date."
He drives forty minutes to a small place in Millbrook, white tablecloths, a wine list longer than the menu, and I spend most of dinner cataloging things about him I never had space to notice on a job site.
The way he orders without hesitation, direct with the waiter the same way he's direct with everyone.
The way he listens as if my answers actually matter, not just waiting for his turn to talk.
"Tell me something about you that has nothing to do with construction," he says over dessert.
"I used to want to be an architect. Before I realized I liked keeping people alive more than I liked drafting buildings that might kill them if someone cut corners."
"That tracks."
"What about you? Something that has nothing to do with concrete."
"I read more than people expect. Mostly history. There's something steadying about knowing everything eventually gets rebuilt on top of what came before it."
"That's annoyingly poetic for a man who spends his days yelling about rebar spacing."
"Don't tell the crew. I have a reputation to protect."
By the time we're driving back, something's loosened between us that wasn't there at the start of the night, some careful edge worn down by two hours of conversation that had nothing to do with permits or safety violations.
"Come back to mine," he says, when we hit the edge of Forge Creek. "No expectations. I just don't want the night to end yet."
"Okay," I say, and mean it.
His place is quiet when we get there, and he pours wine while I curl into the corner of his couch, my shoes off, and feeling looser than I have in weeks.
"You're being very romantic tonight," I observe. "It's almost suspicious."
"I contain more depth than the hard hat suggests."
"Clearly."
He sits beside me, close enough that his arm settles along the back of the couch behind my shoulders, and for a while we just talk, nothing important, easy back and forth that fills the space the way good conversation does.
Eventually it drifts somewhere quieter, somewhere I don't usually let it go.
"Why do you leave places?" he asks. "Why is temporary your default setting?"
"Because it's safer," I finally say. "If I don't stay long enough to put down roots, I can't get hurt when things fall apart.
And they always fall apart eventually. My last job, I'd been there three years.
Trusted people, thought I'd found somewhere I could stay.
Then one bad call, one incident where I was right but politically inconvenient, and everyone I thought had my back threw me under the bus to save themselves. "
"I'm sorry that happened to you."
"It taught me a valuable lesson. Don't stay long enough to care."
"That's a lonely way to live."
"It's safe."
He turns to face me more fully. "What if I told you that you could have both? Safe and connected?"
"I'd say you're an optimist."
"I'd say I'm someone who's willing to prove it. For however long it takes." He pulls me against his chest. "I'm planning on being around indefinitely. I’m planning on being the person you can count on when things get hard."
"That's a lot of faith to put in someone you've known less than a month."
"Maybe. Or maybe I just know a good thing when I see it. And you, Rena, are the best thing that's happened to me in a very long time."
My eyes sting with tears which I refuse to let fall. "You're making it very hard to maintain my emotional distance."
"Good," he says, and kisses me again, slow and tender this time, all urgency replaced by something dangerously close to love even though neither of us has said the word yet.