Chapter 3
three
. . .
Beau
When I go home, it's to a completely empty house, just like it always is. Over the past few years my business has grown, but it's at the expense of my personal life.
Which brings me back to Sadie Merritt.
She's cute, and I have no business thinking those thoughts about her. As of a few hours ago, she became my employee.
I toss my keys on the counter and grab a beer out of the fridge, twisting the cap off and flicking it toward the trash can. It misses, same as it does about half the time, and I leave it right there on the floor because I'm too tired to care. At some point I’ll pick them all up, and deep clean.
Truth is, I shouldn't be thinking about her at all.
I've got a business that's been running on shoe boxes and hope for two years, and I finally found somebody who can fix that, and the first thing my brain wants to do is wonder what color her eyes are in better light than the dim light of my shop, and not rimmed with tears.
I pull my phone out anyway.
It takes me two tries to spell her last name right, because I only heard Dane say it once, muttered under his breath while she was walking to her car.
And I haven’t written out that contract yet.
So I haven’t had to know it for sure, yet.
Merritt. I type it into the search bar along with her first name, and scroll until I find her.
There she is, Sadie Merritt. The profile picture's her and a little boy, both of them squinting into the sun on what looks like a lake dock somewhere, and my chest squeezes. That's Vince, probably. The kid she told me about in my office, the reason she needs to be through with her work day by five.
I scroll further. There's a picture from a couple months back, her in a green dress at what looks like somebody's wedding, hair down instead of pulled back the way it was today, laughing at something happening outside the frame.
She's pretty. Not where it takes your breath away, but where it sneaks up on you the longer you look, and I'm looking a lot longer than I should be for a man who hired her three hours ago.
I lock the phone and set it face-down on the counter like that's going to stop me from picking it back up in five minutes.
Get it together, Beau.
She works for me now. That's it. That's the whole story I need to be telling myself.
The last thing I need is to be scrolling through some woman's Instagram like a teenager, especially a woman who's got a kid depending on her and just got her whole world knocked sideways today because some asshole named Will couldn't own up to his mistake.
I grab my beer and head out to the back porch, because staying in the kitchen with my phone is clearly not doing me any favors.
The porch light's busted, has been for a month, and I keep meaning to fix it and keep not getting around to it, same as everything else that isn't directly related to a paying job.
I drop into one of the two chairs out here, prop my boots up on the rail, and I've barely got the beer to my mouth before I hear a voice from the other side of the fence.
"That you moping, or is that just how you sit these days?"
My neighbor, Ricky, is the closest thing I've got to a friend who isn't also a customer or a supplier, which is saying something, considering he owns the lumber yard I buy half my materials from.
"Just tired," I say on a heavy sigh. "Long day."
"Long day doing what? Building things, or standing around watching other people build things, which is usually what it looks like when I drive past your shop." He loves to give me shit, even though he knows I’m the only one building anything when it comes to my shop.
"Funny." I hear him coming around the fence line, and a second later he's dropping into the chair next to mine like he owns it, which, by this point, he basically does. "You bring your own beer, or are you here to steal mine again?"
"I brought my own. I'm not an animal." He holds up a bottle, using the arm of the chair to pop the cap off, which is a trick I've never managed to pull off without cutting my hand open. "Though if you're offering."
"I'm not."
"Rude." He takes a pull off his beer and settles back, looking out over my yard, which is mostly dirt and a fire pit I built two summers ago and never finished the stone ring around. "Heard it's supposed to storm this weekend. Might push that roof back on Dane’s site if you're not careful."
"I already fucked that one up." I take a drink, let the cold sit on my tongue for a second before I swallow it. "Showed up a week early to drop off the built-ins. Dane about had a heart attack."
Ricky laughs, low and easy. "You and dates. I don't know how you've kept that business running as long as you have."
"Barely, most days." I roll the bottle between my palms, thinking about how this might change. "Actually might have fixed that today, though."
"Yeah? You finally hire somebody?" He questions, taking another drink. He and I both seem to have the same problem with help. Neither one of us like to ask for it.
"Hired a bookkeeper. Looks like she’s a scheduler.
too, I guess, if she's as good as she seems like she's gonna be.
" I don't mean to say the next part, but it comes out anyway, because Ricky's easy to talk to, easier than most people I know.
"She got fired off a job site this morning.
Right in front of me. Her boss blamed her for a mistake that wasn't hers, and she stood there and told him he was an asshole in front of his whole crew before he canned her. "
"Damn." Ricky whistles low. "She hot?"
"Ricky…” I smirk over at him.
He shrugs, a smile spreading across his face. "What? It's a valid question. You've got that look on your face."
"I don't have a look."
"You've got a look." He points the neck of his bottle at me, accentuating his point.
"You're sitting out here on a Tuesday night with a beer you're not even drinking, staring off into your unfinished fire pit like it personally wronged you.
That's a look, man." He situates himself in the seat. “You had a lot of plans, and then that woman broke your heart, and you didn’t go through with any of them.”
I don’t want to talk about the woman who broke my heart. In fact, I refuse to.
I take a longer drink than I need to, mostly so I don't have to answer him right away.
"She's got a kid. It’s a little boy who is about four years old.
She told me straight out, before she even said yes to the job, that she needs to be gone by five most days for daycare.
Didn't dance around it. Didn't apologize for it either. "
"And that's a bad thing? You like when people are honest with you. I’m failing to see what the issue is.”
"It's not a bad thing. It's just—" I stop, because I don't actually know how to finish that sentence in a way that makes sense out loud. "She works for me now. That's all it is."
"Uh huh." Ricky doesn't sound like he believes a word of it, and honestly, neither do I, but I'm not about to say that out loud to the man who'll bring it up every single time I walk into his lumber yard for the next six months.
"Well. For what it's worth, sounds like you did a good thing today. Girl gets fired in a shitty way like that, and you're standing right there ready to hire her instead. You’re a good man. Sometimes you just can’t see it. "
"Wasn't trying to be a hero. I needed a bookkeeper and she needed a job.” I shrug like it’s no big deal. “It worked out."
"Sure it did." He finishes off his beer, sets the empty bottle down on the rail between us. "You need anything from the yard this week? I got a truckload of that white oak come in yesterday, figured you might want first pick before I put it out for everybody else."
"Yeah, actually. I could use some for a headboard I'm finishing up. I'll swing by Thursday, maybe, once I know what my week actually looks like."
"Once your new bookkeeper tells you what your week looks like, you mean." He jokes, a sly smile making the edges of his eyes crinkle.
"That's what I said."
"Sure it is." He stands up, stretches until his back pops loud enough you can hear it from three feet away, and grabs his empty bottle off the rail.
"Storm's supposed to roll in Saturday afternoon, so if you need that oak dry, get it before then.
I'm not hauling wet lumber across town for anybody, not even you. "
"Will do."
"Alright. Tell your bookkeeper I said good luck. She's gonna need it, dealing with your paperwork." He laughs again, heading back toward the gap in the fence he came through. "Night, Beau."
"Night."
I sit out there a while longer after he's gone, listening to the crickets pick up as it gets darker, finishing off the beer that's gone warm in my hand. I look around at all the shit I haven’t fixed, that keeps building up.
The porch light's still busted. I still haven't finished the fire pit. My invoices are still sitting in boxes.
None of it feels as heavy as it did this morning. All because I hired a woman who might be more trouble than she’s worth.
I go inside eventually, rinse the bottle out and set it by the others waiting to go in the recycling, before heading back to my room. I've got an early morning ahead of me, same as always, but for the first time in longer than I want to admit, I'm not dreading it.
Sadie's supposed to be at the shop by eight. I find myself excited about that prospect.
I climb into bed, and for the past couple of years, it's the emptiest room in a house that's full of them, but for once, it doesn’t feel the way it normally does.
Tomorrow, there'll be somebody else in that shop besides me.
I fall asleep faster than I have in months.