3. Charlotte
CHARLOTTE
Ican't stop thinking about Ryder the whole drive home, which is officially the dumbest use of my brainpower all week, and that's a competitive category lately.
I should go, I have papers to grade. That's what I said to him. Papers to grade. As if I'm the kind of woman who flees a bar because of grammar homework and not because Ryder Kane had my wrist in his hand and I forgot how to be a functioning adult.
I stop at Kinkaid's on the way home because I never actually ate dinner. I unwrap the burger at a red light, take one bite, and immediately drop a glob of ketchup directly onto my sweater.
“Great,” I say out loud, to no one. “Perfect. Excellent night.”
I dab at it with a napkin the whole rest of the drive, which does nothing except spread the ketchup into a wider, sadder stain.
I pull into my driveway still thinking about Ryder. More specifically, his hand around my wrist. Which is ridiculous. It was a hand. On a wrist. People have survived far more intimate contact without thinking about it for the entire drive home.
Apparently, I’m not one of those people.
Then I walk inside and hear water.
Not rain. Water, inside my house, somewhere it has no business being, a steady drip that I follow up the stairs with a rising sense of dread until I find it seeping into the hallway outside the guest bathroom.
“What the hell,” I say. There's nobody around to hear it, but the situation feels like it deserves company.
I push the bathroom door open and the bath mat squelches under my shoes. I stand there for a full minute just staring at the damage, willing it to be less bad than it looks, and it does not become less bad.
I call my mother because she is closer than I am to knowing what to do about a house, and because some habits from being someone's daughter never fully die no matter how many years you spend paying your own bills.
Mom arrives twenty minutes later with a man named Hank Mullins in tow, which is exactly the kind of thing my mother does—brings solutions with mustaches.
My mother has known Hank for years. If a road needs repaving or a water main needs fixing anywhere within twenty miles of Forge Creek, Hank is already coordinating it before the rest of the town wakes up.
He crouches in the doorway of my ruined bathroom, flashlight in hand, and shakes his head like it's personally disappointed him.
“Clearly, you're gonna need a plumber,” he says. “And a contractor. Wall's gonna have to come open.”
“I'll call around in the morning,” I tell him.
“Good luck with that.” He clicks off his flashlight. “Every contractor in Forge Creek is booked solid for months.”
“Great,” I say.
I thank Hank and he waves it off, already on the phone with someone else about something else before he's even out the door.
I stand in the hallway a moment longer, staring at the damage like a Rorschach test for exactly how badly my year is going.
Homeownership might have been a decision made by a slightly skewed version of myself.
A version who believed that buying a house with her own money, on her own terms, would feel like proof that she'd landed on her feet.
My mother stays behind, arms crossed, surveying the damage with the particular satisfaction of a woman who has been waiting for an opportunity like this since I signed the closing papers.
“This is exactly why I told you not to buy this place,” she says. “I told you. Old house, old pipes. You should have just moved in with me.”
“Mom.”
“I have almost the whole place sitting empty since your father passed. It would have been so easy.”
“Mom, I need my own space.”
“You're my little girl. I don't understand why it’s such a terrible thing to live with your mother.”
“I'm not your little girl anymore. I love you. I appreciate you coming over, and calling Hank, and all of it. But I've had a very long day and I need to sleep before I can deal with any of this.”
She sighs the way she's been sighing at me since I was born. “You moved all the way to New York,” she says, like it's a fresh wound. “And now you're five minutes away and I still don't see you any more than I did back then.”
“We'll make time. Soon. I promise.”
She nods, unconvinced, and kisses my cheek on her way out, and I stand in my ruined guest bathroom for a long moment after the door closes.
I spend my lunch break the next day calling every plumber and contractor within a thirty-mile radius. I get a plumber, but every single contractor delivers some version of the same news. Booked. Backed up. Can maybe fit you in sometime after the new year.
Samuels Construction is the only one who tells me they can send somebody out tonight to at least assess the damage, and I say yes before the woman on the phone can change her mind, relief flooding through me so fast I nearly forget to write down the time.
I almost forget something else too, walking to my car after school, when I catch sight of a familiar pickup truck parked near the gym and have to actively steer myself in the opposite direction to avoid walking anywhere near it.
Ryder is somewhere on school grounds, and I can’t afford the embarrassment of another encounter.
I make it as far as the teachers' lounge before my luck runs out anyway. I grab my lunch from the fridge and try to slip into a chair unnoticed, which has never once worked in this particular room.
“Did you see the guy working on the equipment shed?” Priya says, not looking up from her lunch.
“That's Ryder Kane,” Deb says. “I can't believe they're letting him on school property.”
“He was a kid,” I say, before I can stop myself. “People change.”
Deb gives me a look like I've suggested something wildly naive. “He works for Samuels Construction now, apparently. Foreman, if you can believe it.”
Something cold drops through my stomach.
“What?”
“Samuels Construction. That's who won the bid for all the work around here.”
I didn't notice the logo on the truck. Too busy noticing the man standing next to it.
Of course that's who's coming to my house tonight.
Of course. But they wouldn't actually send him, would they?
There has to be somebody else at that company who isn't currently leading a huge construction project at the school.
Somebody who isn't Ryder Kane specifically.
The doorbell rings a little after seven, and I open it already knowing exactly who's going to be standing there.
Ryder fills my doorway wearing a plain black shirt that does nothing to hide how much he's changed since high school. His eyes find mine.
“Charlotte.”
“You're the one they sent?”
“Apparently so.” One corner of his mouth lifts. “Did you finish last night?”
Heat shoots straight up my neck.
“Excuse me?”
“Last night. You said you needed to grade papers. That's why you ran out. Did you finish grading them?”
“Oh.” A relieved laugh slips out. “Right. Yeah. Grading.”
He doesn't call me on the lie outright, but the look he gives me says he doesn't need to. I step back and let him in before I can embarrass myself further.
I lead him upstairs to the bathroom, and he crouches in the doorway, forearms braced on his knees, flashlight steady in one hand while he examines the damage.
“Burst pipe inside the wall,” he says after a minute. “This place have the original plumbing?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Old galvanized pipe corrodes from the inside, and you don't know it's failing until it fails.” He runs a hand along the water-stained drywall.
“Bathroom's older, so the insulation's probably shot too, and depending how long this has been leaking before you noticed it, you might be looking at compromised subfloor under the tile.”
“How bad are we talking, worst case?”
“Worst case, we're pulling this whole wall down to the studs and replacing the flooring in here and probably part of the hallway too, depending how far the water traveled.” He glances at me, gauging my reaction. “Best case, it's contained to this one wall.”
“I'm going to go ahead and assume worst case, because that appears to be the theme of my life.”
A laugh moves through him. “Rough year?”
“You have no idea. So, is this something your crew can do?”
He straightens, and I notice how solid and entirely too sexy he looks standing in the middle of my destroyed guest bathroom.
“We’re booked out for a few months.” He looks at me for a second, something calculating behind his eyes. “I could work after hours, though. Nights, weekends. Get you back to a functioning bathroom.”
“You don't have to do that.”
“I'd be happy to. I'll need about an hour tonight to look at everything more closely. Get you a rough idea what this is gonna run. That work for you?”
“Yes,” I say, too quickly, and clear my throat. “I mean. Yes. That's fine. Thank you.”
There's a beat of silence that goes on a little too long, both of us just standing in my hallway with a ruined bathroom between us, and I finally remember that I possess manners.
“Can I get you something to drink? Water, or…” I trail off, because I genuinely don't know what else is in my fridge.
“Water's fine.”
I lead him down to the kitchen, painfully aware of him following a few steps behind me. I pull a glass from the cabinet and my hand is shaking so badly when I turn on the tap that water splashes over the rim and onto the counter.
I feel him move closer behind me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of him at my back even though he isn't touching me.
“Do I make you nervous?” His mouth is close to my ear, and I feel it everywhere at once.
“No.” The word comes out unconvincing even to me.
I turn around and hand him the glass instead of answering further, and he takes it without breaking eye contact, lifting it to his mouth and taking a sip.
I watch him lick a stray drop of water from his bottom lip and think, with real and immediate concern, that I might actually pass out in my own kitchen.
“You always did get nervous around me.”
That stops me cold.
“I did not.”