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“Still don’t like pickles, huh?”
Rex puckered his mouth. “Uh, too sour.”
I snapped a bite of the fermented spear. “So you’re the fire marshal now, huh?”
“Yep. A volunteer firefighter too,” he said with a proud smile on his face.
“I had no idea,” I said, suspecting his reasons for going into that line of work.
“Why would you? We haven’t talked in thirty years.”
“True.” My parents moved our family out of New Elwood when I was in sixth grade, after the fire. Once we were gone, coming back to visit old friends had never been a priority.
“Yeah, after your house bur—” Rex started, but I cleared my throat to interrupt.
“We don’t have to talk about it. I get it. You’re saving lives.” I didn’t want to go there any more than I wanted to be here. Again. The whole memory left me uneasy. I’d been able to move on from what happened, but being back in this town was making it all a little too real.
There was a reason I wasn’t a fan of old buildings.
“Well, what about you? You’re some big real estate developer now?”
“No surprise there, huh?” I said and finished off the pickle.
“Nope,” he said, then he leaned in. “So what’s going on with you and Charlie? Things between you two seemed a little tense.”
A little. He didn’t know the half of it. “Right. Her. Yeah, she’s my pain-in-the-ass neighbor who’s making my life hell.”
“I could see that. Charlie’s a ballbuster for sure. But she’s only getting under your skin because you two are so similar.” Rex chuckled and sipped his tea.
I had to laugh. “Similar. No. Reeves and I are complete opposites, and it’s making my work here that much more…difficult.” I didn’t want to admit to him that half the time I couldn’t stand that woman and the other half I was mesmerized by her lips.
“Well, it sounds like you need to find some common ground if you’ve got to work together.”
Common ground? All I wanted was to break ground. Why did she have to make that feel so impossible? The woman drove me absolutely crazy. And some twisted part of me loved that about her. There’d been a moment earlier, when we were alone in that theater, when I’d felt…something. Her notes were perfectly organized, her ideas were sound, and I could respect the effort she’d put into planning the restoration already. At one point, if I squinted just right, I could almost picture what she saw when she looked at that old theater. The woman believed in something. That was rare.
But this was bigger than her. Bigger than me. Getting the approval for this hotel was more important than anything else, no matter how pretty she looked when the sun made her eyes glitter. I pushed her out of my mind and asked Rex what he’d been up to for the past two decades. We ate together, parted ways, and I got back to work.
The sun was just beginning to set when I returned to the apartment. A forty-foot ladder leaned against the roof, and Albert waved to me from atop the shingles.
“I’m almost finished up here,” he yelled down.
I saluted the man for his efforts, not wanting to inform him that any repairs would be torn down as soon as I got the approval on my demolition permits. If the blonde in Sullivan’s was any indication, people around town were already growing hostile toward me. I needed to get out of here ASAP.
Back in my apartment, it was quiet with only the damp stench from last night’s rain to greet me. The ceiling in my bedroom had new drywall and just needed a fresh coat of spackle and a bit of paint, not that I would bother. I stared up at it for a while, wondering what would have happened if Reeves never fell through the ceiling in the first place.
I’d never have seen her naked, for one. Wouldn’t have got to feel the softness of her skin under my palm. Wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing that mortified flush on her cheeks. These days, the only time she flushed was when she wanted to pop my head off like a champagne cork.
I grinned, then my smile slipped. I glanced at the patch of drywall again.
Was she at risk of falling again? The desk was still under the hole. She could break her neck.
The woman drove me crazy, but I didn’t want to see her hurt.
I poured myself a glass of water at the kitchen sink, and her plate sat there, still littered with cookie crumbs. What were the chances she’d make me cookies again? For a second, I wondered how it would feel for her to smile at me the way she’d greeted Rex. As much as I enjoyed our bickering, I knew there were facets of her she’d kept hidden from me. I saw hints of it in how diligently she worked and how fiercely the townspeople defended her. How would it feel for her to look at me like an ally?
I thought back to what Rex said about finding common ground. Maybe if we could find some, she’d see things my way and forgo her resistance to every single proposal I brought her. So I soaped the sponge and scrubbed the orange plate with the white daisy pattern. I rinsed the suds away and turned off the faucet. Then, the ceiling creaked and the sound of her front door shut. She was home.
I walked up to her apartment and knocked on the door.
