Page 3 of Oops I Fell For The Lumberjack Next Door

"Your porch needs replacing," he says.

"I'm sorry?"

"The whole thing. Not just the step. The joists are gone." He drops his gaze to the wood, nudges a plank with the toe of his boot. It flexes like rubber. "You can't walk on this."

"I'll figure it out."

"Tonight?"

"Yes, tonight. I've been figuring things out on my own for six months. I'm extremely good at it."

He looks at me. Really looks. Daniel used to catalog whether I was presentable. My mother scans for cracks in the composure. This is neither of those. Just a steady, unhurried gaze that moves over my face, reading something he recognizes.

Then he nods once and steps off the porch. "There's a side door around back. Kitchen entrance. Sticks, but it opens. I'd avoid the front until you can get a contractor out."

He's walking away. Across my gravel, through the tree line, back toward his property. His dog, a massive Bernese mountain dog with a holiday themed name I'm too furious to remember, trots out of the trees to meet him.

"I don't need your help," I call after him.

He doesn't turn around. "Didn't offer any."

And then he's gone.

I stand on my broken porch, bleeding from a shallow cut on my shin, holding a bottle of grocery store Merlot, while my cat yowls from a carrier at my feet. The mountains rise on every side, indifferent and enormous. The cabin slumps behind me. The tree line between my property and his is maybe forty feet of pine and scrub, which means every morning I will see his house, his farm, his stupid flannel shirts, and those arms.

Those arms that just snapped a board in half without effort.

I grab Princess Buttercup and go around back to find the side door.

It sticks. Badly. I have to put down the carrier, grip the handle with both hands, brace one foot against the frame, and yank. It gives with a screech of swollen wood, and I stumble into a kitchen that smells like dust and old wallpaper paste.

The kitchen is small. Outdated appliances from at least two decades ago. Countertops that might have been white once but are now the color of weak tea. A window over the sink, cracked open an inch, letting in a draft.

The window over the sink faces his property.

Because of course it does.

From here I can see the edge of his tree farm. Rows of evergreens in various stages of growth, neat and deliberate against the mountain backdrop. A larger cabin, well maintained, with a wide porch and warm light glowing from the windows. An axe stuck in a splitting stump near a woodpile. And Briggs Holloway himself, standing in his yard with that ridiculous dog, looking back toward my cabin.

He can't see me. It's too dark inside, and the window is grimy. But I can see him. The set of his shoulders. One hand scrubbing over his beard before he turns and walks inside.

My stomach does something I refuse to acknowledge.

I set Princess Buttercup's carrier on the counter, open the door, and she steps out with the cautious dignity of a queen entering a questionable kingdom. She sniffs the counter, the faucet, the edge of the window, and then she sits directly in front of the glass and stares at Briggs's cabin like she can see through walls.

"Don't even think about it," I tell her.

She ignores me. Obviously.

I pour Merlot into a coffee mug I find in the cabinet, because there are no wine glasses and there won't be until the moving truck comes tomorrow, and I lean against the counter and take stock.

The cabin needs everything. Roof, porch, plumbing, insulation, probably electrical. The kitchen is a time capsule. The bedroom, which I peek into from the hallway, has peeling wallpaper and a floor that creaks ominously. But the walls feel solid when I press my palm against them. The ceiling doesn't sag. The bones, as they say, might actually exist.

And my neighbor is Briggs Holloway.

The universe has a sick sense of humor. I came here to start over. To build something with my own hands after spending a decade watching my marriage dissolve so gradually I didn't notice until there was nothing left. Daniel didn't cheat. He just checked out. Emotionally, physically, presently. By the end we were two polite strangers sharing a mortgage, and when I finally said the words out loud, he didn't even fight me on it.

That might have been the worst part. That he didn't fight.