Page 82

The address comes through.

I’m already pulling a clean shirt over my head.

Dottie’s in the living room with Bo, refereeing what looks like a high-stakes Lego negotiation.

“I need you to watch Bo for a bit.”

She doesn’t look up from the pile. “Where you going?”

“Olivia’s.”

Now she looks up.

“Her garbage disposal’s out,” I add, like that’s the whole story, like it explains the clean shirt and the keys already in my hand.

Dottie’s mouth does something she doesn’t fully manage to hide. “Her garbage disposal.”

“It’s broken.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I can fix it.”

“I’m sure you can.” She turns back to Bo, waving me off with one hand, and I catch the smile she aims at the carpet so I won’t see it. “Go on. Go help Olivia with her garbage disposal. Take your time. Bo and I are building a city and it’s going to take hours.”

“It’s a real garbage disposal, Dottie.”

“I believe you.”

She does not, in any way that counts, believe me.

Bo looks up. “Tell Olivia I said hi!”

“I’ll tell her.”

I grab my toolbox out of the garage on the way and I’m backing out of the driveway before I’ve fully admitted to myself that I’ve never in my life been this happy to go unclog somebody’s sink.

Chapter 13

Luke

I’ve fixed a lot of things in ten years. Fences. Faucets. A busted water heater at two in the morning. A swing set. A hundred things at the station, and a street’s worth of leaky sinks for widows who didn’t want to call a stranger.

I’ve never once driven to any of them like this.

Olivia texted me for a plumber’s recommendation, which is the most Olivia way to handle it. Polite. Self-sufficient. Determined not to be a bother to anyone, least of all me. She was going to hire it out. She was going to hand a hundred and fifty dollars to some guy named Gary rather than ask me for a single thing.

Not on my watch.

Because here’s what nobody tells you about a man like me. I don’t have a lot of words. Never have. When Dottie’s tired, I mow the lawn. When Bo’s coming apart, I sit on the floor with him and don’t say anything at all. When I love somebody, I fix what’s broken in their life, one thing at a time, because it’s the only language I’ve ever really been fluent in.

And Olivia has a broken thing.

Now I’m parked outside her building with my toolbox on the seat beside me and a clean shirt on my back and a nervous system that’s apparently reverted to seventeen, and I sit there a second, just breathing, because I know the truth even if I’m not ready to say it out loud.

I am not here to fix a garbage disposal.

I mean, I am. I’ll fix it. It’ll take thirty minutes.