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It made her look … hot, and he needed to get that out of his head. The last thing he needed was to look too hard at Violet when they were sharing the same house. And yet, heat stirred in him while he looked at her. He had to tear his eyes away.
It was a betrayal to Lauren, but more so to himself. If he looked at Violet for too long, he’d inevitably find himself hurt.
“It’s done.” When Charlie looked at her again, she was packing the rental tools away. “Come check it out.”
Charlie pushed off the washer and inspected it. The final stair held his weight with ease.
“Wow,” he said. “How did you learn how to do all of this?”
“You figure things out when you live in shitty apartments. It was easy.”
Charlie couldn’t take his eyes off the stair. He had been struggling to get parts of the house fixed up, partially because contractors were expensive, and because he didn’t know if he could trust them.
He didn’t know if he could trust Violet either, and yet her repair looked amazing in the dim light of his basement.
His great grandmother would have been proud of it herself.
“It looks good,” he said.
“You don’t have to sound surprised. I may only be a schoolteacher, but I want things to be perfect.”
He stared at the stair, a thought hitting him. Maybe she was such a perfectionist that she couldn’t take criticism. Maybe it was her downfall. He had been the one who told her that her thesis wasn’t solid, after all.
“Do you see something wrong with it?” She asked him when he didn’t look at her.
“No, I … it’s a different color.”
“It’s new wood,” she said, her voice not angry, despite his light critique. “But I can stain it tomorrow.”
Huh. Well, she didn’t seem mad about that critique. What the fuck had happened with her paper then? It had to be something else.
“Don’t worry about staining it,” he told her. “It’s fine the way it is.”
“Only if you’re sure.”
“This is a basement step, not something upstairs. It looks fine.”
“Okay, well, the wood is pre-treated so it will hold up to moisture. I’m going to put this in my car and then head to bed.” She walked past him, and Charlie only let himself look at her as she walked up the stairs.
He wondered if there would be a day he understood Violet Moore.
Probably not.
Charlie went to his own room after Violet was upstairs, needing some time to think. His mind tried to put pieces together about his temporary roommate, and they simply didn’t fit. She was so mature, yet sensitive enough to drop their friendship over a paper – one that he had never even been mean to her about.
Thinking about it made Charlie’s head hurt. He needed a distraction, and he went through his phone, wondering who would be decent to talk to. Any of his friends were going to ask about Violet.
But there was one person who didn’t know any of this was going on.
His mother.
Charlie hadn’t heard from her in a while. Maybe it was time to catch up.
Mara Davis, his mother, was his favorite person in the world. She had been both a mother and a father to him when his dad left, and she had done it with grace. She lived on the outskirts of town, and Charlie found himself so busy he didn’t get to see her as much as he would have liked.
His mother answered on the third ring. “Hello, Charlie,” she said, her voice light. “It’s late. Is everything okay?”
“No, I … finally got some work done on the house. I thought you might like to know.”
