by Eden Butler
“Sam’s my best friend.” Her tone was sharp, but she still leaned into the touch of my mouth on her skin. “Oh…that’s nice.”
“Umhm. Do me a favor and stop talking about your prissy best friend and Erin the deputy.”
“Wh…why?” Piper asked, moving her head back.
“Because…” I pushed her hair from her neck and tugged on her shirt, giving me access to the curve of her breast. “I’m about to bury some shit right about now, baby.”
“You’re an idiot.” Her laugh fell off, turned into a low moan when I bent my mouth over her nipple.
“Maybe,” I said, sucking that tender skin between my teeth. “But you love me anyway.”
“I told you this would happen! This is why I wanted a professional.”
“We have a professional. My brother is a professional, and Ed is a professional. He knows more about carpentry and contract work than anyone in this town!”
Piper’s voice lifted so high I was sure it would rattle those stain glassed windows no one could replace. But when she screamed like that, especially when it was for my defense, there was no calming her.
Didn’t see why Sam bothered trying.
“There’s three weeks until the opening. This is ridiculous. How are we ever gonna be ready now?”
I stepped onto the porch. My gut twisted when I spotted the damage along the siding and mildew that had set in to the exposed framing of the exterior of the house.
“Piper?” I asked stepping down off the porch to stand at her side, ignoring the glare Sam gave me as I moved to investigate the damage. “What the hell is this?”
“You tell me,” Sam said, standing between Piper and me. “I get here early waiting on some deliveries and looking things over because the festival director is coming by to check on our progress later in the week, and I find the shingles on this side of the house loose. I pull them back and find this mess.”
The man wasn’t wrong. There was a mess, one that didn’t make a lot of sense. The cedar shingles along the right side of the house were broken and brittle, chipped off and feathered on the ground. I stepped closer, my stomach curling when I leaned in, squinting when I spotted the mildew surfacing through a rip in the moisture barrier.
“It’s ruined,” Sam said, reaching to tear a wider piece and point out the extent of the damage. “How the hell do you explain that? Your crew did the demo. This shit should have been replaced before the renovation began.”
“It wasn’t here before we started the reno.” He moved to tear a longer strip and I pushed him back, cutting him a look.
“Back up.”
“Why the hell should I do that? It’s my damn property.”
Piper stood at my side, her mouth dropped, brow furrowing as she glanced between us. She wouldn’t give me or Sam a straight look but did keep a close eye at the mildew that ran along the exterior of her nearly completed B&B.
“Actually,” she finally said, stepping closer to the house, making Sam move back. “It’s my property.” There was a tremble in her hands I hadn’t ever seen before and spotting it did something to my insides. Piper was always collected, able to retain her calm when she was worried. Now, though, some of that calm was fraying and I didn’t like seeing it. “Ed’s not hiding a thing.” She glanced at her friend, finally turning to stand in front of me. “I was here when everything came down and there wasn’t a lick of mildew anywhere.” Another glance up at the side of the house and then Piper turned to face me. “We’ll take a run to the hardware store and get everything we need to fix this.”
I reached for her, but stopped when she hurried to walk toward the porch.
“Piper…we need to talk about this,” Sam said, moving toward her. He paused long enough to throw me a glare before he followed after her, something I had no plans of forgetting. But that look didn’t stick with me. It was Piper’s worry, that frown and disappointment I couldn’t miss paling her face, keeping the light from her eyes, that stuck in my head all afternoon. It would stay there for months; years after I replayed that last week in my head over and over again.
Eddie
The Next Day
She wouldn’t say that she was angry. Piper wasn’t one to let me know when I’d pissed her off. Fact was, I hadn’t done much of that in the months we’d been together. But after Sam huffed around her the entire day, Piper had begged off our trip to the hardware store and let me settle this errand myself. I let it lie, not wanting to pull at the thread of her foul mood.
I should have taken hold and tugged because Sam sure as hell grabbed tight.
The squeal of tires didn’t generally alarm me when I heard them. Small towns meant a lot of boredom that gave way to jackasses seeing what trouble there was to mix up in with asphalt and speed. When you add tempers and foul moods to that mix, you got a lot of squealing and ruckus that tended to get overlooked.
Except when it was your girlfriend’s Jeep hammering down Main Street and slamming to a stop in the drive after taking the curve and barely missing old man Walker’s Plymouth by two feet.
I watched Piper from the side of the house where a few of my crew helped unload the newly purchased shingles as I fixed the moisture barrier to the framework, but stopped short when Piper hopped out of her Jeep waving off the old man as he blew on his horn. She didn’t bother looking at him, or me for that matter as she stomped through the yard, her focus on the phone plastered to her ear and the yelling she did into it.
“That is not what you said two weeks ago when you promised the tub was on its way. Or the month before that when I ordered. This is some A-level bullshit and I won’t have it!”
“That woman’s got a mouth on her,” I heard as two landscapers I didn’t know came around the corner.
“I can think of a way to shut her up,” the other one said, howling at his own joke.
Maddox and Keene unloaded the shingles, but caught the workers’ conversation, both their attention shooting to me when the bigger of the landscapers laughed and I automatically walked toward him.
“Easy, boss,” Maddox said, catching me around the shoulder. He didn’t drop his hand when I glared at where he held me back. Didn’t seemed worried about the way I squinted my eyes at him or the memory of how I’d handled Red when I’d first came on the site. “Forget them. There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you, but we got busy all morning.”
He nodded toward a spot closer to the van where I could still see the side of the house and the row of large windows around the area we’d been fixing the siding.
“Listen, man, I don’t mean to tell you your business…” When I cocked an eyebrow at him, he lifted his hand, taking a step back. “But, I gotta say, if it were me, even though it ain’t, and my lady had been told by her daddy and half the town that taking on this project at her age, doing it with some…” He looked over his shoulder, then toward the front of the house before he continued, “some puffed tight ass who clearly has no idea what the hell he’s doing, then I’d think she’d be allowed a bad attitude day ever once in a while.” He twisted his lips, his gaze moving from my face like he wasn’t sure if he should finish speaking what was on his mind.
“And?” I said, folding my arms, ready for what I knew was coming.
“And, man, if half those folks were saying to her what I know they’ve said to most of the crew about how…well, how Eddie Mescal is a hot head, bad news, apt to run off on her like he did on his people, like he did on…his team…”
“Fuck’s sake,” I said, turning away from the man.
“I know it wasn’t your fault. You got hurt. Anybody with half-a-brain knows that. Trouble is, there aren’t a lot of more than half-a-brain people left in this town.” Maddox got to my side, pointing a thumb toward the window where I spotted Piper pacing in the front room, holding the phone out in front of her as she continued to argue into it. “She’s not one of those. And she’s doing a hell of a job, but from where I’m standing, she’s doing a lot of the fighting back
for this place on her own.”
“I got her back. She knows that,” I told the man, not happy that he was overstepping.
Maddox shrugged, grinning, but I didn’t buy that the gesture was sincere. “Like I said, it’s not my place, but boss, I gotta tell you, that Travis fella was in her ear the whole time you were gone yesterday. Ranting and raving about the half ass job you…we have done, about how you’ll take off, about how she’s stupid to trust you. Between him and that daddy of hers and the festival director not convinced this place will be ready in time, well Miss Warren is…”
“Pissed at the world,” I told him, my gut in a knot.
Piper had stopped yelling into her phone. The tension in her face was still there, but she’d stopped pacing. If I had a guess at what she felt then, it wouldn’t be anger. From the way she leaned against the wall, her head tilted back, her eyes shut closed, I’d say she was defeated.
“Anyway,” Maddox said, clearing his throat. “Like I said, not my business. I don’t know you well, but you don’t seem like the sort to turn tail and run. Not from what I’ve seen of you.” He shrugged when I moved my head at him, giving the man a small nod of appreciation for saying so. “If it was me and my lady…I’d want to know when it was time to have her back.”
“Yeah. It’s past time.” One final nod and I slapped Maddox’s shoulder, motioning to the shingles. “Give me a little and take care of this for me.”
“Take your time.”
The landscapers were on their work when I passed them, earbuds blaring music I couldn’t make out and I fought the urge to tell them off for their shit talking. There wasn’t time and it wasn’t worth the hassle it would cause me or Piper.
I found her in the office hunched over her desk, shuffling through a file of old newspaper clippings and photos as she leaned on one elbow.
“Hey,” I said, tapping a knuckle to the open door.
She looked up, her mouth not softening from the tight scowl as she watched me. When I moved through the door, shutting it behind me, Piper looked down, focusing on the file again. “I’m busy going through the bullshit the festival director gave me. Can’t really talk right now.”
“I just wanted to check on you.”
“Nothing to worry about,” she said, spreading the folder open to fan out the photos. “Just busy with meeting their ridiculous historical accuracy bullshit, which has nothing to do with the damn festival and wondering if I can pull this mess together in time.”
“Talk to me. What did she say to you?”
“What did she say?” There was a bite in her voice that put me on edge. Piper had always been sweet to me since I’d started mending those fences. But the bite in her voice was new, something I figured I’d see one day when I earned it. But I hadn’t. Not really. There was a worry about her since that day at the diner and Trina’s reminder of who I’d been, but this attitude? This shortness, this was all new.
“Let’s see,” she started, her tone stinging. “Mrs. Eleanor Miller, the director of the Fall Festival, who by the way is my mother’s tennis partner and whose husband played golf with my father not a week ago, isn’t sure we will be ready to host the festival because of the siding and the ‘subpar trim work,’ according to her. Oh, and the landscaping that should have mums, not gardenias since they won’t bloom until the spring and there are no red oaks to speak of.” She stood, grabbing two pictures from the desk before she came around the front of it. “Then, of course, the railing on the front porch isn’t substantial enough…”
“Because it isn’t complete…”
“And,” she continued, like I hadn’t said a word, “the entire thing is two feet shorter than it was when the place was opened in the fifties, and when I told her that regulations have changed, she whined about historical integrity, and then that led to an entirely new tangent about loyalty and hiring contractors who were…” She went quiet, dropping her head like looking at me would reveal too much.
“Contractors who were what, Piper?”
“It…doesn’t matter to me.” She threw the pictures onto the desk, and it was only then that I noticed they weren’t historical shots of the place in its glory days. They were colored prints of the siding and the mildew around the torn moisture barrier.
I reached for them, grabbing them before she could stop me. “Ed, don’t…”
“Insurance?” I asked her, my throat going dry when she finally looked at me. I couldn’t get a read on that expression—whether it was guilt or anger, and which made more sense to me. Didn’t she trust me to do my job? Alex did. My grandfather always had. Hell, his name was still on the side of the truck. He’d never let me drill the first nail if he thought I was half-assing anything.
“Sam wanted…”
“Yeah, I heard all about Sam’s conversation with you yesterday.”
“He’s…concerned.” When I shook my head, tossing the pictures onto the desk, Piper’s expression softened, mouth opening like there might be another excuse coming, but I wouldn’t let her finish.
“He’s concerned. Your old man’s concerned. The director apparently doesn’t like that there isn’t some white guy running this show…”
“And I don’t care what she thinks,” Piper argued, sounding exhausted.
“But you care what your father and Sam think?” I wanted to laugh at the look on her face but couldn’t do more than scrub my face. “Enough to take pictures of what you think is my piss poor work?”
“I don’t think you did this…on…on purpose.”
I stepped back, leaning against the door, crossing my arms to keep myself upright. If she slugged me, I bet it would be less of a shock. “Damn.”
She dropped her mouth, as though she didn’t quite believe she’d spoken that aloud, and quickly shut it.
My throat locked up, going so dry I didn’t think I’d be able to speak again, but cleared my throat, inhaling to calm my quickening pulse. “I get you, Yázhí. You’ve been listening to Sam. To the gossip.” I pushed away from the door, dropping my arms at my sides as I stood in front of her. “Everyone telling you, telling my crew, what a fuck-up I am. Telling you that I’m gonna bolt, that I’m gonna cheat, that I’m worthless because of who and what I was when I was a messed up kid. I got you.”
“I don’t believe that. Stop putting words in my mouth. Stop inventing shit that isn’t there.”
“Nothing’s there?” She twisted her mouth into a tight line when I forced out a laugh, not remotely amused. “So your boy Sam isn’t telling you I’m worthless? He hasn’t been trying to convince you since day one that I’m gonna mess you and this job over?” Piper looked away, head shaking until I moved her chin with my knuckle. “Alex trusts me with this job and with you…”
“It’s not his place to entrust me with shit, Ed.” She pushed my hand away, stepping back. “I’m not his property. I’m nobody’s property.”
“Well you might wanna remind your father and Sam Travis of that shit because they sure the hell like to make like you are and you sure the hell give a shit what they think.”
“They care about me.” Her voice was loud now, her face pink and blotchy and it felt like my insides were rattling. “They love me.”
“And I don’t?”
“I don’t damn well know, do I?”
She wasn’t wrong. Had I ever told her that? Had I ever taken anything she offered and given back even more? Wasn’t that what you did when you loved somebody? Give more. Take less? Had I ever done that?
At a loss and with Piper’s eyes wet and glistening, I did the expected. I did it because it was the only way to breathe again. The only way to get out of my head and not end up hurting her more than I already had. I opened the door, ignoring the low mutter of my name coming from her and walked through it without a single glance over my shoulder before I left Piper behind.
Whiskey made my stomach sour. Three shots in, and I remembered why I didn’t do a lot of drinking.
Besides, nothing would numb the s
ound of Piper’s voice in my head. It got me more buzzed than the bottle curled in my fist as I hunkered down in my Chevy, the tail bed open and the stars above me staring down, laughing at me.
If I didn’t care, if there weren’t years of heartache twisted in my heart remembering what drinking whiskey had done to my old man, maybe I’d be drunk. Might even have wished for that numbing buzz.
But Evan Williams was cheap Bourbon whiskey. It had been my dad’s favorite. It hit my tongue and tasted like misery. It smelled like him and all the nights I’d peeled him off the front porch of our shack and shoved him into his bed, telling him he wasn’t gonna die from the speed of the spinning room or the ache that threatened to crack his heart in two.
“She’s not coming back to me,” he’d say.
“No, Ataa’.” I must have told him that a hundred times. Never once sunk in. “She never will.”
He always passed out with my mother’s name on his lips and a bottle of whiskey curled around his arm.
Don’t know why I bought the stuff. It brought back too much. Especially when that too much got in the way with the reason I wanted to drink in the first place. Like me thinking of Piper and the gossip that twisted her against me.
And the bullshit that kept weighing me down.
My own bullshit.
“They love me.”
“And I don’t?”
“I don’t damn well know, do I?”
Thing was, I did. How could I not love Piper? How could anyone be around her and not feel good, not want to be better, do better?
She made me want things for myself that I never thought were possible.
She made me want to settle and be happy and home. Until her, none of that had ever entered my mind. That had been a nightmare scared up by the terror my parents’ marriage had been. They’d shown us the worst of love. The obsession. The fear. The jealousy.
How ugly it could get.
Now there was something to look forward to. Something that didn’t look like a train wreck.
So why the hell couldn’t I say it? Why couldn’t I tell her I loved her?