She touched her hand to my knee and looked to be biting back a smile. “Got a little something there on your forehead, champ.”
I rubbed the spot where I clocked myself and saw a big smudge of something greasy and dark. Wet rust, probably. Hopefully. “All in a day’s work, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she fucking loved it. “Here, lemme just…” She reached in and grabbed some of the cleaning supplies. “You’re such a dude, Max. Just get right in there and fix it without cleaning it out first. So focused on the job, you don’t even try to make it easy for yourself.”
“I’ll show you focused on the job.” I shined the light at her cleavage.
She smacked my leg and laughed, and then grabbed a stack of dish towels from beside me. She reached up to put them on the counter, giving me yet another perfect view of the soft curve of the side of her breast, milk-white, untouched by the sun or some tattoo artist with the hots for her. That spot, and all the rest, mine, all mine.
I took hold of the shut-off valve knob, digging my fingers into the cracking red vinyl cover. Finally, it let me have a quarter turn. Then a half to the right. I tightened it closed and did the same to the cold-water line. I took the flashlight out of my mouth and placed it on my chest. “All right, beautiful. Give that faucet a try and see if it’s off.”
She stepped closer so her smooth, bare calf was brushing against my jeans. I couldn’t fucking resist and ran my fingertips up those soft, perfect thighs. Her knees buckled a little, and I felt my cock twitch, a physical and instantaneous response. She came up onto her tiptoes slightly to reach the faucet, because my legs were in the way. Above me, I heard the faucet handle move, and the water that had been in the pipes trickled out. “I think we’re good!” Rosie said.
I wasn’t so sure, though. From below me in the basement, I heard a rumbling, followed by a strange and ominous thumping. I still had one hand to the cold-water valve, and I felt it tremble.
“Max?” Rosie asked. “What is that noise…”
Noise wasn’t the word anymore. Imminent disaster was more the idea. There was a rumble and a bang and a weird burping sound. The vibrations in the pipe got more pronounced, and then with a hiss, the connections below the valves split open and sprayed me like I was Fletcher’s dog trying to grab the sprinkler.
I shut my eyes tight. Fucking plumbing. The worst.
I tried to sit up, but as I did, I whacked my head again—hard this time, hard enough to feel it rattle my molars.
Cupcake came racing in—I heard her collar jingle before I saw her. She leaped into my lap, giving me an accidental glancing blow to my balls. I made a sound like I’d just been, you know, kneed in the balls, and instinctively tried to curl into the fetal position. Cupcake took my agony as a hidden sign for playtime and put a paw directly in the center of my scrotum. Motherfuck it. Rosie, unconscious of the fact that I was in the midst of the most mind-numbing, logic-busting pain, just squealed and giggled, barely able to talk, “Max! Do something!”
I forced myself to ignore the pain in my balls and gave the shut-off valve my all. The motherfucking thing came right off in my hand and spewed a jet of water in my eye. The burping shifted to a rattling. It was like a volcano was about to blow. Though I couldn’t see it, I could hear it—the clatter, the sound of a geyser, and Rosie giggling hysterically, as the water shot through the pipes and sheared off the faucet.
By the time I got the water turned off in the basement, Rosie looked like she’d been in a wet T-shirt contest or in my personal dream version of Girls Gone Wild. Her makeup was smudged, and I could see the pink fabric of her bra straight through the white cotton of her top. I pulled off my T-shirt and stepped outside to wring it out in the sun. I hung it over a hedge to dry, and Rosie emerged, pressing a dish towel to her soaking wet curls.
“Well, that was fun!” she giggled. Cupcake trotted out, her coat shiny and spiky with the water. “What in the world happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wiping my eyes and laughing. “I disturbed the memory of Grandma Maryann or something.” I peeled the soaking wet gauze off my arm and wadded it up into a ball.
Rosie snorted and then did this thing where she mussed up her hair in a sexy-as-sin way. Half innocent, half vixen, pure Rosie. “She always said never to touch the plumbing. I think that was the tenth PS in the will, right after PS: The ants come every three years. Just deal with it.”
As I undid my soaking wet boots, I wondered exactly how many dudes in the history of guys trying to impress their girls had blown up pipes or set fire to stuff with shoddy wiring. Lots, I imagined. Millions. I sat on the front step and looked up at her as I took off my socks. “At least tell me you got your snail done.”
“Mostly!” she said, beaming. She turned and headed back inside. The fabric of her dress hugged her hips, and the lace of her panties made a ripple above her ass. She was totally fucking oblivious to what she was doing to me. “More or less!” Rosie added over her shoulder, still drying her curls. “I’ll send it back to the author to make sure she doesn’t want me to draw in some snacks or something.”
I followed her in, and we stood together in the soaking wet kitchen. The ceiling was dripping, and there were big puddles on the floorboards. It looked like the fire department had been here, except without the fire damage. Thank Jesus.
I went to the linen closet and got a whole stack of beach towels that I’d seen Rosie folding a few days earlier. They were old ones, bleached and faded. I handed her a stack and arranged a few on the floor to help soak up the flood. “So,” I told her as we wiped down the cabinets, “I think we should make the best of my total inability to install a garbage disposal.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Chicken salad out of chicken shit?”
“How about I take you out to dinner?”
“Oh, yes, please.” She smiled and reached up to run her fingers through my damp hair. “I could really go for a beer, a cheeseburger prepared completely at random, and a round of pool.”
But we were way past burgers at the Anchor Nurse now, and for one fleeting second, I imagined her grandma laughing, as if it had all been some grand plan to change things up. Matchmaker, matchmaker, blow up the plumbing and see what happens… “I mean out to dinner, for real.”
She inhaled sharply. “Like…a date?”
“Yeah,” I told her, letting myself feel her wet panties on my wet jeans. Christ all fucking mighty. “A date-date. Somewhere really nice. Let me wine and dine you. Let me do it up right.”
She broke the stare, and her eyes moved down to my hand, gripping her waist. “How nice?”
“Heels. A dress. I’ll treat you to something new to wear.” I snapped the edge of her thong. “What do you say?”
“Pfffft,” she said, grinning. “I’ve got something.”
“Just to be clear, I like you naked best.”
“Noted.” She pursed her lips. “Duly noted.”
I gave her a wink and then glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall, each hour a different species of bird. It was already three in the afternoon, and I figured she still some work to finish. “How about I take Cupcake, and I’ll go get cleaned up? We’ll pretend we haven’t been all over each other constantly. We’ll be upstanding and pretend we’re just starting.”
Rosie looked nervous, and I fucking loved it. “A date. We’re going on a date.” She gulped. “A date.”
“Our first date,” I said, and I gave her ass a possessive squeeze. “Pick you up at seven thirty.” I lifted her chin, my thumb to her jaw. “You’re sure you don’t want me to take you shopping? Give you some cash? I’d love to do it.”
But she shook her head, and her wet curls slid along her tanned shoulders. “Nope. I know just the thing.”
28
Rosie
Actually, I didn’t know just the thing. I’d looked him right in the eye and lied to his face because I didn’t have one single thing to wear. After he and Cupcake headed down my driveway, with her
in her little hanging box, looking out the window with her ears perked up and him giving her head a little pat—shhh, shhh, shhh, ovaries—I put the wet towels out on the line to dry, so heavy that they made the trees on either side lean in. I pulled off my soaked sundress, hung it over the newel post, and ran upstairs. I opened my bedroom door and found Julia Caesar, wagging her tail a little differently than her normal question marks and S-shapes.
Was she happy? Did cats ever look happy? Had Henry Kissinger ever looked happy? I felt like I had feline face-blindness. I didn’t know happy from furious. This time her tail was flat on the floor, going side to side, and she was staring straight at me. I was no cat whisperer, but I slowly became certain that, for some reason, this was a really bad sign.
“Hello!” I chirped, like one of her petrified swallows on the gutter. “All yours.” I opened the door and stepped aside like I was a butler or something.
She moved her whiskers and dead-eyed me.
“Seriously!” I made a magician’s assistant ta-da! move with my hand. “Go forth and investigate!”
Tentatively, she stood up and placed one paw forward, letting it hover out in the air. She didn’t look at me but just waited. And waited.
“I’m not going to close it. Promise!” I did a two-armed ta-da. I was pretty sure I was overselling, but Julia wasn’t buying.
Then she made a sudden and lightning-fast yard-long dart. Once out of my room, she stopped on a dime in the hallway, raised her nose, made the question mark of her tail again, and thumped off down the stairs.
I plumbed the depths of my closet. Lots of sundresses, lots of leggings, lots of sweaters and boots for winter. But nothing that was even close to being special enough for my first date with Max. Nothing that would be good enough for fancy things like linen tablecloths and fancy drinks in equally fancy glasses—nothing that was new, free of memories, and that would just be his and his alone to take off me.
I slumped down on my bed, part of my leg warmed by the square of light coming in from the skylight above. As I thought about what to do, I heard a creak on the stairs. A very manly-sounding creak.
My heart leapt into my throat. “Is that you? Max?”
But it wasn’t. It was Julia, with footsteps like a grown man. She leapt up on the bed beside me, depressing the mattress slightly under her weight. Much to my surprise, she actually nuzzled the underside of my arm, and I petted her downy soft fur.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
She cleaned her face with her paws. It reminded me a whole lot of my gram putting cold cream on her cheeks.
Actually, I realized, Julia had a lot of Grandma-like qualities. I’d never thought about it before, but neither one of them tolerated bullshit, and they were both passionate about SPAM. Julia was much scarier than Gram, but still. There were hints. Julia glanced at me, and even her eyes had a touch of my grandma. So much so, in fact, that I heard Gram’s voice in my head. Some of her age-old, practical wisdom, tried-and-true. Time for a trip to Marshalls, honey. They won’t let you down.
29
Max
The Rose Marie was in dry dock, and she looked like a beached whale. Her normally wet and shiny sides were now dry, and the crackles in the paint looked like alligator skin parched by the sun. I put Cupcake on her leash, lifted her out of her travel box, and led her down to the jetty. But within a couple of steps, I felt the leash tighten, and I turned to see her digging her claws into the dock boards in a desperate attempt to pull me backward.
“Oh, shit.” I took a few long strides back to her and scooped her up. It hadn’t even occurred to me, but out here, she was surrounded on every side by the dreaded water that had almost swallowed her up whole. I kept her close and felt her trembling against my chest. I put a kiss to her bony head and scratched her ears as I carried her back to the parking lot.
The docks were empty, and anyway, I wasn’t about to leave Cupcake in the care of whomever. I considered some possible strategies—leaving her in the car while I showered and changed? Fuck no. Tying her to the fence? Fuck no, again. Her trembling had lessened, and she placed her tiny chin on my shoulder. I gave her a little kiss on the cheek which she answered with a big lick up my stubble and a full body wag that started in her tail and moved up her like a shiver.
I sat on the front fender of my truck and looked out at the houseboats, the Sunfish, the skiffs, and all the rest. There was a time when this place was it for me—the water, the shore, the freedom to up sticks and head out for different waters if I ever wanted to go. Now though, it was different. Now, it didn’t even really bother me that my whole house was in dry dock or that my life was basically upside down. It didn’t even annoy me that this little bitty dog I was holding might have an incurable fear of water. All my priorities had gotten reshuffled like a deck after a game of 52 Pickup. What used to matter didn’t anymore. What mattered now was something completely different than I’d ever allowed myself to hope for. Everything was new, because of her. She’d exploded a depth charge inside me, and I’d never be the same again. I adjusted the broken heart on my neck, tucking it under my shirt for safekeeping.
Since I couldn’t get to my stuff, I realized I was going to have to do some shopping myself. The thing was, though, usually I’d have asked Rosie for help on this. But that wasn’t an option.
Fletcher, on the other hand, was.
Even though he was all tatted up and spent most of his time in old T-shirts and jeans with holes now, I remembered him way back before the tats. The guy had style, always had. “Maybe we should go see Fletcher. Remember Fletcher?”
She looked at me, no recognition. She cocked her head, though, like she was thinking, Mmmmm. Maybe? Don’t know. Say more words.
“Remember…Captain?”
Cue the whole-body shimmy-and-shake.
Fletcher lived off the beach, in an old Cape-style shingle board house with a sun-bleached kayak leaning against one wall of the garage. When we pulled up, he was sitting out on his front porch with a beer, watching Captain attack an oscillating sprinkler in the middle of his yard. I could hardly hold Cupcake in my arms she was wriggling with so much excitement. Captain raised his dripping jowls from the sprinkler and perked up his ears. We were pretty far away, though, and clearly Captain didn’t know if we were good, bad, or the UPS man. The sprinkler kish-kish-kished back toward his face and sprayed him in the chest, but he didn’t budge. Cupcake made little marfs and meeps, huffing and puffing and trying to get out of my arms. I opened the front gate, closed it with my foot, and then let her go. The two of them charged toward each other like that beach reunion scene with Dudley Moore and What’s Her Name from Ten.
“Hey, man,” Fletcher said, raising his chin. “I was just thinking about you.”
He stood up, and we did the old familiar bro-hug we’d done a million times, all chest and shoulder pats. He took a second beer out of the six-pack by his chair and handed it to me. I popped off the top with my key and toasted his bottle. As I put my bottle to my mouth, he said, “Asked her to marry you yet?”
I almost shot beer straight out of my nose. But I knew what he was expecting me to say, because up until very, very recently it was what I would’ve said. I’m never getting married. Never fucking ever.
The silence, it said it all. As I lowered my beer, the mouth of the bottle hissed against my lips. Still, I didn’t say anything.
“Holy shit fire.” He watched me closely, eyebrows up. “It’s real.”
“It’s real,” I told him. “Tonight, I’m taking her on a date-date.”
Fletcher let out a whistle. He flipped my beer cap with one thumb, and it landed upside down in his hand, where he tightened his fist around it. “You sound like her, dude. Talking in doubles.” He flipped the lid again, smiling. “Starts with like-like, moves to date-date. Pretty soon you’ll be talking about love-love.”
He never minced words, never, and I might have dead-armed him a time or two over the years because of it. Except now, it was dif
ferent. Because now he was exactly fucking right. So I just toasted him again, to say, Yeah. Hell yeah.
Fletcher ran his hand down his jaw. “Where you taking her?”
“Portland, for sure.” Out in the yard, Captain rolled onto his back while Cupcake stuck her butt up in the air and barked. “There’s a place on Fore Street. Fancy as hell.”
Fletcher’s eyebrows shot up as he swallowed hard. “You? Voluntarily going to a city where there are actual crowds of people?” He clicked his tongue. “Bringing out the big guns.”
“You know it. But I’ve got fuck-all to wear.”
He looked at my clothes, like, You’re goddamned right about that. “I can help you out. We’ll leave the dogs inside—turn on some Animal Planet.” He drained his beer. “But seriously, I call dibs on best man. Deal?” He raised his almost-empty bottle to me.
Best man. Me and Rosie, walking down an aisle. Holy fuck alive.
Real as a goddamned heart attack.
“Deal,” I said and toasted him again.
With Fletcher’s help, I decided on a pair of dark gray pants, a blue shirt, and a dark blue tie, which had this shimmery thing happening I thought Rosie would probably dig. Also, a new belt. The only thing they didn’t have was shoes.
“I’m good,” I told Fletcher as we headed for the car, and I stuck the receipt in my pocket.
“Dude. No. What are you going to wear, your fucking boots?” He lifted his hands like I’d just suggested, Christ, something unforgivable. Like putting vinyl siding on a historic house. Totally inappropriate.
He had a point. I was pretty much either shit-kickers for work or flip-flops for the beach, and nothing in between. “What size are you?” I asked him.
“Twelve and a half,” he answered as he unlocked his truck.
“Fucker. I’m a thirteen.”
From his pocket, his phone began to ring, and he checked the screen. “Oh, shit. I gotta take this. Go take a look at Marshalls. Brown, not black. Got it?” he said and put his phone to his ear.
So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel) Page 16