That was close.

What the hell was I thinking?

It’s him.

Connor Vale.

Extensive knowledge about the inner and outer workings of a home, and now I’ve learned his painting skills were honed by a canvas, not a wall.

Today I watched his hands. I couldn’t help it. He touched me with them. Twice. And I touched him once when he was talking about his dad. I snatched my hand back as soon as I realized I’d done it.

Our afternoon job consisted of rehanging an in-cabinet garbage can. It sounded ridiculous to me at first, but Connor explained that the garbage can places too much weight on the brackets and that’s why they were bent. He suggested a whole new system where the can rolls on gliders installed on the bottom of the cabinet, and the homeowner agreed. We went to the hardware store for the pieces that weren’t in one of the built-in toolboxes in the bed of his truck, and the whole time he was showing me what to do, I watched his hands.

He has strong, deft fingers, certain of their movements. Capable. The skin on his palm, just below the start of his fingers, is slightly hardened. Callused, I guess, but not in the way I’ve always thought callused hands would be.

His hands are where I focused my fixation, because I cannot afford to have my gaze travel anywhere else. It was hard enough to sit across from him at lunch. Holding his gaze when I wanted to hide my face? That took strength. There’s one surefire way to make him look away from me, but then he would know about my past, and that’s completely off-limits. It’s a good reminder to keep my head down, make as much money as I can until fishing season comes to Mexico and my parents can make enough to help me get out of the country.

As much as I don’t want to be, I’m intrigued by Connor. A man who takes over his family business, even though he is good at the same thing he happens to be passionate about? He’s a genuinely good person. Of course, I already knew that. I did step out in front of his truck and he hasn’t said a word to me about it.

It’s still dented. I noticed it but didn’t say anything. I don’t have the money to pay for it right now anyway. I’ll have to ask him about it soon. I have no idea how much something like that will cost.

What a way to start my temporary life in Brighton.

I’ve managed to cause an accident, get a job doing something I know zilch about, and anger an old man. On the plus side, Cassidy said hi to me when I was out front watering Ginger’s flowers, so I guess my first impression didn’t terrify her too much. I said hello and nodded, still not sure how friendly I should be. Friendliness comes naturally to me, and snuffing it out takes work. I was voted friendliest person and nicest smile in high school, something Connor would probably never believe. It’s also how I got my old job. Club-promoters don’t scowl.

It’s funny what tragedy will do to a person. The smiles it will rob you of, both present and future. The present smiles can’t be summoned, and future ones never surface for fear of perceived happiness. How dare I be happy?

One of his letters said exactly that. I know he hates me, but I don’t think he understands how much I hate myself.

I’ve made too much.

I wasn’t paying attention, and I poured the entire package of noodles into the boiling water. I could save it and eat it again tomorrow night, but I don’t want to. I want the company of another person. Someone else’s thoughts, the sound of their breathing, simply existing nearby me.

Cassidy comes to mind first, because she’s closest. But, no. I can’t deal with Brooklyn.

Definitely not Connor. There’s only one person left.

He opens the door as I’m walking up. “What do you want?” Walt grunts.

“World peace. The end of child hunger. I could really go for a sea salt brownie if you have one.”

He makes an undistinguishable sound and waves a hand at me.

I make my way up his steps and hold out the spaghetti. “I hope you’re hungry.”

He eyes the food. “I already ate.”

“The early-bird special is more of an afternoon snack, don’t you think?”

Walt cracks a small grin, and I’m close to one myself. Breaking through his wall feels like a victory.

He backs up, holding open his door. “Come in, then.”

I step in, and the harsh click announces the door being closed behind me.

“Wasn’t expecting anybody,” he mutters, shuffling around. He picks up a folded newspaper, stares at it, then sets it back down in the same spot.

“Please, Walt, don’t worry about clean-up. I made too much spaghetti and I want to give you some. I don’t need to stick around.” I look down at the containers, one for the noodles and one for the sauce I made last night, and stay in my spot, just a few feet in the doorway.

From the outside his house looks to be only a few hundred feet bigger than mine, but on the inside, it feels smaller. Muted photographs in thin wooden frames hang from the living room wall, and his recliner takes up a large portion of space. The lamp on the table beside his chair is huge, and so is the old TV in the corner of the room. Knick-knacks and a full collection of encyclopedias are crammed onto a dusty bookshelf.

Without thinking I walk forward, balancing the food in one hand and running my hands over the spine of one encyclopedia. “My grandparents had these.”

“Oh yeah? Did they have the whole set?” There’s pride in his voice.

“Nope. But my grandma wanted the whole thing.” I can still hear her voice, telling my grandfather that an incomplete set was like leaving out a letter of the alphabet.

Walt walks over. He smells funny, kind of like how my grandpa smelled. It’s hard to describe. Back then, when I was fifteen, the only word I could come up with was old, which wasn’t very nice, or descriptive. Nine years later, and I’m still struggling for a better word.

“My wife didn’t care about the books. I did, though. Guess I just like to know things.”

I hold the spaghetti out to Walt. “Here you go. I just wanted to drop this off.”

Walt takes it, walking away. “You might as well stay. The kitchen table has a motor on it, so we can’t sit there, but there’s a table out back that’s clear.”

I follow him and see he wasn’t kidding. An actual motor is on the table, lying in parts on top of newspaper. At least he gets points for protecting the table first.

I want to say something about having a motor in the kitchen, but I keep my mouth shut. If I tease him now, I might never be invited back.

He stops for a fork and napkin, then I follow him out of the screen door. His backyard is an even bigger mess than the inside of his house. Random junk lines the fence, and in the very back is a large piece of ride-on equipment. I have no idea what it is, except to say it looks like it could flatten someone into a pancake if it drove over them.

He directs me to sit down at the glass-top patio table. Steam rises from the sauce when he takes the lid off the container. He leans in, sniffing, and tells me it smells good.

“Was that a compliment, Walt?” I grin. I can’t help myself. Reaching over, I add the sauce to the noodles for him, then sit back.

“Don’t let it go to your head.” He takes his fork and sticks it in the spaghetti, spinning it around. “It might taste like crap.”

I can only laugh. My food doesn’t taste like crap. I’m a lot of things, but a bad cook is not one of them. He takes a bite and doesn’t say a word, but he does take another bite, and I’ll accept that as praise.

His hair is cute. It’s mostly white, but there are strands of black here and there, a lot more salt than pepper. The top is messy. He has a bit of a natural wave, and his combover isn’t terrible. It’s obvious he’s hiding some baldness, but it’s a suitable hairstyle. Anything that’s not a toupee is acceptable.

He’s chewing now, and he looks at my shirt.

“Why does your shirt say that?” He points a gnarled finger at me.

I wink at him. “It’s nacho business.”

He glowers and takes another bite. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s a play on words.” I look down, pointing at each word as I say them out loud. “Now do you get it? Taco is like saying talk and nacho is like saying not your. Ha ha ha?”

Walt wipes his mouth with his napkin and places a palm on the table. “In my day, jokes were funny.”

I’m pretty sure I can’t even picture Walt making a joke. He’s the crankiest man I’ve ever met, but I have a feeling he has a soft spot located somewhere deep down in the murky depths.

“Walt,” I say, looking out at his yard while he finishes up. “What is that?” My chin is tipped toward the big piece of machinery in the yard.

“It’s a roller.”

“A…roller?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Why do you have a roller in your backyard?”

“Why did you get dropped off this afternoon by a guy in a work truck?”

I peer at Walt.

His lips draw together in a straight line, and I see a petulant fifteen-year-old somewhere in there.

Smacking the table with one hand, I say, “You are such a busybody.”

He pulls back his shoulders, his expression offended. “I am not, young lady. It is my right to know the comings and goings of this neighborhood. Keeps everyone safe.”

I arch an eyebrow. “Does everyone know you’ve appointed yourself the role of sentinel?”

Walt ignores me. I stop myself from asking him to turn up his hearing aid. He’s not wearing one, and he may not think my joke is funny.

Using his hands on his armrests, Walt pushes himself out of his seat. “Thank you for dinner.”

I stand too. “Anytime.” I get the feeling Walt is finished with our visit, so I gather the empty sauce-smeared container, nestle it in the noodle container, and stack the lids.

Walt leads me back through his house and opens his front door. I pass him, stopping on the wooden planked porch.

“What’s your favorite meal?” I ask him.

“Sour beef and dumplings.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I’ve never heard of that.”

He shrugs. “It’s a Baltimore thing. I grew up there.”

“Shouldn’t you like crab cakes then?”

“I like those too.”

I step down, pausing on the bottom step. “Maybe I’ll learn how to make sour beef and dumplings.”

Walt sticks his hands in the pockets of his pants and nods. “I haven’t had that in years.”

“If I make it, will you tell me about your wife and the roller?”

Walt eyes me, giving me a long look. “I suppose so.”

“It’s a deal, then.”

I retreat to the sidewalk and walk home. Instead of rushing into the house before someone can talk to me, I sit down on the rocking chair Ginger has on the front porch. I spend only two minutes out there, listening to the breeze pushing the pine needles, the cawing of a nearby hawk, and Brooklyn shrieking in her backyard.

This place is only temporary, but at least it doesn’t suck.

This time, I’m ready for him.

I’m dressed, fed, and properly caffeinated. No more embarrassing messy-haired wake-ups and piercing alarms.

I can tell he thinks the door alarm is silly, but he wouldn’t think so if he’d read one of the letters. The last one was the final straw for me. I was gone within a week, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I had no reason to stay anyway. My parents don’t live in the country, and my friends hit the road when everything started to spiral even more out of control. Nothing weeds out fake friends like crisis. And, it turns out, they were all fake, almost every last one of them.

The letter came, sounding even more desperate and irate than the others. I’d dealt with his resentment and anger plenty of times before, and I let him say what he wanted because he needed someone to hate. I swallowed his hate, let it sink down into my stomach and join the guilt that never left me, and the two ate at me like battery acid. The real person he hated was his wife, but it would hurt him to acknowledge that, so I shouldered his hatred for her. It was the very least I could do, and it made me feel the tiniest shred better to do something, anything, for her. But the last letter had a fantastical, hysterical edge to it.

“Maybe one day I’ll show you what it feels like to have everyone you love taken away,” he’d written.

The previous letters went on and on about the terrible human being I was, how one day I would pay for my sins. He called me party-girl, drunk, waste of space, scum, and that I should be in the ground instead of his wife and baby. Even though I know I didn’t hit them on purpose, even though I know I never had a choice, I agreed with him.

I’ve gone over and over the moments leading up to that one second, and I see how many things I could’ve done differently to not be there, driving down the street at the exact moment that Amy Prince decided to end her life, and the life of her four-month-old, Samuel.

Every day I’m haunted by what happened. It took only one second to alter the course of my future. To change Eric Prince from a loving devoted new father, into a vengeful, bitter man. His grief morphed, became malignant with hatred, and he changed the narrative. All he needed was ammunition, and I had it in spades.

Never mind the eyewitnesses who saw Amy Prince do it.

Or me, who met her eyes just as she decided to go through with it.

Or the hours of questioning by the police, only to be released without charges filed.

Eric Prince needed someone to hate, and naturally, that fell to me. I really didn’t mind, until his letters turned threatening.

So, yeah, the door alarms are necessary. I think I did a good job of covering up my destination when I left Phoenix, but I can’t be too careful.

After locking my front door and double-checking it, I wait for Conner in the rocking chair. The outdoor sounds are the same as they were last night, but the bird is different. Not a hawk, but twittering, sweet birds. Prey, instead of predator.

I hear Connor before I see him. His truck growls, turning a corner. The dent is still there, not that I really thought it would’ve disappeared overnight. I feel bad that I put it there. Connor thinks I was careless and froze in a moment of danger. What would he think if he knew the truth? He might fire me, and he definitely wouldn’t like me.

Assuming he does.

I mean, I think he does. He’s kind, and his eyes stay on me for a few seconds longer than they should sometimes. Yesterday he was patient with me, and very good about where his body was in position to mine when he was showing me how to do something. But still, there were those touches that came when he sensed my pain.

He pulls up to the curb, engine idling as I come down the steps and walk to his truck.

“Good morning,” I say, opening the door and climbing in.

“Hello,” he says, reaching for a thermos. He takes a drink and offers it to me. “Coffee?”

I stare at it until he sets it back down in the cup holder. I’m still not used to his kindness.

“I don’t have cooties.” He shifts into drive and the truck eases forward.

“You might,” I respond, instantly piqued. What is it with this guy? Why am I so ready to charge into battle with him?

“I promise, I don’t,” he mutters, looking both ways before turning left onto the main road.

“Anyway,” I say brightly. I’m determined to be at least civil and keep my job. “How was your night?”

His jaw clenches. He reaches up, his hand gripping his jawline, and rubbing in a circular motion.

“What happened?”

He lets out a short, frustrated sound. “Nothing happened. Again. Night after night, I stand in front of my canvas, and nothing happens.” He shakes his head, his brown hair bobbing around with the movement. “Maybe I’ve lost it.”

“Lost the…” I pause, confused. “What? Talent? I don’t know if you can lose talent.”

“Not that, exactly. The muse. The excitement. I have the desire, but not the capacity. It’s like…like…having all this love and nowhere to put it.” He glances at me from the corners of his eyes. His cheeks pink when he catches my gaze and he looks back to the road. “Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat. “You’re probably praying I stop talking about feelings and say something manly.”

I snort. “Hardly.”

“You don’t like manly men?”

My nose wrinkles. “No. I mean, yeah, if that’s how they are naturally. Not if they’re only pretending to be manly.”

“Who pretends to be manly?” A deep ‘V’ forms between his eyebrows.

Connor takes a turn and sunlight streams through my side of his truck. I look down at my legs. A spot I missed shaving last night glints in the light. Damn knobby knees. I almost always cut myself and I never do a good job.

“Well,” I say, running a finger over one knee. “The guys in the clubs I promoted, for one. They were never who they said they were. They would only be what they thought the ladies wanted them to be. Like a chameleon, or an octopus.”

“Do octopuses change color?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” Connor grabs the coffee and sips from it. “I’ll just have to take your word for it.”

“I’m reliable.”

He takes another turn, this time onto a smaller road. “Yesterday at lunch you said ‘back home,’ but you didn’t say where.”

My thigh muscles contract. Should I tell him the truth? Would that be like giving him one more piece of the puzzle? In the end, I decide it’s safe. He still doesn’t know my real first name.

“Phoenix.”

He nods. “Sounds about right. So you’re moving up here for good then?”

This, I cannot tell him. He might fire me. Who wants an employee with a set timer? My mind is racing, concocting something on the fly, when he sends me a wary glance.

“Never mind. I may not want to know.”

I slump in my seat, the air gone from me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I am.

I’m sorry I can’t be more normal.

I’m even more sorry I can’t stick around and form real relationships.