I gave the wrench one last hard pull and the pipe was tight. There was no way water would leak from it ever again. I eased my way out from under the sink, wrench in hand, the smell of turkey and bacon lingering in the air.

“Watch your head, Rams,” Aunt Millie called out from the counter.

“I’m fine,” I said as I stood up.

“Knock your head on that sink and it’ll put you out for a day or two.”

I smiled. No use in arguing with Aunt Millie. She was the shortest woman I’d ever met, but damn was she the toughest. She knew when to use words to cut into your soul. And she knew when to get a wooden spoon and give you a crack across the ass to calm you down.

I put the wrench on the counter and washed my hands, double-checking my work to make sure I didn’t leave her with a bigger mess than what I found. Uncle Tom had set up a system of buckets and rags to keep collecting the water from the leaky sink. Aunt Millie gave him her usual two-week grace period before finally calling for help.

“Have some lunch,” Aunt Millie said. “I’m making your uncle a sandwich. You have one too.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“You’re skinny.”

That made me laugh. There was no way any person in the world could think I was skinny. Maybe twenty years ago, sure, but not now. Not since I found an old dusty weight set in the basement of the house and started working out, right after a girl named Janelle broke my heart in the eighth grade. I never looked back from there. And from the second I could do so, I worked for Uncle Tom’s construction company. The old timers at the company used to just call me Bull because of my size and strength. Then they figured out my name was Ramsey and started calling me Rams, which worked better. I also got that name because I wasn’t afraid to put my head down and go to war with anyone who pissed me off.

That attitude came right from Aunt Millie. She took no shit from no one. Uncle Tom was a bit calmer and willing to talk things out. But not Aunt Millie.

Which was why when she jammed a plate with a turkey and bacon sandwich on it into my hands, I took it and thanked her.

“Uncle Tom is going to be pissed that I touched the sink,” I said.

Aunt Millie tossed a towel over the wrench on the counter. “There. He knows nothing.”

“He’s going to check.”

“I’ll deal with him later,” she said. “You eat and then go back to work. Or go home.”

“I’m good right here, Aunt Mill,” I said with a wink.

“Oh, stop it. You grew up here. You’ve had enough of here.”

“I have a house guest again.”

“Animal?”

“Something like that.”

“Oh,” she said. “Let me guess… Matt?”

“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “I think I’d rather an animal.”

“Sleeping on your couch again?”

“His favorite spot,” I said.

“You know, some people just don’t understand how a relationship works.”

I nodded, knowing exactly what that meant. Matt had a complicated marriage to Mary. One that was fast and wild, and probably should have been axed a month after they got married. But they were determined to make it work. Even if that meant Matt spending a lot of time on my couch. I stayed out of it, other than enjoying having a buddy to drink with during rough nights.

“Yeah, that kind of stuff is hard,” I said.

I turned and put my plate on the counter. I lifted my sandwich and took a bite. Over the plate, of course. Leaky sinks were one thing, but crumbs? They were Aunt Millie’s greatest enemy.

The island in the kitchen always had a spread of food on it. Right on cue, each day, Aunt Millie would have breakfast out. Snacks out. Lunch out. More snacks. Appetizers before dinner. For as rough as my youth had been, one thing that always went right was coming here and having food.

Uncle Tom came through the kitchen door as I rinsed off my plate.

He froze when he saw me. “Did you touch the sink?”

“I ate a sandwich,” I said, knowing how to masterfully lie without actually telling one.

He looked at Aunt Millie. “You called him?”

“I made lunch,” Aunt Millie said. “I can’t feed my own nephew?”

“You’re supposed to be over at the Johnson house,” Uncle Tom said.

“I was there,” I said. “Drywall’s up. Looking at the flooring next.”

“Can’t do that from here,” he said.

“I’m on my way out the door,” I said.

“Not without seconds,” Aunt Millie said.

She tried handing me another sandwich. Uncle Tom reached for it and she swatted his hand away.

“Ouch,” he yelled. “Thought that was for me.”

“He eats first,” she ordered.

“Can’t argue with the boss,” I said.

“I’m the boss,” Uncle Tom said.

“Not in this house,” Aunt Millie said without missing a beat.

I took the sandwich and gave a wave. “I’d better get back to work.”

“You’d better,” Uncle Tom said.

“Thanks for the lunch,” I said to Aunt Millie and winked.

“You earned it after fixing the sink,” she said with a grin.

“Hey!” Uncle Tom bellowed.

“I’d better go,” I said.

“That floor had better be in or your ass is fired,” Uncle Tom called out as I shut the door.

I put the sandwich into my mouth as I wrestled for my keys in my pocket.

I got in my truck and sat there, staring at the old house. Through the kitchen window I saw my aunt and uncle standing there, talking to each other. They could never get mad at each other and stay that way. Even during the worst of times, like when they found out that they would never have kids. Or when they took me in off the street to raise me. And I fucking fought that as hard as a rebellious teenager could fight it.

All I ever wanted was what they had.

I came within spitting distance of it, but it didn’t work out. There was a trail of memories and a few broken hearts that were forever stuck to the stone steps from the back door of that kitchen to the driveway.

Hell, I had broken Aunt Millie’s poor heart more times than I could count.

I hated thinking about it, but it was the truth.

I put my truck into reverse and took a big bite of my sandwich.

All I needed to do now was get through the second half of the day.

Then I could wash it all away, trying to forget for good about the woman in the wedding dress who said that she was going to give me a shot at forever.

* * *

I twisted the cap off a beer and threw it into a bucket that I kept at the back door. I handed the bottle off to Matt and sat down. It was the last of the decent enough nights to actually sit outside. A fire burned in the fire pit at the corner of the old and squeaky deck.

Matt leaned forward and stoked the fire, then finally did the right thing by tossing a fresh piece of wood into the flames.

I rubbed my jaw and let another busy week roll off my back. My phone had been buzzing all afternoon and night, but I just kept ignoring the number and swiping to delete the text messages. There was this funny thing about the past trying to step into the present and future that I did my damnedest to fight away.

My eyes moved to Matt as he just sat there, looking like he wanted to fight the fire or something.

“Matt and Mary,” I said with a grin. “The wild romance of our generation.”

Matt turned his head. “Fuck you, man.”

I held my beer bottle out. “Come on. We made it another week through life.”

Matt hit his bottle against mine. “I don’t know what to do, Rams. I love her like crazy, but we just can’t figure it out together.”

“I know it’s not my place, but what doesn’t work?”

“Everything,” he said. “She gets pissed when I go out for a beer. I get pissed when she goes out.”

“So just go out together,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“We don’t trust each other.”

“From all that high school bullshit still?” I asked.

He laughed. “Seems that way.”

“You can’t let go that she kissed that guy at that party one time, huh? When you were sixteen?”

“It’s more than that,” he said. He stood up and walked toward the fire.

“Hey, if you’re going to jump into that fire, you’ll need more flames.”

“Thanks for that,” he said.

I laughed. “You keep crashing here, man. You two are forever fighting. Isn’t a marriage supposed to be about talking and working through that stuff?”

“You’re one to talk,” Matt said.

“Don’t throw knives at me, man,” I said. “I’m your only place to stay.”

Matt shook his head. “There were a few crazy nights that we both had. During some rough times. When her grandmother was dying of Alzheimer’s, she was the one who took care of her, you know? I stood by and waited as long as I could.”

“As long as you could… why doesn’t that have a happy ending?”

Matt glanced back at me. “Rams, it got bad. You know that.”

“Of course I know it got bad,” I said. “I was there for the whole damn thing. I held Mary at the funeral while you were carrying the casket out to the hearse. She collapsed into me, man. She loved that woman. It was like losing her mother.”

“Yeah, it was,” he said. “Whatever. It was just a hard time. Then and now, I guess. Maybe I should just head home. Stop and get some flowers.”

I laughed again. “Matt, it’s eleven at night. You’ve been drinking. You go home right now smelling of booze and looking like you do, Mary’s going to get pissed even more. And stopping for cheap, half flowers at the corner ‘mart isn’t going to help either.”

“I get it. Man, did you dodge a bullet, huh?”

I forced a quick smile and decided to change the subject. “So, how about that Johnson project, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “That’s coming along nicely. Just too many people involved right now.”

“Yeah. Uncle Tom thinks that more hands means more work.”

Matt laughed. “More hands means more people wanting to sit around and drink and spit their chew.”

“All we need is you, me, and Lance. Maybe Doc to oversee any surprises. Even still, we could just call him.”

“He can’t use a cellphone,” he said. “Even for talking.”

“We should be out of there in a few more days. On to something else I guess.”

“What about this place?” Matt asked. “You ever actually going to work on it?”

I refused to look around. I didn’t need to look around to know what kind of work needed to be done on the old country house. I found the house on a whim during a time when I needed something distracting. The original idea had been to hide in the house, fix it up, and eventually just sell the damn thing. Instead, I made the house livable and let everything else remain the same. Standing tall and strong but broken.

Who does that sound like?

“Don’t worry about my house,” I said. “That’s my problem, not yours.”

“I’m just saying,” Matt said. “We could start working on it tomorrow. Might be good for both of us. Stay distracted from the bullshit.”

“What do I need to be distracted from?”

“Come on, Rams,” he said. “You and Sarah were getting a little serious there. Then… it just ended. What happened?”

I gripped the right arm of the chair, feeling like I wanted to rip the fucking thing apart and throw it at Matt.

Instead, I stood up.

I pointed to the fire. “You can let that burn out if you want.”

“You’re out?”

“I’m out,” I said.

“It’s early, man.”

“Too much sappy, bullshit talk for me,” I said.

“Right.”

Matt raised an eyebrow.

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t get you sometimes.”

“Get what?”

“You were such a skateboarding punk when I met you. Right? You were basically homeless. Then your aunt and uncle help raise you. You look like you’re the size of a truck now, man. And you had everything in your hand. Everything, Rams. I don’t get it.”

“Just like I don’t get why you fucking married Mary when this was going to happen to you,” I said. “You want to go down that path with me? Pick apart everything the other person did right or wrong?”

“No,” he said. “Sorry for saying anything. And sorry for whatever happened with Sarah. She was nice. Really pretty too. I thought she was slowly starting to tame you a little.”

“They all try, but none can,” I said. “That’s the problem. They try.”

Matt chuckled. “Have a good night, man. I’m going to give Mary a call.”

“Good luck,” I said.

I went inside and walked through the old house. The large eat-in kitchen that had tons of windows for the sunrise each morning. The family dining room with a table that I had never used once. The way each room was perfectly laid out with its own entrance and exit, with custom wooden trim that was older than old and only needed a little touch-up to bring out the beauty of it. I gave a shit about this house in a way that didn’t make sense to me. Because truthfully, I could have had this house and everything it was meant to be.

At the front door I paused. I looked at my beer and put it up on a shelf next to it. I grabbed the key to my motorcycle and walked out of the door. It was dark and cool. Leaves rustling with a hint of a breeze. The kind of night that would probably scare kids, but it took a lot more than that to scare me as a kid. Because I had seen true horror. I had lived in this kind of darkness as a way to survive a version of hell that nobody quite understood. Which was fine. It wasn’t anyone’s job to understand it.

Just my own.

I opened the garage and started my motorcycle.

She roared to life, the only beast I could fully contain and control.

I took off down the street, not knowing where I was going.

Which was the exact point.