Alex: We. Were. So. Right. I love this for us.
Alex: And for them, I guess.
Stan: Kinda knew it
I tell myself I’m just cleaning up, although I’ve done that maybe too many times since Roe hit the road for it to be normal.
Jamie’s at Arch’s for the weekend, Friday through Sunday, with a bunch of other boys. The house is too quiet, too still, the kind of silence that wraps around your ears and hums. I make it as far as the kitchen, then detour to the workshop before I’ve even thought it through.
The miniature town is waiting. I haven’t touched it in days, maybe a week. The rink’s half painted, but the corner café‘s windows are still blank. A little version of Main Street sits on the workbench like it’s holding its breath, waiting for me to come back.
I stare at it for a long time before I pull out the carving tools. The newest addition starts as a block. Just maple. Clean, square. I sketch the bar from memory—two windows, front door off-center, flat roof with the kind of overhang that sags a little when it rains. I don’t even know what Roe’s renovation will look like yet, but somehow, I do.
I know him and I know that building.
Or maybe I don’t and the honeymoon period hanging over us has me thinking one thing, when the truth is that he could already have sold the place.
I start cutting.
Outside, the wind rattles the shed walls. Inside, it’s just me and the wood.
***
While Monroe and I should be old news by now, the town doesn’t shut up about it, and I really need them to get interested in some other guy so I can sort out my own feelings.
Riley posts a picture of me and Roe outside The Blue Line—Roe was holding both our coffees that morning, which is damning enough—and captions it, “Monroe likes his coffee like he likes his men: hot and sweet.”
The comments section lights up.
I close the app, shove my phone in my back pocket, and walk into Miller’s Hardware for screws. I don’t make it past the front display. “Well, if it isn’t Fox River Falls’ most elusive boyfriend,” Mrs. Hargrove calls from the paint aisle. “Tell Monroe I said good luck on the road. And that I miss watching his thighs on the ice.”
I blink. “What?”
I don’t need a reminder about people drooling over Roe. Even if it is a woman well into her seventies. She just waves a swatch of sage-green paint at me like it’s a perfectly normal thing to say and adds, “Oh, don’t look so scandalized. He knows what he’s working with. I’m elderly, not dead.”
I buy my screws and flee.
I make it through the day without Jamie and then barricade myself back in my workshop when I get home. I’m in the shed, knife in hand, shaving a clean angle into the front ofthe bar. The model’s small, but I can already see it coming together—windows inset just right, door framed like it’s holding something.
I’ve barely looked up when my phone buzzes again.
Roe: Your’e in the workshop, aren’t you?
I snort, despite myself. Why was I worried about letting someone in? Roe’s just going to crash through anyway. I have precious little agency here.
Me: Maybe.
Roe: So hot when you’re lying.
A minute later, he calls.
I answer with my free hand and set the phone on the bench. He’s still in his base layer, like he just got out of his gear, hair damp, smile soft around the edges like he just finished a practice. I swallow my tongue as he plops a worn baseball cap backwards on his head.
Shit. That’s a look I didn’t quite know I liked so much.
“Miss me?” That cocksure grin takes over.
Yeah, he read me like a book.
