“I know you’re trying to distract me because you have stage fright, but seriously, Dylan, there’s nothing to be worried about. This isn’t live, and we’ll make you looksupergood.”
“I thought you needed to make me look real.”
“You look good real.”
We stare at each other for a second, and that’s when it hits me.
Reallyhits me.
Tavi Lightly finds me attractive.
Not convenient. Not easy. Notjust therewhen there’s no one else.
Shelikesme.
I genuinely thought when she tried to go down on me in the locker room that it was a thing in her world to pay for stuff with sexual favorswhether you like a person or not. And I also thought she was flirting with me in the days before that because she wanted me to fix her plumbing.
Not because she liked me.
There’s a reasonable possibility I assume most people don’t like me despite the easygoing, friendly, happy guy I try to be.
Even people who didn’t know me in my shithead years.
I shake my head. I’m reading this wrong. “Do you—” I start, but the door to the garage squeaks, Banshee erupts in a massive snarling bark-fest, and Marta huffs back into the kitchen.
“Found it!” she announces. “Turns out it was right on top since Ken dealt withthat thingthat he gets mad at me for talking about.”
Tavi turns her beaming influencer smile on Hannah’s mom like we weren’t just standing here staring at each other while it dawned on me that someone who lives in a world of celebrities might actually like me.
Meme.
The guy who I’ve worked hard for years to become.
Holy shit.
Tavi Lightly likes me.
I have a completely clean slate with her, andshe likes me.
“Marta, don’t you think Dylan would be thebestsocial media star? Like, he could tell everyday, normal people how to treat their pipes and do good things for their plumbing, and he could make plumbers hot again.”
And now Marta’s beaming too. “Oh, honey, if you’d asked me that ten years ago, no way. But today? He’d bethe best. Who wouldn’t take advice from this cutie?”
“Aww, was he slow to develop?” Tavi asks, as if I haven’t told her a million times I was a total shit.
“No, he was—” Marta starts, but I cut her off.
“Marta, you know where the circuit breaker is for the disposal?”
“Oh! Of course. I should’ve thought of that while I was out in the garage. Not that the garage is in the circuit panel. I mean, the circuit panel is in the garage. It’s in the basement. The circuit panel. Not the garage.” She’s weirdly adorable when she’s flustered and making zero sense.
Hannah’s the same.
I pretend I don’t notice. “You mind flipping that for me, too, so I don’t electrocute myself here?”
“Of course! Of course.” And she’s off again.
Tavi frowns at me. “What was wrong with you ten years ago?”
