“Door first,” he says, because he loves me with triage.
He kneels, tests the frame, and runs a thumb along the warped edge. “You know, if we shave a hair here and add a shim, it’ll stop rubbing.”
“I adore when you talk lumber to me,” I say flatly. He grins without looking up, the corner that means I’ve been caught liking him.
We work shoulder to shoulder. He holds the door, and I hold the shim. His forearm brushes my upper arm, and my entire nervous system writes poetry I refuse to publish. The sound of the plane shaving the edge is clean, satisfying—curl after curl of wood peeling away like the door is sighing out its stubbornness.
“Try it,” he says.
I tug the handle. The door swings as smooth as a promise.
I clap. He bows like a magician.
Payment is the unspoken permission to stay. He does, leaning on the counter while I ring up a couple in matching rain boots who whisper that they’re “Team Stay Gold” and wink like they were on the dock with us. I roll my eyes and take their money while Crew pretends he didn’t hear and also looks smug.
At five, a squall scuffs the bay. Rain needles the windows sideways, and the shop turns amber and safe. Crew and I stand at the front just to watch the weather happen. My hand ends up on the glass. His ends up close enough that if I moved half an inch, we’d be threaded.
“Used to hate storms,” I say, watching the surface pucker under wind. “Felt like the world was mad at me.”
“And now?” he asks.
“I like how honest they are.” I glance up at him. “How they arrive, make a mess, leave you clean.”
He hums. “You sure you’re not a poet?”
I snort. “I’m a bookseller with a diverse vocabulary.”
“And you,” he says, as if the sentence doesn’t need anything else.
The squall passes. The light returns. The floorboards dry in patches that look like continents. I sweep the grit into little countries and push them into the dustpan like diplomacy.
I’m tired in the good way—hands used, brain sated, body vibrating with a quiet hum that isn’t caffeine. Crew asks, “Dinner?” and I’m about to say no in the name of composure when Lila texts.
Lila: Dean says bring the quarterback. I made pasta. No press, only carbs.
Closing shop early, I ride with Crew to the house on the canal where I always imagined someone rich and famous living. And now with Dean there, a billionaire in his own right, my vision came true. The thought leaves me wondering whether I can be right about things with Crew, too.
Dean and Lila’s porch smells like basil and butter. A pitcher of something bright is on the rail. There are cushions Ivy bought in a fury because “the porch wasn’t vibing.” A child’s chalk drawing on the step looks suspiciously like a lighthouse and a football holding hands. Lila probably staged it. I’ll thank and mock her later.
Dinner is chaotic music. The table is too small and perfect anyway. Ivy flits and fusses and then sits and eats like a person deprived of joy, which she is not. Dean tells a story about a goat that was not his problem, then became his problem, and now lives behind their garage like a dignified roommate. Crew laughs, that low, real laugh he saves for here.
There’s a moment—tiny and huge—when somebody tries to pass bread around me, and I reach for it at the same time as he does, and his hand overlaps mine. No one says a word. Thecontact is brief, practical, and unrehearsed. It feels like a wire spliced back together.
After dishes, the deck is string lights and breath. Lila puts on a playlist that would embarrass her best friend, Ashvi. Crew and I lean on the railing and watch the bay turn navy. The air cools, the wood warms, and I realize I’m not braced for impact. I’m leaning.
“Tell me something true,” I say.
He thinks for longer than a joke needs. “I was going to quit.”
“Football?”
He nods. “After the injury… after the surgery… I wasn’t just afraid I couldn’t play like before. I was afraid I didn’t want to be that person anymore.”
My throat goes tight. “And now?”
His gaze stays on the dark line where water meets sky. “Now I want a life that doesn’t require me to outrun myself.”
I don’t say anything for a few breaths because I learned this summer the value of letting silence do its work. “You don’t have to outrun anything here.”
