“Really?” she asks, her face lighting up with hope.
“You’re going to need an electrician to come in and rewire that wall,” I tell her, “and you’ll need to fix the floor, wall, and ceiling over there, but there’s not much more than that besides cleaning up the mess.”
“I fixed it once,” she says proudly, “I can do it again.”
She looks around and smiles. “At least, my most prized possession didn’t get damaged,” she says with a grin.
I look where she’s looking and laugh. That stupid calendar is hanging on the wall, unharmed.
“Lucky you,” I say with a grin.
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The space between us feels charged, humming, like the air right before a storm breaks.
I remember the way her warm skin felt under my fingertips and a longing to touch her again hits hard.
“I’m June,” she says.
“I’m April,” I say and then immediately catch myself. “I mean, Ethan.”
She chuckles as my cheeks go hot from embarrassment.
Her mouth curves into a small smile as she watches me.
The sound of tires crunching on gravel fill the air and then there are truck doors opening and closing and male voices outside.
“Who’s that?” she asks.
“The rest of the calendar,” I say as I head outside. “January through December.”
The cool air hits my sweaty face. Graham and the boys are swarming the area, all of them in business mode.
“It’s all good, Chief,” I say as Graham comes over, looking up at the roof. “Fire is out. The damage is mostly cosmetic.”
“Good,” he says, putting his hand on my shoulder as he walks by. “I’ll double check just in case.”
“Did I win the bet?” Doug asks, coming out of the fire truck with a huge bandage taped to his forehead.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Mason asks.
“Oh,” he says, like he just remembered he has a giant Maxi Pad taped to his face. “I had a run in.”
“With who?”
“With… a raccoon.”
They all burst out laughing.
“Did I win the bet or not?”
Lincoln pulls out a wad of cash and dumps it into Doug’s hand. “James knocked him out in forty-seven seconds.”
“Nice,” Doug says as he flips through the cash. “Did you take twenty-five percent?”
“It’s all yours,” he says. “Maybe we should go double or nothing on you and the raccoon.”
“I’m taking the raccoon,” Mason says.
“Me too,” James says as he takes care of the hose.
