“I guess I should have set out a tarp or something for you to lie on so you wouldn’t get muddy,” I remark as she prepares to slide beneath the house.
“Would have been nice,” she mumbles, pulling her braid over her shoulder before leaning back and reaching for the broken pipe.
I watch as she uses the saw to cut out the cracked section, then she directs me to cut the new piece down to size while she applies glue and fittings at the ends. Once she’s ready, I hand her the new section, and she glues it into place.
“That old PVC gets brittle over time. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you find another crack when you turn the water back on,” she tells me when she scoots out from the crawlspace and takes the hand I’m offering to pull her up. “But I wouldn’t worry about wrapping the rest, since the temps won’t be quite as low tonight.”
“I guess we just need to let it cure for a while?”
“Yep,” she confirms, gathering tools as if she’s preparing to leave.
“Uh, let me grab you a towel. Don’t go anywhere,” I blurt out in a panic and dart into the house.
She’s already packed up and drying herself off with a towel from her trunk by the time I make it back outside.
“Sorry, I should have been better prepared,” I murmur, but she’s still ignoring me.
“Well, good luck.”
“Wait, you’re leaving … already?” I ask when she opens the driver’s side door.
“With all yourpipeexperience, I didn’t think you needed me to sit and watch the glue dry,” she replies, her smirk confirming my suspicions that there’s some kind of euphemism at work here.
“Well, no, but … what if I find another problem when I turn on the water main, like you said?”
“Then I’ll come back. I’m only about a mile down the road,” she replies matter-of-factly.
“You don’t want to come inside and wait? Maybe we can find something for dinner,” I offer, and she narrows her eyes at me. Her hesitation is definitely justified, but I can’t help that I want to keep her here a while longer. And I doubt she’d stay if I came right out and asked, especially if I told her how much I’ve been thinking about her and craving her company.
“We both know the Reeds can’t cook, so that pantry is bound to be bare. Not to mention, the lack of running water would make food prep pretty inconvenient,” she says, calling me out. “You’re not looking for another invitation to my place, are you?”
“No, no,” I say too quickly. “But I feel like I at least owe you dinner by now. Maybe we can find some takeout?”
She sighs as she stares me down. “Even if we had a fast-food option, it’d be closed by now.”
I open my mouth with an offer to take her out of town for dinner, but I’m cut off by a loud hiss and a small geyser erupting from the water main behind me. Claire and I both curse and scramble over to the new water fountain I’ve inadvertently created in Daisy and Landry’s front yard.
“I thought you said you shut off the valve!” she yells as we squat to inspect the source of the six-foot-tall waterspout that’s currently raining down over us.
“I did, but the handle was rusty, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it sprung a leak after I had to force it!”
“Oh, shit, the glue hasn’t cured,” she mumbles. “Grab the pliers from my toolbox in the back. I’m going to hold that pipe together.”
I nod and run over to her Bronco as directed, casting a glance her way as she crawls under the house.
“Can you hurry the hell up?” she shouts, and I growl as I fight against the water pressure to clamp and adjust the pliers. Ittakes another minute and a few more embarrassingly loud grunts for me to shut the valve again.
“Got it closed. You okay?” I call out to Claire.
“Freaking peachy,” she retorts. But when I turn and wipe the icy cold water out of my eyes, I realize my efforts were in vain.
My frustrated growl resounds as I approach the small swamp that formed beneath the house within the last minute.
Claire sputters and turns her head to spit on the ground. “Not only did our new pipe disconnect, but a few more followed suit,” she explains, her voice tinged with annoyance. “This just became a much bigger job.”
“In other words, we’re not fixing it tonight.”
“Not unless you plan to lift the house for me. And since it took you long enough to shut off a little old valve, I don’t think that’s possible.” She rolls onto her belly and shimmies out from beneath the crawlspace, and cringe when her backside comes into view. She’s soaked, which isn’t surprising now that there’s at least an inch of water on the ground.
