I stand stock still, careful not to interrupt as she gifts me with rare bits of insight into her unknown life before she came here.
“My parents couldn’t afford—or wouldn’t afford, more likely—to get it fixed, so we had mold.” She sneers, her little kit canines showing real violence. “We were sick all the time, which was terrible, but it’s the smell thatreallysucked. It stuck in my nostrils for months after we left.” Her arms cross over her torso as she hugs herself. “If my house smells like that…”
“It won’t,” I assure her, resisting the urge to hide her away from memories that paint her face in derision, sorrow, and worry. She doesn’t want my comfort. Still, I try with my words, if not my arms around her. “Emerson and Warren know what they’re doing, and they’d never leave a job having done anything less than the best. There’s an exactly zero percent chance that they finish this job with a speck of water damage, let alone enough to grow anything hazardous to you.”
Carefully, I lay a hand on top of her head, digging my fingers through her golden locks and down. I repeat the action, petting her until she sags, tension fading.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I don’t know why I told you that.”
“I don’t mind,” I answer in an understatement, fully aware that it wouldn’t be appropriate to blurt,I loved hearing your trauma, please share more.
She huffs, then groans, then stomps her feet. “Okay,” she says, mouth set in determination. “We’re going in.”
“Okay,” I parrot, removing my hand from her hair to squeeze her shoulder while pride zings through me. My kit, so brave, facing scary things that bring forth scary recollections, and doing it with more courage than I have in my left pinky. “We’re going in.”
She nods, squares her shoulders, and marches to the front door. I trail after her, hoping some of her hubris scatters in her wake to land on me.
When we walk inside, the air holds a blissful lack of stink. I make the grand assumption that this is due to the fact that the carpet is gone, half the subfloor is ripped up, and most of the walls are likewise missing. Relief wars with disbelief on Poem’s face.
She stops just inside the door, jaw dropping as she hurriedly steps to the side to allow room for Emerson Wright, one half of the town’s favorite—and only—contractor duo, to carry a hunk ofcarpet outside. He smiles as his six-foot-one-trillion-inches self passes, bidding us good morning.
“Morning,” Poem answers weakly as her head swivels to the destruction of her home. “Gracious, this is…”
“Progress,” I finish for her. “And excellent progress, at that. They’re moving quickly.”
“It’s not the demo that’s the slow part,” Emerson comments as he rejoins us inside. “It’s letting everything dry once we have as much out as we can get, then seeing if we need to go back in with heavier equipment to get hard-to-reach and slow-to-dry spots out as well.” His eyes narrow on the walls. “It’s hard to know for sure how things will dry, but you got the water off before things gottoobad, so we’re hopeful we won’t have to do anything too extensive—or costly.”
Poem blinks. “Emerson, I don’t have floors. What could possibly be considered extensive if not the full removal of floors?”
He opens his mouth to answer, but I put my hand up, stopping him. “Do not give her a laundry list of things to anxiously worry about,” I order. “Especially when they’re unlikely to be a problem.”
Grinning, he nods his acquiescence.
Poem protests. “I think I deserve to know what I might be dealing with.”
“Sure,” I agree. “Except he just said that he doesn’t know for sure what you might be dealing with because he doesn’t know for sure how the house will dry. What’s the point in psyching yourself out with a bunch of maybes and what ifs?”
“Does there have to be a point?” she returns. “Maybe I like laundry lists of things to anxiously worry about.”
My eyes roll. “Worry about stuff you know for a fact requires worrying, then. Like your pajama situation or how we’re wasting time arguing when we still have to go to the store after this.”
I translate the cute little scrunch of her nose to mean,Wow, yes, what logic you have there, Fox. I will follow it immediately.
She turns to Emerson. “Is there a safe way for me to access my bedroom?” she asks. “I need to get more clothes if I’m going to survive the winter.”
A line forms between his brows. “It’s July.”
“Exactly,” she agrees, throwing a glare my way.
His face clears. “Ah,” he says. “You guys are flirting again.”
Discomfort hits my chest like an arrow. “We’re not flirting,” I assert. “We don’t flirt.” I wouldn’t flirt. Not with anyone, but especially not with Poem. Not now, before I’ve reformed myself into a stable, upstanding man. I don’t have the right to flirt with pretty women who deserve the world. I haven’t earned it yet, and I haven’t absorbed nearly enough of Poem’s shed hubris to think I could do it anyway.
Emerson’s eyes land heavy on mine, and Poem’s fairly dig a hole through the side of my face.
“Why are you snapping at him?” she asks. “And lying while you do it?”
My head whips down, agitation slicing a path through my nerves. “We don’t flirt,” I bark.
