“Hey, uh, I gotta get some stuff from the hardware store down the road really quick. I’ll be right back,” he says, hardly making eye contact with me.
“I’ll come with!” I say, not giving him a chance to respond as I shut my laptop and hop off the stool.
“Oh, it’s just some random nails and stuff, I don’t need—”
“It’s okay. I wanna learn.”
“About… building?”
“Yeah. I might need it. For the cottage,” I say in three staccato sentences.
He rolls his lips inward and stares at me like he’s waiting for me to break character. But I don’t, so he nods and then turns to head to his car. I silently follow him and climb in.
We don’t talk, but he turns up the song that was already playing—“How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees. I try to convince myself that it means something. And then I try to convince myself that it means nothing.
I sit on my hands and look out the window, avoiding the invisible wall of frisson I feel every time I sit this close to him.
“Alrighty,” he says, putting the car in park. “This will be a quick trip.”
He exits the car and power walks up to the tiny store named Bolts and Builds. I have to add a shuffle-hop to my stride to keep up with him.
We amble together in silence through a foray of bucketsfilled with screws and bolts. My eyes see but don’t process any of the information written on the tiny labels.
“We’re looking for screws an inch and a quarter long,” he says.
“Got it. Screws. Inch and a quarter.” I nod like I’m taking orders. “Oh! Found it!” I pick up a silver screw from a bucket.
He narrows his eyes and takes it from me to inspect. “This is a conical screw. We want flat heads.”
“Oh,” I say in vocal italics, drooping my head as I pluck it from his fingers and drop it back into the bucket. “Sorry. I thought the comical screwwasflat.”
He doesn’t turn around, but I catch the tiny bounce in his shoulders, presumably from a silent chuckle. A zing of satisfaction shoots through me, quick and hot.
“Okay.” Declan slides a plastic package off a display. “These are the ones we want for the bar we’re building. See how the top is flat?”
I nod.
“It will sit flush with the wood. Which will make it look better. If I were to build the deck for your cottage’s backyard however, I would use these screws.” He takes another package off the shelf and holds it up to me.
“Oh,” I say in a small voice. “That’s very cool.”
It was, actually, very cool. But the casualness with which he referred to building me a deck for “my cottage” was making me dizzy. I couldn’t remember the last time I envisioned New York City. Or consulting. Or staying up late in a corporate office by myself. I stopped having those fascinations ever since my mom broke down in the back of the convenience store.
Declan and I mosey up to the cash register, and as he pulls out his wallet to pay, I see the edge of a photo peeking up behind some cash. My breathing catches as I try to study itwithout him noticing my bug-eyed stare at his wallet. But he slides his credit card out and pays with a quick tap before returning the wallet to his back pocket. Evidence of the maybe-photo disappearing with it. Was that it? Was that the photo Harper claimed Declan had of us in his wallet?
I trail behind him to the car in a daze, replaying what Harper said about Declan’s reaction to seeing me again for the first time. I try my best to reconcile that image with the silent man now driving beside me. If cognitive dissonance was a movie, this would win most accurate depiction.
We get back to the coffee shop and I still haven’t settled from the jolt of hope that shot through me at the sight of the tiny picture’s edge, but I don’t need to, because Declan wants me to stain a table he built. Our comfortable silence is easy to fall into again once the sound of his drill whirring starts and I have the paintbrush in my hand to distract me.
We continue until the sun has gone down, leaving one floor lamp illuminating the space. I remember the beginning of the summer when I came in to help him. I thought the lights were off because he didn’t want them on—like some reclusive vampire character. But now I realize it was because he got so enraptured with what he was working on that he didn’t notice until it was completely dark.
When the sun has finished setting, Declan’s voice sounds from behind me, tentative and grave. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I reply without turning around, brushing a section of wood with stain.
A few seconds pass without a sound, and then slowly, he says, “What were your last few moments with Lottie like? If you don’t mind me asking.”
My hand pauses its pass on the wood like I’ve hit aninvisible wall. A well of emotion rises in my chest, and not because the question is too emotional to answer, but because he was the first one to ask it at all.
