She nodded, swallowing loud enough that I heard it.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” She didn’t look fine. She stood in front of the ruins, and even in her distressed state, she looked beautiful. The juxtaposition of her light with the harsh destruction caused a lump in my throat.
“It’s okay to be upset that your home just got destroyed.”
A flash of something crossed her face, but she quickly wiped it away with a smile. “It’s okay. I’m used to living without a home anyway. I haven’t had one of those in a long time.”
I wanted to pry, because this was clearly affecting her, but she seemed determined to put on a brave face.
“So, I’m guessing I can’t live here…” There was a melancholy quality to her voice as she toed a fallen branch and kicked it off her front porch before setting her foot back down and wincing.
“No, you can’t. And it’s going to be a minute before you can get inside. I’m sorry, Nat.”
“Not your fault,” she offered, but the dejected look on her face had me wishing I could fix it.
“This brings me to my next point,” I started, but she cut me off.
“You mean where I’m going to live?”
“Yeah. Hazel and Leo are gone for a week. Leo offered to mail a key, but they seem a little stressed right now?—”
Nat shook her head. “We don’t need to involve them.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I’ll tell them they don’t have to go to the trouble.” He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text. “So, the way I see it, you have a couple of options. Option one is that you stay with me. You take one of the bunks, and I sleep in the bed you used last night.”
She looked up and carefully considered my words. “And option two?” she said hopefully.
“Option two is one of us sleeps on Autumn’s couch.”
“I don’t want to put them out. Not to mention, those two are like newlyweds, and it would be awkward as hell.” She was right about that. “What’s wrong with your couch?”
“The permanent indent in my side from the broken spring says we should not sleep there. That thing is like a modern-day torture device.”
“Jesus, Jack, how old is it?” She looked skeptical.
“A few decades?” I shrugged. “I haven’t gotten around to changing it.”
Just like I hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of the bunk bed in my bedroom, which had previously been a bunkhouse. I remembered the early days. Nights when Hazel, Leo, Autumn, and I slept in that room, laughing into the early hours of the morning. Maybe I hadn’t moved them because I was nostalgic.
“Look, I spoke with Leo, and they’re going to be gone at least a week, and even then, neither Hazel nor Leo has an available spare bed. We’ve converted our second bedrooms into offices or storage. Which, as much as it pains me to say this, my place sounds like the best option, for now.” Man, I needed to build some storage sheds.
“Maybe I could tough it out once the tree is gone,” she offered. That was the moment the west-side gutter fell, right on top of the bush. I lifted an eyebrow, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe not.”
“I don’t love the idea of you or me sleeping on a couch for however long this takes.” I took her hands in mine and rubbed the back of her palms with my thumbs in reassurance. “I promise I’ll get into this place as soon as I can, so you can at least get some of your things.”
She glanced down at where we were joined and back into my eyes. “I know you will.” We dropped hands, and the disappearing heat from her fingers felt like a loss I wasn’t willing to analyze. “I probably have some clothes in my car. Don’t stress, okay?”
That was the nicest thing she’d said to me this year. I thought about the reasons for her vitriol and quickly pushed them away on the walk back to my cabin.
Nice went out the door the minute we went inside. She let out a puff of air, almost as if in disbelief.
“I’d say there’s good news and bad news to this living arrangement.” She lifted a pile of mail with her pointer finger, her chipped blue nail tapping on it before she dropped it. “The good news is you have a roof.” Here we go. “And the bad news is: this is almost as bad as my cabin.”
If it had been any other person, I would have snorted at her sarcasm, but this was Nat. Even if she had a point. It wasn’t just drywall supplies and tools. There were also buckets of paint. A few shovels. Tiling supplies and bags of thin-set adhesive. When I took my cabin in through her eyes, a wave of embarrassment hit me. None of this should have been in a place that was supposed to be habitable. I needed to move it into the second bedroom. Or better yet, outside somewhere.
Nat folded her arms over her chest. “If I’m to live here”—we both physically cringed at that—“we need to have some rules.”
