Page 26 of Built to Last

I continued to stare at the blank screen, though. I didn’t feel like just letting it go. Chase had a point with everything he’d said. And wasn’t the definition of madness to continue doing the same thing you’d always done expecting different results?

I tried something else, something new. I took a deep breath and typed a new message.

“So how about that game last night?”

As soon as I hit send, it felt like my heart dropped into my gut.

Even worse, three dots appeared just a few seconds later.

“Yeah, it was a tough one,” Kyle wrote back. “You guys played your hearts out.”

“You didn’t do so bad yourself,” I replied. “That arm of yours just keeps getting stronger.”

“That’s what happens when you go to the gym ,” Kyle sent back.

The emoji in particular had me smiling. “What gym do you go to?” I typed. “I’ve been thinking of joining one.”

I settled back in my chair as I hit send. Three dots flashed up right away. As I waited for the message, I smiled. Kyle and I were having an actual conversation about something mundane, albeit via text. We weren’t fighting, we weren’t getting off, and we weren’t talking business. It was almost as if we were making friends again, the way we had in those early days of college.

Maybe this time we could do things differently.

CHAPTER 8

Kyle

It was done. After months of planning and even more months of construction, the shop extension on Glenside Ave was completed.

“Never thought we’d get here, did you,” Angela said with a pleased smile as she prepared the final inspection checklist for my walkthrough.

“Nope,” I said, rubbing my chest to rid myself of the weird, hollow feeling that had been lodged there since I woke up and drove the RV to the site that morning.

“I bet you’ll be glad to move on to the Landsdale project,” Angela went on, stacking the papers together and attaching them to the clipboard. “No more bickering with the neighbors.”

My face twitched. “It wasn’t bickering, really. We just had a few things to iron out.”

“Mmm hmm,” Angela said with a sly look, slapping the clipboard against my gut.

Her gesture felt like way more of a blow than it should have. No, it was her expression that had me shaking in my boots, like she’d found my dirty laundry, despite me doing my best to keep it all contained and tucked away.

“Mr. Andreotti phoned earlier to say he’s going to meet us over at the shop in—” she checked her watch, “—in five minutes, actually. So we’d better get a move on.”

“Yep.” It was a lame reply, but it was the best I could handle with my number one employee giving me that shit-eating grin.

It wasn’t just dread creeping its way through me, though. I felt jumpy, expectant. Sort of like Christmas morning as a kid. My conversation with Gilbert in the locker room kept ricocheting off the inside of my skull. So did the text conversations we’d had throughout the week since then.

Me and Gilbert. Text conversations. About the most boring, banal things. It seemed completely non sequitur. We had all those years of silence and resentment between us, then the last few months of renewed antagonism, then one hot as fuck half-hour in a locker room…and now we were best friends again?

As if to underscore that point, my phone buzzed when Angela and I were halfway down the street to the finished shop. I casually pulled my phone out to check the message.

“We just got a shipment of a great new Costa Rican blend. You should come in later to sample it.”

I smiled at the message before I could stop myself. As soon as I caught Angela watching me out of the corner of her eye with an enigmatic smile, I schooled my face into a neutral, construction boss look and shoved my phone back into my jeans pocket.

Marco was already in the shop as Angela and I entered. He was off to one side, measuring the distance from the outlets to spots in the middle of the floor where, I presumed, he wanted to put shelves and things. He straightened as soon as we entered and flashed his winning smile.

“Ready for the big day?” he asked, leaving what he was doing to meet us in the center of the space.

“The big day is Monday, when the county inspectors come in,” I said, though I liked his cheery attitude.