by Mara Wells
“Mmm-hmm.” She surveyed the situation. What to do? Her phone buzzed. Can we talk?
Caleb. She ignored it and called the plumber she’d had to use when her shower kept backing up and no amount of Drano cleared the pipes. In a few minutes, the dispatcher assured her someone was on the way.
How about now?
She shoved the phone into her bag and squished her way back to the hallway. No one was going to be happy with her for turning off the water, but she couldn’t see another choice.
“Let me flush first!” Grams hurried to her apartment when Riley told her the water would be off until the plumber arrived and fixed whatever was going on in Constantine’s kitchen.
“You’ve got three minutes, Grams.” Riley pushed the elevator button and leaned against the wall. First, she’d shut off the water line to the building. Then, she’d write Sydney a check for the shoes and suit she’d just ruined. Could this day get any better?
Her phone buzzed. She ignored it.
* * *
Riley had a credit card specifically for building emergencies. The bills went to Rainy Day, which had made sense when she thought they were the management company, but now she wondered who actually paid the bills. She didn’t have access to the building’s financial records, just the spreadsheets Rainy Day sent her every month of incoming and outgoing transactions.
“Geez.” Riley smiled at the plumber, a nice enough man with a Marlins ball cap pulled low over his forehead and work boots that looked like they weighed more than her poodle. She white-knuckled it while he swiped the credit card, praying it wouldn’t be turned down. There’d been the drainage issue in the laundry room last month that ran up quite a bill. “I hope you’re getting a vacation home or something out of this arrangement.”
“Not me, but my guess is the owner isn’t doing too badly.” The plumber grinned and handed back the card. “My advice if you don’t want to keep racking up the emergencies is to redo the plumbing. These pipes look original to the building, which means they aren’t up to code and certainly not up to the strain of modern life.”
Riley signed her name on his pad with her finger, shaking her head. “I’m afraid new pipes aren’t in the budget. At least not anytime soon.” She knew exactly how tight the money was for the Dorothy. No reserves. Patty behind on her rent. All those empty units.
“In the meantime, then, don’t let anyone install a dishwasher, garbage disposal, or washer and dryer. And if someone’s got one of those in their unit, tell them to stop using it. Stresses the whole system. Until—” He mouthed the word kaboom, using his hands to illustrate a bomb going off.
“I’ll certainly keep that in mind.” Kaboom certainly described how this whole day had gone so far. Kaboom at the commissioners’ meeting, kaboom on her new outfit, kaboom to the Dorothy’s budget. She smoothed a wrinkle out of her damp skirt. “And I’ll send an email to the residents right away about not using any appliances. They’re not supposed to have them, but you know how it is. A few ignore the rules and do as they please.”
“It’s the same in every building.” He handed her a business card. “You can call me directly next time.”
“Next time?” Riley slipped the card into her purse. Why was she playing dumb? Of course there would be a next time. As he’d pointed out, the pipes weren’t getting any younger, and Mr. Cardoza wouldn’t give up his garbage disposal any more than Patty would give up using her washer-dryer combo. Who knew what else the other residents might’ve installed over the years?
She added a walk-through to her to-do list. She’d say it was a general maintenance check, and it would be. But it would also be a hunt to find the culprit who was clogging up their drains. Mr. Cardoza was high on her list, but she couldn’t rule anyone out. Not even her own Grams, who’d had a dishwasher put in twenty years ago and still used it. She rubbed her temple with two fingers. Sometimes she felt like she was holding the Dorothy together with nothing but bubble gum and an optimistic attitude.
“Good luck to you.” The plumber smiled, tipped his hat, and finally, finally she could go home and not be optimistic. Yes, she was due for some wallowing—a good, old-fashioned, pajamas-in-the-middle-of-the-day, binge-watching afternoon with a poodle on her lap was exactly what she needed.
LouLou was overjoyed to see her, yipping and spinning in delighted circles. Riley scooped her up, planted three quick kisses on her head, and dropped her bag on the kitchen counter. She heard the buzz and sighed. What if it wasn’t Caleb? She was supposed to be on call for the residents. It was unprofessional to have her phone on silent during business hours. Her fantasy of a lazy afternoon evaporated as she braced herself for whatever the next emergency was.
Now?
The smile on her face was not because the message was from Caleb. She was only happy that it wasn’t a resident with more plumbing problems, or a broken thermostat, or God forbid, Hilde Grant needing another ride to the ER because her heart arrhythmia was acting up but she couldn’t afford the ambulance copay.
Caleb’s Now? waited for a response. Did he want to gloat? Email her his presentation so she could obsess over every detail of his destroy-Grams’-home plan? Or worse, did he think the kiss meant that he’d won her over? It hadn’t. She should text him back to prove she hadn’t been affected. Or she should not text him to prove she hadn’t been affected? Ugh, she hated how mixed-up she felt, as confused as LouLou when her squeaky toy stopped squeaking—even when she was the one who’d disemboweled the thing in the first place.
Riley ran cold water over the insides of her wrists at the kitchen sink, an old habit from when she was a kid and wanted to cool down on a humid, summer day. She pumped some verbena-scented hand soap into her palm and scrubbed away traces of whatever she’d touched in Constantine’s apartment. Really, she should hop in the shower, but she was so drained she didn’t think she could make it out of the kitchen without a caffeine IV straight to the vein.
She popped a cup into the Keurig, not even bothering to check the flavor, filled it with water, and started it up. She leaned heavily on the counter, not even wanting to go as far as the counter to sit on a stool. LouLou circled a few times, then settled herself squarely over the tops of Riley’s now bare feet. She wasn’t sure where she’d toed off Sydney’s shoes. Probably out in the hallway, as was her habit. She should really go get them. And she would. Later. After caffeine. She propped her cheek against the edge of the overhead cabinet and made a list of the things she’d do later. Maybe even text Caleb back. Something cool and unaffected. An inscrutable emoji perhaps. Her phone buzzed again.
You ok?
Oh, Caleb. Her eyes drifted shut, and she remembered the feel of his arms around her, his muscled biceps under her palms, the way all her worries flew out of her mind when he kissed her, and the only thoughts swirling in her head were more and now and yes, please. She was strangely polite in the throes of passion. Aiden used to make fun of her, faking a British accent from one of the HGTV home design shows she liked to watch.
“Dearest Aiden, what a jolly good chap you are. Yes, please, do pour me some more of your tea.” He’d always waggled his eyebrows in a way that made her laugh, but it hadn’t really been funny. It wasn’t like she thought about the things coming out of her mouth in heated moments.
“Must’ve been a repressed Victorian in a previous life,” Aiden had said on more than one occasion, usually after she’d said, “Not tonight,” after particularly long, hard days at the hotel when all she wanted to do was collapse into a bubble bath and not come out until she was as wrinkled as pre-Botox Grams.
Stupid Aiden. She should’ve realized earlier that he wasn’t interested in actually getting married. He liked being engaged; she’d been his fourth betrothed. It wasn’t like there weren’t warning signs. But she’d believed his stories about how the other girlfriends had gone Bridezilla as soon as they had a ring. She’d been sure if she stayed the co
urse, stayed herself, it would work out. She should’ve listened to her gut. Or at least her Grams. It wasn’t like Grams hadn’t warned her a hundred times. A hundred times a hundred times.
“Men like that,” she’d say, clicking her tongue like she did when Riley was ten and Grams caught her scarfing down all the Weight Watchers diet cookies, “never settle down. You’re wasting your time.”
Riley did waste time. Years of it before she finally freed herself from whatever delusion had made her think that sticking it out with Aiden was virtuous. He’d shrugged off their years together and never even bothered to pick up his things she’d carefully boxed and labeled for him.
“Toss it,” Grams had advised more than once, but Riley dutifully carted it from her apartment to Grams’ and then downstairs to the manager’s apartment. For what? So she could have the memory of how Caleb filled out Aiden’s old sweats forever emblazoned on her memory? No, thank you.
The Keurig clicked off, and she chugged her extra-bold blend. She felt the caffeine course through her veins, stronger than blood, pumping her full of what she knew was false energy but would take advantage of anyway.
“Come on, LouLou.” Riley led the way to her bedroom where she changed into her cleaning-day clothes—ripped jean shorts and a T-shirt from her undergrad days that used to say “Will Work for Cupcakes” but too many washings later and the w’s and r’s were gone, leaving behind “ill ok fo Cupcakes,” which Riley felt summed up her current mood pretty well.
“Ill ok?” she asked LouLou after pulling down the hem in front of her mirror. She’d laid Sydney’s suit carefully on the foot of the bed. The damage wasn’t as bad as she’d thought back in Constantine’s apartment. Maybe a good dry cleaner could salvage it.
For now, though, Aiden’s box was a priority. She might not be able to control the plumbing in the Dorothy or convince herself that she wanted Caleb to stop texting her, but she could do this. She could get rid of the Aiden remnants. She marched to the hall closet, LouLou on her heels, and flung open the door.
Aiden was written in her neatest print in black marker across the box. It was a large box, but not so large she couldn’t pick it up herself, though a little awkward, and haul it out to the dumpster.
She clicked her tongue for LouLou to follow, groping blindly for the front door and finding the handle by touch. She peered around the right side of the box to steer herself toward the back entrance and out to the dumpster. That was why she didn’t see what was coming on her left.
“Riley? Need a hand with that?”
“I got it.” She squeezed her eyes shut. She should’ve texted him back. Surely, there was some emoji that covered the trifecta of sure-you’re-a-good-kisser, but I-can’t-with-you-right-now, and yes-it’s-complicated. The shrugging girl? The genie? The tango dancers? God, it really was complicated. “I’m fine.”
“You’re always fine.”
Riley huffed and set the box down. “What do you want, Caleb?”
“You didn’t answer. I was worried.”
Her brain stuttered for a moment on his response. She fought the urge to lean forward until her forehead crashed into his collarbone. She imagined his hand stroking up and down her back, how good it would feel to let someone worry about her. She’d tell him how the building needed new plumbing. He’d be sympathetic, let her talk it out, maybe suggest a plumber she’d never heard of, one the Dorothy could afford. He’d offer to make the call for her since she was unbelievably tired. But that wasn’t her life. She was paid to worry about everyone else, not the other way around.
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“It’s just—”
Riley sliced her hand through the air, cutting him off before he could say something that brought back those moments on the bench. “Just nothing. I told you it was a mistake. A big, stupid mistake.” She kicked the box, forgetting her feet were bare, and jammed her toe. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she dashed them away with the back of her hand. “I told you to forget it.”
“I’m not going to forget this afternoon.” His hand cupped her face, like he’d done on the bench, thumb smoothing away an escaped tear.
Her toe didn’t really hurt enough to justify the tears she felt building in her eyes. “I have to go.”
“Trash emergency?”
She nodded and picked up the carton of Aiden’s left-behinds.
“Let me.” He supported one side of the box with his hand.
It was easier this way. She hated him for it. Hated how light the box felt and how relieved she was not to deal with it alone. Hated that things seemed easier when he was around. She remembered how she’d climbed onto his lap, pressed her breasts into his chest, pushed into his touch. How she’d moaned when he’d grabbed her ass and pulled her tighter to him. She was certainly easier around him. Too easy.
Did she really need to take the box to the dumpster now? Maybe she should load it into her car and donate everything to Goodwill. That way, Aiden’s leftovers might do some good in the world. Then she remembered the way he’d looked at her as she’d stumbled through her carefully rehearsed breakup speech, clearly disinterested and dismissive, flipping through his social media feed. It hurt her so much to leave him, but he’d seemed unaffected. They’d been drifting apart for over a year, no doubt about that, but she’d hoped he’d show some emotion when she left him. She just hadn’t wanted that emotion to be relief.
“Come get your stuff!” she’d texted a few days later and, when he didn’t reply, sent him a photo of the box with a question mark.
Keep it, he’d texted back. You can sleep in my old clothes and adopt a few cats. Winky face.
That was when the box got banished to the closet, and it wasn’t more than a few weeks before LouLou was snuggling up on her feet every night at bedtime.
The dumpster was definitely the best place for anything Aiden related. She bumped open the back door with her hip and crab-stepped her way to the side of the dumpster, Caleb mimicking her moves on the other side of the box.
“Mmpf.” She dropped her side, signaling Caleb to do the same while she flipped open the dumpster lid.
“What’s in here?” Caleb rubbed a bicep. A nice bicep that Riley found herself unable to look away from. Corded and strong, the defined muscle flexed when Caleb ran a hand over his short hair.
“Aiden’s old things.” Had she taken too long to answer? Did he know she was ogling his arms? The combination of exhaustion and the recent caffeine influx warred in her, made her hands a bit shaky. She clasped them behind her back.
“That’s more than some old sweats.” He bent to inspect the box, forcing Riley to notice the way his thigh muscles bunched and pushed against the material of his pants. Muscles. Muscles everywhere with this one.
The dumpster lid banged against the wall. “His hand weights, some electronics.”
“What happened with this guy anyway? Were you that serious?” He popped open the top to examine the contents like he could get an idea of who her ex was by looking at his things.
Riley slammed the box shut. “We were engaged. Two years. When it became clear he wasn’t interested in ever setting a date, I broke it off.”
“That must’ve been a tough decision to make.” Caleb watched her face carefully.
She blinked a few times like something was in her eye and swiped the back of her hand over her eyes. “Let’s just say I’m not a fan of long engagements. I thought he’d try to get me back or something. He never did.”
“Well, good riddance to that idiot.” Caleb crossed corded arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. “You know, it gives us another thing in common. Besides our terrible fathers.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Riley checked the dumpster to make sure there was room. It would take quite a heave-ho to get the box up and over the lip, but once that was done, it was an easy drop to the bottom of the c
ontainer. One more surge of effort, and that part of her life would be gone forever.
“We were both loyal to people who didn’t deserve it.”
Riley sank to her knees beside the box, his words fluttering like moths in her stomach. Or maybe that was too much coffee and not enough food. “How do you know he didn’t deserve it?”
“Because he let you go.” Caleb crouched across from her.
Riley fussed with reclosing the lid. “That’s kind of you to say.”
“I’m not a kind person.” Caleb reached for her hand. She let him take it.
“Sounds like you’ve had some experience.” Riley turned her hand to run nails lightly across his palm, backtracking to trace each line individually. She liked his sharp intake of breath, how he held it and let it out slowly, watching her with those intent blue eyes. “Do you think you’ll ever be loyal to someone again?”
“I don’t think I can help myself.” He tugged her hand, stopping her explorations, and pulled her forward. She balanced her weight on the box, bringing their faces close. Closer. Kissing distance. “I’m a loyal person. Like you.”
“Like me?” She breathed in his words, soaked up the longing in his eyes, leaned into his touch. He was magnetic. Even knowing who he was, what he planned to do to her building, she couldn’t stop her lips from meeting his. Her feelings were jumbled up inside her. Complicated, so complicated, but his touch, the way he cupped her jaw as he drew her in for a deeper kiss, wasn’t complicated at all. It was easy. And so, so good.
LouLou bounded onto the box with an excited wag of her tail, nosing at their joined hands for some petting. Riley laughed and pulled away from Caleb, relieved for a reason to pull away. Disappointed that she had to.
“You’re right. I am loyal. To Grams. To my job here at the Dorothy. To my pal, LouLou.” Riley kissed the top of her dog’s head, trying to play off the last few minutes. She had to keep it light. As addictive as she found Caleb’s kisses, the timing couldn’t be worse. So she deliberately broke the rules of dating someone new and brought up her ex again. Not that they were dating, but what better way to kill the mood that had grown fast and hot between them? “You’re also right about Aiden. He didn’t deserve my loyalty.”
