Brandon’s fire station had set up a GoFundMe for me after Brandon died. That had helped bridge the gap until I was up to working again. I made okay money doing astronaut cats from the volume alone—I’d always been fast. But the ancient water heater just needed replacing and the month before that, the air-conditioning unit broke. Now my kitchen had flooded, and I wasn’t sure if the floors were going to survive the damage. If I had to pay for a new kitchen floor, I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage this month.
I should have sold the house after Brandon died. I couldn’t afford it on a single income. It was too big for me and too broken. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, the same way I couldn’t bring myself to empty his closet or clean out the garage.
“Okay. But can I pay for your time?” I asked. “And I’ll obviously cover the materials.”
“I don’t want you to pay me. Oh, which reminds me.” He reached across me to open the glove box. His arm brushed my knee, and the sides of his lips twitched. He handed me an envelope. “Here. The money for watching Tucker. I know I don’t have your receipts yet, but I guesstimated. And I added a reward.”
I held the envelope and looked at it. I needed what was in it. But now taking it felt weird. It was one thing to accept it from a stranger whose dog I was watching, a man who was taking Tucker away from me. That was a business arrangement. It was something else entirely to accept money from a guy I was kind of dating and who wanted to help me with repairs on my house.
I handed it back to him. “Why don’t you keep this? You can fix the sink and we’ll call it even.”
He didn’t reach for it. “I insist you take it. It’s nonnegotiable.” Something final in his voice told me the discussion was over. “As for materials, you have a lot of tools and parts in the garage. I doubt I’ll need much else. I can get a lot done with what’s already there.”
I didn’t reply. He parked the truck in the Home Depot lot and put on the brake. “We’re here.”
“You don’t think this is a little weird? You fixing my sink?”
“The weird thing would be me not fixing it knowing that I can. Come on,” he said, opening his door. “I wanna get my hands on your pipes.”
* * *
Jason went through Home Depot with a surgical accuracy that told me he knew his way around a home improvement project. At the self-checkout stand, he wouldn’t let me pay. “Part of our date.”
“No, it’s not,” I objected, trying to swipe the items from him.
He pivoted and held everything over his head, out of my reach. I crossed my arms and glared at him. His blue eyes twinkled, and I marveled for the hundredth time at how handsome he was. His pictures had been great, but he was so much better set in motion.
“If I’d taken you to a carnival and won you a stuffed animal, that would be part of the date, right? Or if I’d brought flowers or paid for a movie?”
“Yes. But that’s typical date stuff. Buying me parts to fix my sink isn’t.”
“So you want me to be typical?” He grinned.
He had this way of backing me into my own corners. He turned his back on me and continued his purchase, shooting a victorious look over his shoulder as the receipt printed out.
“One more stop,” he said, grabbing the bag.
“What now? Are you going to change my oil or something?”
“I can change your oil if you want.” He laughed, then took my hand and wove his fingers through mine as he walked me out of the store.
I died. I had to draw on some internal strength women probably use for childbirth just to close my fingers around his, because his touch made me lose control over the use of my hand.
Jaxon Waters is holding my hand.
I didn’t even remember the walk to the truck. I think I blacked out.
“You’re going to like the entertainment portion of this date,” Jason said a few minutes later, pulling up to a gas station. “Let’s go inside and get some dessert.”
We made our ice cream selections from the deep freezer, and then I poured myself a small decaf and hovered over the coffee station, eyeing the individual flavored creamers. Jason came up behind me as I took seven hazelnuts and slipped them into my purse. I turned to him and he arched his eyebrows at me.
“What? They come with the coffee. And I love the little creamers. I keep them in my purse for coffee emergencies.”
“Coffee emergencies?” He smiled down on me.
He was back in my personal space again. Just slightly closer than most people stood. It made me feel a little breathless.
“Yeah,” I swallowed. “You can never be too prepared.”
“And do you have a lot of these emergencies?” he asked. His eyes moved to my lips again, and he cocked his head a little like he was studying them.
“At least one a day.”
He came back up and grinned. “Come on.”
He took my hand as he led me to the register. He bought our desserts and my coffee, and he asked for twenty dollars’ worth of lottery scratchers.
Once we were back in the truck, Jason drove us around to the car wash. “Ready?” he asked, leaning out the window to punch a code into the kiosk.
“Ready for what?”
“The entertainment. Rainbow car wash.”
I laughed. “Oh my God, I love rainbow car washes! It’s been so long since I’ve done one!”
“You don’t wash your car?” he asked, driving in. Once the tires were taken over by the track, he leaned back in his seat and opened his ice cream.
I pulled the lid off of my sorbet and started poking at it with my spoon. “You haven’t seen my car.”
“The Corolla? I saw it in your garage when I was looking for the shop vac.”
“Well, then you understand why I don’t bother to wash it,” I said, looking up at the windshield as water started spraying over the truck. The long strips of fabric began slapping back and forth across the hood and the nostalgic citrus smell of the underbody wash drifted in through the vents.
“We need a soundtrack for this.” He fiddled with the radio. A mewing Lola Simone song came on and he quickly changed the channel. I hated her music too. Too Courtney Love for me.
He settled on KROQ, and when the foamy rainbow soap started to pour over the truck, we glanced at each other and smiled. We held the look for a long moment before staring back out through the glass.
I was so sensitive to him sitting there I could barely focus. It almost felt like neither of us was actually watching the car wash. Like our eyes were there, but our attention was on each other. At least mine was.
When the truck was done, Jason parked in front of the gas station and handed me ten dollars’ worth of scratchers. “If we win anything, we decide what to do with the money together,” he said, digging in his cup holder and producing a penny to give me.
“How do you think of this stuff?” I smiled, rubbing my penny on the scratcher. “I think this is the best date I’ve ever been on. First the guy saves me from a flood. Then he reveals he’s my favorite recording artist. He gives me an envelope full of money and buys me hardware, followed by a show and some gambling.”
“I could think of a few ways we could make it even better.” He gave me a devilish grin.