Page 9 of Oops I Fell For The Lumberjack Next Door

Small towns. Everyone connected to everyone, favors traded in six degrees or less, and Briggs Holloway apparently sits at the center of this web doing quiet good deeds for people who didn't ask.

I hate how decent he is. It would be so much easier if he were terrible.

This morning, the problem is the bedroom floor. Specifically, the section under my bed. I'd been sleeping on an air mattress over it for three nights without issue until Princess Buttercup knocked a pen off the nightstand, batted it under the bed with the deliberate cruelty of a cat who wants to watch you suffer, and when I got on my stomach to retrieve it, my hand went through the floorboard.

Through it. Into open air. Cold, damp, crawlspace air rushing up through a hole roughly the size of a dinner plate.

So now I'm sitting cross legged on the mattress, staring at the gap in the floor, drinking coffee from the same mug I've been using since day one because my wine glasses are still in a box I can't find, and considering my options.

Option one: ignore it. The bed covers it. Nobody has to know.

Option two: call a contractor. Spend money I'm trying to conserve for the kitchen renovation.

Option three: fix it myself. YouTube exists. How hard can subflooring be.

Option four presents itself in the form of a knock on the side door at seven fifteen.

I don't have to open it. I already know who it is. The knock is distinctive. Three slow, heavy raps with a pause between each one, as if the person knocking is giving you time to prepare yourself for the fact that he's about to be helpful whether you want him to be or not.

Barefoot, in leggings and the oversized UNR sweatshirt I've owned since freshman year, I pad through the kitchen. Princess Buttercup is already at the window, tail twitching.

"Traitor," I mutter.

She chirps. At the window. At him.

Opening the side door, I find Briggs standing on the flat stone that serves as a back step. He's in a thermal henley, jeans, those same boots. Sawdust on his forearms. Behind him, Tinsel is sitting in my yard with his tongue out, looking thrilled to be here.

"Morning." He lifts a thermos. "Brought coffee. Figured yours is the instant stuff from the grocery bag."

"My coffee is fine."

"It's not, but okay." He leans against the doorframe. "Heard from Ray the crawlspace under your bedroom is open in a couple spots. Said the subfloor's got soft patches."

"I found one."

His eyebrows go up. "How."

"My cat knocked a pen under the bed. My hand went through the floor."

He processes this with the minimal expression of a man who communicates primarily through physical labor. A nod. A glance past me toward the hallway. "I've got leftover tongue and groove from a barn project. Enough to patch it, maybe enough to redo the whole bedroom floor if the joists are sound."

"Briggs."

"Yeah."

"Why do you keep doing this."

He looks at me. Direct. Those blue eyes that I've been avoiding for four days because every time they land on me, something in my chest that I thought I'd shut down after Daniel starts making noise.

"Because your floor has a hole in it."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

We stand there. Him in the doorway, me barefoot in a sweatshirt. The morning is cold. Pine and frost. His breath makes small clouds in the air between us.

"Fine." I step back. "But you're drinking the instant coffee."