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He puts his chin on his paws and doesn’t dignify that with a response.

Can’t fully blame him. I don’t think either of us believes it.

That night the rain settles in steady over my roof and I lie in bed not sleeping.

Behind my eyes she’s in that wrecked office chair with her hair coming down, except it’s my hands taking it down. Slow. Pin by pin. And then it’s my hands everywhere else, tracing every inch of her.

Her jaw, the back of her neck, the strip of her I saw this morning and haven’t stopped seeing since.

I’m hard as a pry bar over a woman I’ve spent two days trying to run off. Two days. That’s all it took her to get under my skin this deep.

I don’t do anything about it. Feels like it’d be admitting something.

So I lie there and want her through the rain, and when the rain finally quits, I lie there and want her through the quiet, which turns out to be worse.

Chapter 3

Vanessa

It’s Saturday morning just after seven and somebody’s knocking on my door with a boot.

Steady, low, the knock of someone whose hands are full, and when I open up, it’s Tommy on the landing with two of my boxes stacked to his chin and Marcus behind him carrying a third like it weighs nothing.

“Morning,” Tommy says around the cardboard. “These were still in your truck bed. It’s gonna rain again later, don’t want them getting damaged if you need to drive somewhere.”

“There’s no rain forecast,” I say, sounding as bemused as I feel.

“Walt says rain by two.”

Marcus edges past me into the apartment without being invited, which I’m learning is just Marcus’s way. He looks all easy-going and go with the flow, but he doesn’t stop until he gets what he wants.

I’m in no position to complain about that, it’s the only reason I’m still at Cole Marine Services and not back in Portland with my tail between my legs.

“Walt’s knees are more accurate than the Weather Service. Where do you want the heavy one?”

“You don’t have to unload my-”

“Kitchen or bedroom?”

The kitchen is four feet of counter and a built-in stove which only works when it feels like it. The bedroom is the rest of the apartment, minus the bathroom, which is roughly the size of the bathroom on a boat and smells faintly like one too.

“Kitchen. Those are dishes.”

He sets it down on the counter and the counter holds, which I honestly wasn’t sure about.

Tommy drops his two by the bed, straightens up, and does a slow turn like he’s appraising the place for a magazine spread.

“Huh,” he says. “Gus hasn’t done much to fix up this place in years. The floor needs leveling.”

Now that he mentions it, the floor slopes toward the harbor wall. Noticeably. Set a pen down anywhere in this apartment and it rolls east.

“Should I be worried about that?”

“Nah. The whole building shifted a bit back in the eighties, so it leans a bit, but it’s structurally sound. Gus says it helps the water find the drain.”

Tommy nudges the baseboard with his boot.

“The guys down at the marina have a betting pool on when the stove finally dies, if you want in. I’ve got August.”