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Time moves really slowly when you’re waiting. I’ve been ready since a quarter to seven. At ten till I go downstairs to wait by the front door like it’s sophomore year and I’m waiting on my homecoming date to arrive.
At nine till I start questioning if he’s coming. Which is ridiculous, it’s still early.
At eight till I make a contingency plan for the evening, just in case. It involves wearing my fancy dress to Rain Modern for an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. It’s not actually a buffet restaurant, I just intend on going, getting a table for six and then ordering entrées for every seat. I might still do that sometime because honestly the more I think about it the more excited I get about the idea.
Maybe for my next birthday.
At six till I hear the drip.
At five till I revisit the all-I-can-eat Chinese food idea.
At four till I debate how bad the mystery drip can be, and if I should look or if it’ll hold till I get home in a few hours. It’ll hold, right? The bathroom plumbing has probably been disintegrating for a decade. It’s not like the ceiling is gonna cave in tonight.
At three till I take a peek into my kitchen and find the leak.
It’s fine.
Pretty sure.
Not a huge deal.
At two till there’s a light knock on my front door. My front door, which is also my shop door. I run back to swing it open and, yeah, there’s Warren Russo on my doorstep.
Totes normal.
“Hey!” I greet him like an overly familiar weirdo. I mentally rehearsed a bunch of ways to open the door in a sophisticated manner and trust me, none of them involved me whipping open the door and saying ‘hey.’
Ugh.
“Just one second.” I hold up a finger to emphasize. “I’m ready, I swear.” Then I leave him standing on my doorstep and bolt back to my kitchen to shove a trash can under the overhead light fixture, from which a drip of water is now coming.
It’s a small drip. Barely noticeable. Totally fine.
“You need to kill the circuit for that light.”
Great. This is so much less embarrassing than Gary dragging a mouse through my house. So. Much.
Because nope, Warren did not wait at the door and is now standing in the threshold of my kitchen witnessing my garbage can plumbing setup.
He looks perfect. Black suit, crisp white shirt, dark charcoal tie. Perfect fit, of course. It’d help my heart rate considerably if the suit was ill-fitting. But nope. No such luck. Perfectly polished black shoes. I have a thing for a nice dress shoe on a man, especially one with nary a scuff in sight.
He’s raised his arm to run his fingers across his jaw as he stares at the overhead light fixture. The move exposes a heavy watch on his wrist and we all know it’s a universal truth that a nice watch is sexy as hell.
I’m staring. A fact I realize when he finally raises an eyebrow and prompts, “Fuse box?” after an eternity of silence in which I’ve just been running my eyes over him like I’ve never seen a man before in my entire life.
I can’t catch a break.
“Right,” I agree, nodding quickly to shake off my lust stupor. “Fuse box,” I repeat back for lack of anything else to say. A lone wisp of blonde hair has escaped my artfully arranged loose, low pony and fallen into my face. Too loose, I guess. I blow it out of the way and slide past Warren into the closet under the stairwell where the fuse box for this house is located, flipping the one labeled ‘kitchen light.’ The elderly aunt I inherited this place from might’ve been terrible at home maintenance, but she was a top-notch labeler.
This fuse kills the overhead light in the kitchen and hallway so we’re plunged into a dusky early evening shadow. I immediately blurt out, “Okay, I’m ready!” with way too much enthusiasm. Then I clap my hands together and nod toward the door. I add a weird little thumb point to round off this sophisticated display.
Warren doesn’t move, he simply glances between me and then back to the ceiling light. I’m mollified to see that the drip has stopped. See? Problem resolved.
“Have you called a plumber?”
“Are you crazy? On a Saturday night? You think I’m paying a plumber for weekend hours for what amounts to less than a glass of water? They already bill more than doctors do during regular business hours. It’ll hold till Monday.”
Warren makes one more visual sweep of the ceiling then, with a small shake of his head, says, “Okay,” and follows me to the front door.
So. This is going really well.
We manage to make it outside and into his car without exchanging another word. Once we’re on the Thruway I decide to test out my stellar conversational skills.
