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Flushed, I smiled. “I … um, well, be careful going home.”
“You too. There are deer out this time of year, so watch the county road, all right?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, since I’d driven the road to my house about a billion times. “I will,” I promised. Then walked around the front of the car, turning to wave awkwardly at him. And with his awkward wave back, I slid into the car and took off.
“Smooth. Real smooth, Daisy. Just ask him out, they said. It’s not weird, they said.”
And with that thought, I made plans to stuff napkins in all their shoes.
Even Mama’s.
13
MONKEY WRENCH
KEATON
I was an absolute fool.
After dinner, I drove home without even turning on the radio. I didn’t need any more noise—my mind kept itself busy with a scolding so hot, I might have given myself third degree burns.
Daisy Blum had asked me if I wanted to date, and I said no.
I couldn’t figure out why I’d said it like I had, quick and cold and distant. Though I would have loved to blame it on a black out or a possession perhaps, the truth was that I’d overthought every word I said to the point of utter fucking nonsense.
Every instinct said yes, but my idiot mouth said no.
I hadn’t lied—there was no room to add anything else into my life, not without a sacrifice I didn’t know how to make. A flash of guilt had cut me down the middle at the thought of dating. Not that I hadn’t considered it, but I’d never imagined anything with the detail I imagined kissing Daisy. But I had kissed approximately one girl in my life, outside of Jenny Andrews in the first grade under the monkey bars. I’d only dated one girl, a girl I married.
The obvious takeaway was that I had no idea what I was doing, but that wasn’t the bulk of it.
It felt like a betrayal of my old life. Ridiculous, I knew. But my loss dictated that I wasn’t allowed to be happy with someone else, not without letting go of something I’d been hanging on to for so long, my hands had turned to stone.
Truth was, it was easier to say no than deal with everything that came along with saying yes.
If I wasn’t standing in my own way, Daisy was everything I could ever want.
Giving and kind, clever and determined. She had a softness about her that I knew could toughen in a heartbeat if she had something to defend. She made me laugh when no one—outside of people I shared DNA with—could. The more I was around her, the more I wanted to be around her. And though I didn’t know her well, I knew well enough. And I wanted to know more.
I just didn’t know how to make that jump.
Instead of taking the time to figure it out, I reprimanded myself the whole way home, then reprimanded my brothers for having set me up. I would have reprimanded Sophie too, if she hadn’t been asleep. Though by all estimates, she would have gotten off with nothing more than a hard look and a You too?
I thought all night about seeing Daisy the next day, found myself unsure what to wear, wondered if I should clean up my beard, wondered why I wondered about it, then realized with no small amount of reproach that I was nervous about spending the day at work with her.
My biggest problem was that I’d blown it with Daisy, and I told myself it was for the best. I had enough to deal with between my duty to our teetering business and the shelter build. I couldn’t give Daisy what she needed. I didn’t know how to give that much of myself anymore. Everything else in my life wasn’t giving—it was doing, and for the sake of the people I loved. The fortunate byproduct was that the doing involved most of my time, giving me space to be alone.
It felt easier, being alone.
I thought about this all the way to the Blum’s property, and when I pulled into the lot, I was both relieved and disappointed that she wasn’t there yet. Once I’d parked and made a few rounds, including a stop by the protesters so I could glare at them for a long, hard minute, I headed into the office and unpacked my laptop, shifting my thoughts to bigger problems.
Our accountant—and the only other human who knew the state of our books—had sent me the quarter’s reports. Red was the color of my worries, as we hadn’t even broken even for the month. We’d taken on too many new guys without increasing our revenue. Then there was the Baker family, their roof rotted and leaking, and Jessie Baker with a new baby. The price I gave them was only a hair over what it would cost me, and I’d told them to pay me back a portion every month until we were square. Then there was the Main Street restoration, which seemed to never end. But it was another pro bono project, one of too many.
