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Chapter Sixteen:
Help Me, Siri
I made another quicktrip home to see my father and Zeppelin, and by proxy, my older brother – but he was different now. Not in a bad way, he was just a little obsessed with his wife. I couldn’t have a five-minute conversation with her without him pulling her into his lap and slipping his hand between her thighs, which probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I didn’t miss Mia as badly as I did. Surprisingly, I held off on telling either of them about her for now. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to gush for five hours about how incredible she was; I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to fuck it up before I said anything else about her to them.
I fucked everything up.
Two days later, I landed back in Domingo and got my Tesla from the airport parking lot to drive home. Traffic was worse than usual for some reason, but it was a gorgeous day: sunny and eighty with a light breeze that made driving with the windows up impossible, and I couldn’t have been in a better mood when I pulled into my garage and slipped my AirPods in so I wouldn’t miss the end of the song I’d been listening to.
That’s where my good mood ended, though.
The moment I opened the door from the attached garage into the laundry room, water poured out and soaked my favorite blue alligator oxfords. Panic set in as I rushed inside and found nearly the whole first floor flooded – water covered the laundry room, the kitchen, the bathroom and the living room almost an inch high, and I couldn’t fucking see where the problem was. The sound of rushing, gushing water distracted me for a moment and I slogged through the flood to the stairs and sprinted up them, but everything on the second floor was alright. No faucets were running, there were no signs of water damage, but still. I heard it.
I went all the way to the basement as fast as I could without falling on my ass or slipping in the mess, and I found fucking two inches of water down there. The suede couches were ruined, the carpet, the bottom of my fucking pool table. I screamed like a little girl when I realized how close the water was to the baseball card collection I’d left here when I moved out the first time and panicked all over again, but I swore I could hear my brother’s voice in my head.
“It’s water, Oliver. Shut the water off. Find the valve.”
“Outside!” I yelled. “Fucking outside!”
Thankfully, I’d been thorough when checking the house for needed cosmetic repairs, because otherwise, I didn’t think I’d know where to find it. My socks squished and squelched in my ruined shoes as I waddle-ran outside to the recessed cement box and opened it with shaking hands, then swore loud enough to make birds scatter when I saw two knurled, round knobs. “Ah fucking fuck, fuck, fuck! Okay, um ...” I picked the one facing my house and curled my fingers around it, repeating a mantra of “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey” in my head before turning it. I grimaced with my eyes closed as I tightened it fully like I thought something was going to happen, but nothing did – there was no sign to indicate whether I’d chosen the right one or done the right thing at all, so I ran back toward the house yelling, “Hey, Siri! Call Plumber Guy!” in hopes that I was close enough to my phone for my AirPods to still work.
The sound of rushing water was gone, but I could still hear the drip, drip of the fucking disaster ruining my life yet again as the line rang in my ears. I was entirely unhelpful to the poor man when he answered since I had no idea what happened or when, but he assured me he’d be there within the hour and told me to start trying to clean up the water.
There was so ... much ... water.
Buckets, mops, towels, the wet/dry shop vac I had in the garage. I used everything I could and barely made a dent, so I gave up and started looking for restoration contractors who could come out quickly. This wasn’t just a matter of renovating to merit a higher sale price anymore, I lived here. I couldn’t wait.
Four hours later, I was being told in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t stay there until repairs were completed. I wouldn’t have running water for a while, and it wouldn’t be advisable to turn the electricity back on until the water damage was at least mitigated. Not to mention the possibility of mold – both the contractor and the plumber agreed that the pipes in the bathroom couldn’t have burst too long before I got home, but any amount of flooding like that posed risks.
So, I took my soggy, tired, sad ass and drove to Sunday’s to get some Sad Huevos. It didn’t occur to me until I got there that it was way too late in the day for Mia to be working, so I texted her and asked if there was any chance she’d meet me for some waffles. I made it damned clear that I’d chosen Sunday’s so she wouldn’t think I was tricking her into a date she hadn’t agreed to, then followed it up with an explanation about what happened.
That goddess of a woman was sitting across from me less than twenty minutes later.
“I’m sorry,” I opened. “I probably smell worse right now than I did the day we met, but I couldn’t exactly take a shower first. I can’t even seem to find a hotel, but I’m still looking. Might need to sleep on a weight bench at Planet Fitness tonight.”
“Ay, Papí.” Mia reached out and touched my hand, her slender fingertips rubbing the inside of my palm. “Dios te bendiga. I may not be as religious as my parents were but my mother would say that when things were rough, which was very often.” Her fingers absentmindedly went to her cross and she rubbed it. “Figured a blessing can’t hurt right, Huevos?”
I smiled, taking in every inch of her beautiful face. Her slender nose and soft jaw, her unfathomably deep, kind brown eyes. “You’re something, you know that, Mia Camilla Perez?”
Her foot brushed mine. “So are you. Why don’t you — never mind that’s crazy.”
“I just came back from Brisley and I need to be close here in case I need to do anything,” I said quietly. “I can look for hotels outside of the city, but apparently there’s some huge convention this weekend so I’d have to go out like fifty miles.”
“Tomatés. It’s a huge deal around here. Whatever, just stay with me until something opens up. It’s crazy, I know, but I don’t want you sleeping in your expensive car or on a bench.”
“My sassy little knight in shining armor,” I teased, but I honestly meant every word. “You’d do that for me? I’m fucking massive and I snore, so I tend to ... y’know, take up a lot of space.”
“Everyone snores, no?” Mia chuckled and stared at me fondly. “You are massive but we have a nice couch believe it or not ... and you’d only have to be on the couch until everyone else went to bed.”
I sat up a little straighter, no longer thinking she was kidding. “For real? I can do that. I’ll sleep there all night if you want, and I’ll do your laundry and cook you breakfast.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mia touched her chin like she was thinking about it. “Maybe I won’t let you leave when you find a room then, huh?”
Another waitress, Maggie, interrupted us with our food, looking disappointed when she saw Mia holding my hand. “Hey Camilla, I didn’t know you’d be coming in today.”
Mia’s jealousy radiated so strongly I felt it instantly. “I wouldn’t have, but my man missed me. That’s all over here, Mags. I’ll take good care of whatever else he needs and get you the check when we’re done. No need to come back.”
Her grip on my hand tightened and I barely tucked my lips between my teeth in time to hide my amusement.
