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“The rain’ll keep going for weeks.”
He nodded and then smiled at me. We were breaking down walls after all. “That’s Murphy’s Law,” he said.
“Then let’s get started.”
“I’ve got it,” he said. “You can stay in the truck.”
I could tell he was trying to be chivalrous, but I didn’t want him to be.
“You’ve got an extra set of hands,” I said. “Do you want to fight about it, or do you want to be done in half the time?”
Wesley sighed and gestured for me to join him.
When I stepped out of the car, I realized that the rain was coming down harder than I thought it was. The raincoat was helping a little bit, but the winds had picked up and it wasn’t helping nearly as much as it had been before. I contemplated getting back in the truck and letting the man with the big arms handle everything, but I didn’t want to look weak in front of him. Still, I hoped it wasn’t going to take much time.
“We want to pile them in the entranceway,” Wesley told me. “The garage should be fine on its own and the backyard patio is raised up, which should prevent water from getting in that way.”
I followed his orders, grabbing one of those sandbags and immediately feeling it pull my arms to the floor. He’d been tossing these things around like they were pillows, but the one I’d grabbed must have weighed nearly fifty pounds!
If Wesley noticed my struggle, he kept it to himself, focusing on the job at hand, probably putting down three bags by the time I got there with my first one.
“Pack ‘em in tight,” he said, “and stomp ‘em down.”
I was in flip flops and couldn’t do much in the way of stomping, but I did my best. I’m positive he used his heavy boots on every single one of the bags I put down, but he at least did me the kindness of waiting for my back to turn first.
With the two of us working together — though, to be honest, it was almost entirely him — we finished in just a few moments time and ran back into the truck.
“Turn on the heat,” I begged. I was shivering. I hadn’t noticed how cold it was outside when I was running back and forth from the truck to the entranceway, but it was cold outside, and I was soaked to the core.
Wesley turned the truck on and put the heat to full blast. “It’s an old truck, it takes a bit to warm up, but it’ll get there.”
He wasn’t shivering at all. If anything, he looked a bit warm. The sudden urge to cuddle up with him until he heated me up like a fire came over me, but I bit my tongue and put my hands together to prevent myself from acting on the impulse.
“I should go do a once over in the house to make sure the roof isn’t leaking,” he said. “Stay in here and warm up. I’ll be right back.”
He ran into the house, taking his boots off before he entered, and left me alone in the truck. His stepping away reminded me how lonely I’d been. Not just that night, but nearly every night leading up to that one. In fact, this may have been the first night I’d spent with someone since I’d moved out of my sister’s house.
One of the issues with dating someone like Bradley is that their jealousy interferes with your social life. I couldn’t go out with friends because he’d wonder why I didn’t want to spend that time with him. Everything we did, we did together and, since we were trying to keep the relationship a secret — even after I’d moved in with him — we couldn’t even have mutual friends together.
Let me correct that: he could have friends and do what he wanted to do. I was the one who was subject to the jealous interrogations. Meanwhile, he was cheating on me with who knows however many people, sneaking behind my back… At that moment, I just remembered why I wanted my phone in the first place. It was to call Bradley and hope that he would take me back. And just an hour or so with Wesley had completely removed any inkling of that desire to the point that I couldn’t imagine why it was ever something I’d wanted.
Wesley returned and got back in the truck.
“No leaks,” he said. “Everything’s good.” And then he paused and looked out the front windshield. “We’ve got to stay here, though.”
The road was flooding worse now, but with the truck, it seemed manageable. “We can’t drive through this with the truck?”
He shook his head. “In an emergency, I might chance it, but flooding is dangerous. Even a foot of water can make it impossible to control a car.”
The heaters in the truck were starting to work, but I was still shivering.
“We’re going to need to wait it out.”
“In the truck?” I asked.
Again, he shook his head. “God forbid the flooding gets really bad, we don’t want it to take us away. Let’s go in the house. There should be some towels to dry you off.”
We ran inside together and found several hand towels in one of the bathroom closets. I did my best to dry myself off, but my clothes were just drenched and there was only so much I could do with what I was given.
