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I made it worse by letting Tom take me on a date.
I need to come clean, though that’s hard to do when I can hardly explain what Dane and I are, even to myself.
“We’re…sort of seeing each other,” I mumble.
Strangely, that doesn’t seem to surprise or upset Emma—if anything, she only looks more intrigued.
“Oh, you sweet summer child…don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Tom is disappointed but far from devastated.
“Is it ‘cause he’s so rich?” He sighs. “I never get anybody worth getting.”
“Well, you could try showering more often,” Emma remarks. “And cleaning out your truck.”
“Women don’t care what’s in my truck.”
“A little bit they might,” I say gently. The backseat of Tom’s truck is full of crushed beer cans, sandy blankets, and several bags’ worth of crumbled Doritos.
“Well, guess I better get to work.” Tom heaves his tool bag out of the tuck bed.
“Can I grab you a glass of water or something?” I ask, feeling like an asshole.
“Nah, I already had a drink.”
“Of coffee,” Emma assures me, though I don’t believe her.
“How about you?” I ask.
“I brought my own.” She holds up a thermos. “And I’m here to work! What can I help with?”
“You don’t have to do that, you’ve got your own business to run—“
“It’s dead ‘til Halloween. And if I go in, Mandy will be lazier than ever. I don’t know what I’m paying her for; she doesn’t even wipe down the tables.”
“I’ll come wipe ‘em for you—fair’s fair, you helped me paint the ballroom. I’d offer to carry some trays, too, but I have to admit I got fired from my one and only waitressing job after a single shift.”
Emma laughs.
“Let’s keep you right where you belong.”
* * *
We spendthe afternoon replacing smashed windows on the upper levels. Emma isn’t quite as good at holding the heavy panes steady as she was at painting, but she keeps me entertained with a string of anecdotes about the craziest customers she’s gotten at the diner and more local gossip.
She’s just finished filling me in on all the gory details of Corbin and Helena’s doomed love affair when a splintering crash and a horrible thud send us running downstairs.
We find Tom on the floor of the ballroom, covered in cobwebs and plaster dust, his leg at a disturbing angle. His face is white as chalk, and I can’t tell if he’s breathing. A tendril of blood leaks out of his ear.
The hole in the ballroom ceiling, twenty feet overhead, shows where he fell through.
Emma starts screaming, hands at her mouth.
“JUDE!” I bellow. “Call 911!”
My brother doesn’t emerge, so it’s me who scrambles to find my phone.
The ambulance takes an agonizing forty-two minutes to arrive.
