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“I’m a professional,” I told her. “See?” I pointed to the Kane’s Construction logo on my shirt. “I own this company. I do this sort of thing for a living and I’m not going to fuck this up. I’m probably going to do a better job than Ted’s guy.”
“Then why aren’tyouTed’s guy?”
“BecauseTed’s guyis his nephew or something. Nepotism. You know how it is.”
“I don’t, actually,” she said, almost bitterly.
“Well, either way, if we call him, we’re going to have to wait for a few days because he’s going to have to come all the way over from Patchgrove. Then he’s going to fuck around with this thing forever, because this guy doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, and I’ll probably just have to come down here and fix it anyway. This way, it gets done right the first time and we can all take hot showers tonight.”
She pursed her lips, like she was weighing the risks, deciding whether or not it was worth it to break the rules. Ultimately, she nodded.
“Okay, then,” she conceded.
I’d planned to do it with or without her approval, but having Zoe on my side made me smirk for some reason. I got to work and she stood there with me, watching.
I was going to let her. If a hot woman wanted to stand there in short shorts and watch me fix things, I had no problem with that.
“How’d you know what to check?” I asked her.
“Huh?”
“You knew your way around the hot water heater. Most people don’t. Not unless they do this kind of thing for a living,” I explained. “Are you secretly some sort of plumbing savant or something?”
“Is that really a thing?”
“Probably not. I’m just asking how you know so much about home repair.”
She rolled her eyes. “My husband… ex-husband… didn’t know anything about the house or repairing things. When stuff broke, it was my problem so it was worth it to learn a little. Just so I could… I don’t know…”
“Well, that’s smart. Most homeowners don’t really bother.”
“Desmond certainly didn’t.”
I nodded.
“I mean, it’s not like I expected him to handle stuff like this just because he was the guy,” she continued. “It’s just that… he didn’t want to handle anything. Anything about the house. Anything with Rex.”
“He sounds like…” I stopped myself. It wasn’t my place to comment.
“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re probably right,” she continued, looking off into the distance. “He’s not a bad guy. It’s just like… if something isn’t some high-minded, intellectually-stimulating, hoity-toity thing, it just… was beneath him. And anything beneath him was my problem.”
Her ex sounded like a dick. “I know the type,” I assured her.
Like one of those super smart people who thought they were above everyday tasks. Who expected other people to do everything that they considered too mundane. They wanted someone else to handle all thelife stuffso that they could do… whatever they needed to do, unencumbered.
“He’s just…”
“You don’t have to defend him to me,” I said, quickly.
“I’m just saying… there’s good in him. I married him for a reason.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“He was nice. He was handsome… in that hot nerd kind of way,” she continued. “And he’s really smart. Likesupersmart. He’s a poetry laureate and a professor and he’s written all kinds of books and he was different than any guy I’d ever dated…”
I finished up with the water heater and put my tools away before looking up at Zoe. Her robe had come undone again with her gesturing and her short shirt had crept up a bit, showing her belly button. There was a small red mark on it, which made me think she had a piercing there, but let it heal up. Very unlike the rule-follower she was trying to be earlier.
Maybe she had a wild streak after all. I liked picturing Zoe doing Jell-O shots or dancing on a tabletop or something. I also liked the little bit of a tattoo poking out over the top of her shorts. Words. I couldn’t make it out, but it rode her hipbone for God knows how long.
