Small towns are all about helping each other out, but you don’t have to be Dictator Delaney about it. Your opinions aren’t always helpful.
I pictured my newborn niece standing here one day, her own plea for… Jesus, shoemaking funds?… and eagerly awaiting a response. Would I want her to get a clipped “No, thanks,” or would I want the man to have a little consideration for her feelings?
“Sure. I’ll donate,” I said, realizing my smile wasn’t quite so forced as I pulled out my phone. “What’s your Venmo?”
“Oh, um.” The girls looked from me to the dad and back. “We don’t have that.”
I tried to stifle my irritation, but how was I supposed to hold back from giving an opinion when I encountered such a grievous lack of good leadership, I ask you?
“You don’t take Venmo? Or any cash app?” I addressed this to the man, who’d finally glanced up from his phone. “Did you know a recent study by the Federal Reserve found that fifty-four percent of people don’t carry cash on them? You could be getting twice as many donations if you took them electronically.”
The guy blinked.
With a sigh, I pulled out the emergency $20 I kept tucked into my phone case and stuffed it in the coffee can. “Here,” I told the girls. “Good luck with your… shoes or whatever.”
The inside of the hardware store was boiling hot and crowded—two of my least favorite things—and the big display under the “Snow Shovels!” sign was incomprehensibly empty. Was I too late? Had they sold out?
The answer came when I decided the most expedient way to ask was to get in the checkout line—a line that was moving slower than a taxi in Midtown at rush hour since Hen, the white-haired proprietor, felt the need to chat with every single customer while he rang up their purchases.
“No snow this week,” I heard him say with confidence. He did a little jig behind the counter like one of those puppets that flail when you pull its string. “See that? M’bad leg always feels achy when there’s a storm coming, but spry means dry! Gonna be cold, though. My feet are itching like nobody’s business.”
Several people nodded seriously.
I glanced at my phone, confirming that, indeed, the National Weather Service was still warning about significant snowfall. But apparently, even when trained meteorologists were predicting a big storm, the local populace took their weather cues from an octogenarian with foot rot.
Am I the only one who finds this beyond bizarre? Really? Just me?
Sweat prickled on the back of my neck, and I unbuttoned my jacket.
I hadn’t realized just how… Copper County… this town was when I’d come here on visits. I’d been seduced by the scenery, charmed by the slower pace, pleasantly surprised by the diversity. I’d thought it was just another town, and I could be as happy here as I was anywhere else. It wasn’t until after I’d signed on the dotted line that I learned how wrong I’d been.
And, if I was being honest, that hadn’t been my only fuckup in recent memory.
Against my will, I remembered the autumn day I’d walked into the little bakery across the street for my first meeting with the contractor Tam and all her friends recommended.
I’d been armed with inspiration photos, a firm renovation budget, and a take-charge attitude—a requirement when you were a person of slightly below statistically average height dealing with a power-tool bro so you could make it clear you weren’t the sort of person to be trifled with.
But then Brewer had stood up (and up, and up) to greet me with a smile and a “Delaney, right?”
His eyes had crinkled at the corners when he smiled—a genuine smile that reached all the way to those eyes, making the room feel suddenly warmer—and when he’d stretched out one ginormous paw, I’d been mesmerized by his calloused fingers and broad palm. I’d had the mortifying thought that I wanted those fingers to touch more than just my hand.
I’d managed to mumble out something about “inspired by industrial spaces” and “clean lines,” but I couldn’t have told you what else I said. My brain had short-circuited the moment he’d said my name in that deep, woodsmoke voice, and my very last coherent thought had taken a sabbatical when he’d accidentally brushed his knee against mine under the table.
Brewer had spent the next hour patiently going through my plans, asking questions and offering suggestions in that low rumble that felt like velvet sliding across my skin. Meanwhile, I’d fixated on how the afternoon light caught the golden-brown highlights in his hair and how his forearms flexed when he reached for his mug of coffee—which he took with cream and sugar, no fucks given, like he’d never heard of calories or was too enlightened and real to care about bullshit like that.
A voice in my head had sighed,Tam and everyone were right! You can trust this guy, Delaney.And I’d listened.
Pro tip, friends: Never sign legally binding contracts while lust-drunk on a man who looks like he could bench-press your car with one hand while making you a soufflé with the other. It won’t end well.
It wasn’t until our first real meeting at the house a week later that I realized the voice in my “head” actually belonged to my penis. My dick was a notoriously bad judge of character (see also: every one of my exes), and since Brewer was out-of-my-league gorgeous and probably straight, he was exactly the kind of guy it would point me toward… especially since I’d been in the middle—or, as it turned out, closer to thebeginning—of a months-long dry spell.
That day, Brewer had shown up to my house in a stupidly tight henley that accentuated his stupidly firm muscles and a tool belt that accentuated his stupidly trim hips, examined my bathroom plans, and suggested—no,announced—several changes.
That was when I’d discovered two things: one, my initial dick-straction had blinded me to the fact that Brewer Barnum was the most infuriatingly stubborn, arrogant, my-way-or-the-highway builder in North America… and two, I’d signed a contract giving him far more “design approval” authority than I ever should have agreed to.
Those crinkly smile-eyes? A tactical weapon.
The attentive listening? Just gathering ammunition.
