“Yeah? I bet mine can beat yours.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Let’s hear it.”
I leaned back, cradling my wine. “Okay, so Sutton put me in charge of making scones for this big county fair order—like, three hundred scones. I misread the recipe and put in a cup of baking soda instead of a tablespoon. The entire bakery puffed up with this horrible chemical smell, and every scone turned exploded in the oven. We spent the whole morning scrubbing the oven and the next month dodging complaints from the old ladies’ club.”
Ford laughed, long and honest. “Exploding scones. That’s a power move.”
“I was mortified,” I said, but I was laughing too. “They still call me Scone Queen at work. Not in a good way.”
We sat for a while, trading disasters and jokes. The space between us on the couch disappeared in slow increments, twelve inches melting to six, then three, until it felt almost natural to lean toward him when I talked. His voice was low and soothing. Every now and then, our knees would brush, and it sent a pulse of electricity through my whole body.
I wanted to reach out and touch him, just to see if he’d pull away or lean in. But I didn’t. Not yet. There was still too much of me that remembered the last time I trusted a man, how it felt to be held and then dropped on the cold tile of the world.
Instead, I kept the conversation rolling, filling the silences with stories about Noah—his obsession with monster trucks, the time he tried to “fix” my phone by dunking it in the toilet, the way he’d started calling me “boss lady” after hearing it at the bakery.
Ford listened to every word. Sometimes, he’d laugh, but mostly he just watched me, eyes soft behind the lenses of his glasses, like he was trying to see the whole story behind the words.
When the wine was gone, I realized it was nearly midnight. I set the glass on the coffee table and stretched, feeling the knots in my shoulders loosen for the first time in months.
Ford mirrored the movement, then stood up. “I should get going. Don’t want to keep you up all night.”
“I can’t remember the last time I was up this late by choice . . . It was nice.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, his eyes searching my face for a moment. But then the moment passed.
I walked him to the door, feeling the weight of the evening settle in my chest.
At the threshold, he paused, toolbox in one hand, the other resting gently on my shoulder. I froze, every muscle waiting to see what would happen next.
He leaned in, close enough that I could smell the hint of soap on his skin. His lips brushed my cheek, warm and careful, and I felt my heart stumble over itself. But just when I thought he was going to pull away, he lingered. His hand slid up to wrap around the back of my neck as lips moved across my skin to find my mouth, where he pressed the softest kiss on me.
“Thank you for the wine,” he said, still only an inch away, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Thank you for the faucet,” I replied, and I almost laughed at how stupid I sounded.
He hesitated a moment, fingers lingering on my neck, then stepped back and disappeared into the hallway.
I closed the door, leaning against it, the press of his hand still burning my skin.
For a long time, I just stood there, listening to the hum of the fridge.
My whole body buzzed with a cocktail of longing, relief, and terror. I wanted to run after him, to ask him to stay, to tell him that I hadn’t felt this alive since before the world came crashingdown around me. But I didn’t. I just smiled, a real smile, and let myself have this small moment of happiness.
Maybe I was finally ready for something new.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to build a life worth living, one small repair at a time.
I padded barefoot back to the kitchen, filled a glass of water from the new faucet, and watched the ripples settle in the glass.
It was late, and the world was still turning. And for once, I was ready to turn with it.
Twelve
Ford
The next morning, I drove out to see my mom. As I got out of my truck, the sound of a diesel engine rumbled somewhere nearby, probably my father’s old pickup coughing its way down the back road. The world was gray, the mountains shrouded in clouds, and the grass so heavy with frost, my boots crunched on it as I cut across the front lawn.
I stood in the yard a long time, looking out at the fields. What used to be a herd of a couple hundred Red Angus cattle was now maybe two dozen, all bunched around the one working water trough. The fence that separated pasture from pasture had gone gray with age and lack of care. In some places, it sagged all the way to the ground, and the weeds ran right up and over like they owned the place.
