One
FELIX
Icurse under my breath, sticking my thumb in my mouth like an idiot for a split second before yanking it out and shaking it—also idiotic. I hadn't burned it, I'd smacked it with a fucking hammer. Sucking on it and shaking it weren't going to do anything for the pain. Instincts are stupid sometimes.
I look at the injured thumb—it’ll bruise like a bitch, but whatever.
Annoyed, I toss my hammer onto the ground and stand up, taking a second to let my temper cool off. Working angrily leads to mistakes. If I make a mistake here, it could mean days, weeks, or even months of setbacks to correct—I'm building this place by myself, no crew I can bitch out and order around. Just little old me, building a house from the ground up with my own two hands. Well, and generous use of heavy machinery—it's sorta impossible to raise framing by yourself.
I've made good progress in the last few weeks—I'd actually taken a long weekend, putting Riley and Bear in charge of my crews; I was able to get the driveway cleared so I could start getting the machinery back there.
Yes, I know, I'm nuts. Building a house from scratch with your hands is sort of nutty, I get it. Back in the day, it meant cutting down trees, splitting, sawing, all that. A whole hell of a lot of insanely hard work, sure, but doable. A modern house? That's a whole other beast. And I'm not building a thousand square foot cabin, I'm building a Crowe construction special—the kinda thing you'd see in a neighborhood downtown, just…way out here in the middle of nowhere.
So here I am on a Saturday morning, putting framing together. I'd dug and poured the foundation last weekend, and now, while it cures, I'm putting the framing together. Again, I'm doing it the hard way. You can get preassembled framing, but not only is this cheaper, I'm determined to do every last lick of work with my own two hands, concrete, plumbing, electrical, the whole fucking kit and kaboodle.
Because I'm a crazy man.
My phone rings, jarring me out of my idle reverie. I step over the piles of lumber and boxes of screws and nails and other odds and ends to where my phone sits on the tailgate of my truck. It's stopped ringing by the time I get to it, of course. The notification reads: "Missed call: Bear."
Fuck, that's not good. Bear doesn’t call on the weekends. He doesn't call period—he hates cell phones. It rings again immediately, the photo of Bear with Noelle popping up on the screen.
I swipe to answer and put it on speaker, taking a long slug of lukewarm water before answering. "Bear, what's up?"
His deep voice is troubled. "Sprung a leak out at Aspenview Lane."
"Fuck me, what? A leak? Which house? How bad?"
I hear sloshing. "Bad, boss. Real fuckin' bad." I hear a grunt, a curse, a splash. "Jesus. Got the main shut off, but this basement is a swimming pool."
"Goddammit, how the fuck did that happen. Which one is it?"
"Nine-one-six-one. The one that was almost fuckin' done."
"Shitting Moses," I mutter. "Fan-fucking-tastic."
"I got Reggie, Alvarez, Tom, and Dominic on the way. Reggie's cousin runs one'a them emergency restoration companies, I guess, so he's got his cousins bringing pumps and fans and whatever else."
"I'll be there as soon as I can," I say.
"Sorry, Fee. I don't know what happened."
"We'll figure it out. Mistakes happen." As I talk, I round up my tools one-handed.
"I just—" By the growl in his voice, I can tell Bear is on his way to taking the responsibility for the situation on himself.
"Bear," I cut in, "I know better than anyone how seriously you take your job. Mistakes happen. You can't watch every guy do every job all the time. I ain't mad atcha. You're good."
He sighs. "Supervisor's supposed to supervise."
"Were you off playing hooky or some shit when plumbing went in?" I ask.
"No.”
"New crew? New guys?"
"No."
"So you were doing your job, to the best of your knowledge?"
