And for a moment, I have the most bizarre, unsettling, out-of-body experience of my life.
I see her beside me, platinum hair sunlit and gleaming, silky smooth skin sun-bronzed, denim cutoffs bunched up around her thigh-hip creases with the white flags of her pockets sticking out under the fraying hems, a white V-neck clinging to her curves…and I see the future.
I see her there beside me, smiling, laughing, teasing me, a ring on her finger. I see her there beside me with a belly burgeoning with child.
For a split second, I see it all.
And I fucking want it.
Six
EMBER
Icatch an odd look on Felix's face. It's a split-second thing, there and gone so fast I could have imagined it, but I know I saw it. It was…longing.
Raw, potent, fierce, and wild.
And it was leveled at me.
My heart pitter-patters in my chest at the fragmentary glimpse at his deepest emotions, at the knowledge that he was looking atmelike that.
It's almost too much to handle, for so many reasons. Most of them are to do with Dutchie, and I shy away from even examining them in my own mind.
He jerks the shifter into gear, and the big diesel motor chugs and groans. Moments later, we're out of the YMCA parking lot and heading back toward town. Instead of downtown, though, he takes us into the industrial sector east of downtown. Crowe Construction and Demolition's headquarters is a half-acre lot, with three long, low equipment garages in a U-shape, the opening facing the road, with a small building front and center that used to be a vacation cottage some seventy years ago. The lot is all gravel, and there are vehicles and equipment of varying kinds and ages in the lot—a huge dump truck that has to be nearly fifty years old, a tiny backhoe-thing but with wheels instead of tracks, a massive yellow bulldozer, and several pickups with attached flatbed trailers.
I gesture at the cluster of vehicles. "Why is that stuff not parked in the garages?" I ask. "Wouldn't it be more secure?"
"That's overflow. My grandpa actually started the family business, Crowe Demolitions, more’n fifty years ago. He passed before I was born, and Dad transitioned the company to construction and renamed it Crowe Construction. Later on, Riley reopened Crowe Demolitions. Point is, a lot of that equipment there is old stuff we don’t use much. The dump truck is toast—needs a new tranny which would cost more than the thing is worth, the little backhoe I don't fuckin' know what's wrong with but it's fucked—something with the hydraulics, I think—and the dozer is legitimately from World War Two. It does run and work, but it's fiddly and difficult and requires constant maintenance. And those pickup trucks were the first company trucks Dad bought, so they all have like a half million miles on them."
"Oh. So the equipment and such that you actually use regularly does live in the garages."
He nods. "Yup."
He parks his big gold pickup in front of the little house and shuts it off. "C'mon, gotta grab the keys and sign out the flatbed.”
The little house is the actual HQ office—a tiny space in desperate need of renovation. The gray carpet is dingy, thin, and worn to fraying threads in the high-traffic spots, the walls are cheap wainscoting beneath dirty, cigarette smoke-yellowed plaster, and all the furniture is construction site specials—battered metal desks and filing cabinets, with buzzing, flickering fluorescent bulbs overhead. A thin-bladed fan stirs the air half-heartedly.. The smell of old, burned coffee and decades-old cigarette smoke is nearly overpowering.
A woman sits at one of the gigantic, olive-drab metal battleship-desks, three computer screens in front of her, a phone clamped between her ear and shoulder while a waist-height industrial printer noisily spits out pages rapid-fire. She's tall and slender with glossy, wavy brown hair laced with expensive blond highlights; she's remarkably beautiful, in a Skipper Barbie way. She has cat's eye blue-blocker glasses perched on her nose and she'summm-humming and scribbling notes frantically. A moment after we enter, she thanks the person on the other end and hangs up, her eyes going to Felix.
"Fee! Just the man I needed to see." Her voice is sing-songy and chipper, her eyes drinking in Felix with obvious thirst.
"Hey, Jess," Felix says, his voice carefully neutral. "What's up?"
"The lumber order got all goofed up, somehow. They caught it before they shipped it, but it's gonna take a week or two before they can rectify it and send the correct order."
"Well fuck," Felix growls. "I need that lumber last fuckin' week. Who do I need to fire?"
"Not me!" She chirps, tapping her notepad with her pen. "They're sending us some pre-built framing at cost, and they're discounting the order by ten percent. I got itupto ten, actually—they were originally only offering five."
Felix shakes his head. “That's the third time they've fucked up an order in the last quarter, Jess. I'm losing patience with them." He scratches his jaw. "Get some other quotes for me, will ya? I'm thinking it's time to get a new lumber supplier."
She jots a note, nodding. "Will do. But Mason won't be happy. They've been our supplier since your dad's time."
"I don't care about Mason Carter’s feelings, Jess," Felix growls. "We've stuck with them because they've had good prices and they've been reliable up until recently. But they've jacked up their prices several times over the last couple years, and now they're fucking up orders. Find me a new supplier ASAP, please."
She tosses a snappy little two-finger salute. “Yes sir, will do." She shoots me a friendly smile. 'Hey, I'm Jess!"
"Ember," I say. "Nice to meet you."
