She tsks, but with humor. “How does it fit in there? You managed the whole shoe in up to the ankle.”
I pretend to talk with my mouth full. “Not much room for Pirate’s Booty.”
“You don’t deserve booty of any kind,” she says. I choke, and her smirk turns into another I win grin.
But joking aside, I take a breath to explain and make proper amends. “The way I said that was unfortunate, and I’m sorry. I meant it more as a compliment—the uniqueness of being a woman in your field. The coolness of it. I get the sense that you embrace it for what it is, with the pink hammer and truck and all that. And really, I should have said, ‘I bet you’re great with a hammer.’”
“Points for not going with the obvious.” At my inquiring look, she quotes, “‘I bet you like to get nailed.’”
“Ouch.” I grimace in sympathy. “Please tell me no one says that.”
She laughs. “No, they don’t, actually, because I know how to work a power saw.”
I shudder, raising my hands as if to ward her off.
“Anyway,” she says. “Nice recovery. Very well done.” She takes a beat, then adds, “Maybe you’re a mildly nice guy.”
“There is nothing mild about me,” I say with narrowed eyes and a deliberate growl that makes her laugh.
“Actually, I have to agree. You’re not milquetoast at all.”
“I’ve always aspired to not be milquetoast.”
“You’re exceeding that goal too. And to answer your question, yes, I love pink. I’m going to do a whole accent wall in my house in pink now that I finally can.”
There’s a story in the way she ends that sentence. Before I can ask about it, she tosses a question to me instead. “What do you think of Duck Falls so far?”
“I actually went to high school one town over. In Lucky Falls,” I say.
She glances briefly at me in surprise, then says, “I want to hear all about that.”
The rest of the drive, we chat about how I came to America as a teen, then again in my late twenties, and I figure there’ll be time on the way back to learn about her, and why she’s finally able to indulge in that accent wall when she couldn’t before.
7
January
The store is forty-five miles away from Duck Falls.
Normally, I’m all about efficiency. As a single mom and a small business owner trying to make a dent in a male-dominated field, I don’t have a lot of time to mess around. And I don’t have a lot of time for myself.
Hell, self-care is something I have to schedule, my phone beeping with nightly reminders to lotion up my feet with coconut body cream. Then I’ll drag a pair of fluffy socks out of the drawer and pull them on for bed, all while Alva and I text about her day at the salon and mine tooling around town.
That’s the extent of my maintenance routine—texting my best friend while making sure my feet don’t get all cracked.
I don’t have time to amble around—by my lonesome, or with anyone else.
But Wednesday’s off with Alva’s daughter, Audrey, working on YouTube videos where they sample quirky food like grape gum and bento boxes.
Meanwhile, I’m enjoying all forty-five inefficient miles in my neighbor’s company, as he tells me about going to high school in neighboring Lucky Falls, before he returned to England for university and vet school, then came back to the States in his late twenties. Which explains why his British accent is still so yummy and . . . British.
“So, you were going to high school in Lucky Falls while I was in Duck Falls,” I remark. “Small world.”
“Are you thinking we would have run into each other at the football games?”
I toss him a doubtful look. “Why do I think you didn’t attend football games?”
“Are you casting aspersions on my sportiness, or lack thereof?”
I flick the fingers of my right hand at him as I drive. “I am indeed. Aspersions cast.”
He huffs, folding his arms over his chest. “Fine. I didn’t go to football games.”
“Neither did I,” I say with a wide grin, offering a palm for a high five.
He unfolds his arms and smacks back. “Is this a geeks unite thing? Or science geeks, to be precise.”
I laugh. “I was more into woodshop and theater tech. So maybe it’s more like woodshop tomboys and science geeks unite.”
“All right. Fair enough. Tomboys and geeks. So that explains why we never ran into each other. But what year did you graduate?”
I tell him, and he reciprocates. The arithmetic is easy to figure. “You’re thirty-nine?” I ask.
“So old. And you’re . . . twenty-two?”
“Is that your way of making up for the lady carpenter thing?”
“Did it work?”
“Perhaps,” I say, then I whisper, “Even though I’m thirty-seven.”
“Yes, I figured that out, since we were two years apart in school.”
