All Broke Down

“Hello. My name is Greg, and I want to thank you all for being here. Today we’re working on the house of this young lady here.” He gestures toward a tiny old woman standing on the ground next to him. Her skin is weathered and cracked like old leather, and when she waves, her flesh moves like it’s not attached to her body. “Mrs. Baker has lived in this house for forty-nine years, and this morning we’re going to be helping her make some repairs and renovations. She worked as a nurse at the local hospital until she retired ten years ago. She spent a lifetime giving to this community, and Mrs. Baker, we’re delighted to be able to give a little back to you today.”

“Silas,” Dylan whispers next to me. I ignore her and focus on the guy in charge. I don’t know why what she said makes me feel so shitty.

I am all of those things she mentioned. But I’m trying. Why else would I be here? But if that’s the kind of guy she wants, f**k it.

I think what bothers me most is the idea that those things are all I am to her. I’ve always thought football was the great balancer in my life. It makes up for all the other things I’m not. But Dylan doesn’t give a shit about football, and unless I get my act together, I won’t even have that.

And what am I then? Who am I then?

Greg moves through the gathered crowd, splitting people into groups for different tasks, appointing leaders. I get put in a group with Henry, which is f**king perfect.

I hope he steps on a nail and gets tetanus.

Dylan is put in another, smaller group, and I’m beginning to think this little experiment is going to end with me being even more irrationally angry than I already am.

At least I’m given a cool job. Me and a few other guys are tearing down some rotting and warped siding from the front porch and replacing it with new wood. I’m given a crowbar and a hammer and told to go to town. And I do exactly that.

There’s satisfaction in the creaking sound of the wood giving way. The nails groan as I use the crowbar to lever off the old siding. And when I encounter a few particularly stubborn boards I use the hammer to add some extra force.

I lose myself in the task, sweat beginning to trail down my back as I work. The sun glides higher into the sky, and pours light and heat down in smothering quantities. I strip away the bad wood piece by piece. Sometimes it crumbles in my hand, snaps or bends where it shouldn’t. Then I’m left using my hands, my hammer, my foot—whatever I can to tear the stuff away until finally, I can see the framework beneath. All that’s left are the studs to which we’ll attach the new siding. When I’m done with my section, I move over to the next, where Henry has barely done half of what I’ve managed.

For a while we work in silence, and I forget he’s even there. Then he asks, “So how do you know Dylan?”

I want so badly to say something to piss him off, some innuendo, but I know she wouldn’t like that. And what I say could make her look bad, and I get the feeling she’s one of those girls who are incredibly concerned with how other people see them.

Maybe that’s why the idea of dating me seems so ludicrous to her.

As satisfying as it would be to piss the guy off, it’s not worth pissing her off, too.

I shrug. “We ran into each other last week. Got to talking. Hit it off.”

Okay. So maybe I’m not completely above implying that there’s something between us. But it’s less to piss him off, and more to make very clear that he has no hold on her anymore. If he thought he could do better than a girl like Dylan, the guy is a f**king moron, and he deserves to have that rubbed in his face a little.

“Hit it off?”

“Yeah. She’s pretty spectacular. You don’t meet girls like her every day.”

Henry nods, pausing in his attempt to remove a stubborn board, and says, “Right.”

I look at this guy, and it makes my blood burn hot that he had four years of her life. That he’s had her, and I haven’t. And I let my mouth get away from me. “And just between us, that girl is smoking hot. At first, she seemed a little, I don’t know. Shy. Restrained. But when she loosens up . . . damn.”

Henry tugs hard on the board, and his hands slip, sending his crowbar tumbling to the ground.

“Here. Let me.”

I step in front of him and pry it off with one hard pull.

His expression looks like he’s been run over a few times, and I figure I’ve made my point and can get started on replacing the siding in my section.

He may have had her for years, but I’ve got her now.

Or I’m going to. I’ll prove to her that I’m worth her time. If I don’t, I’m just as big a dumbass as he is.

Chapter 14

Dylan

I finish the first task I’m on, helping to repair the handrail on the stairs at the back of the house. Greg assigns me to start removing some kind of creeping vine that’s taken over one side of the house, and tells me to look around for a partner who’s not busy. I find Silas at the water cooler, in the middle of pulling up his shirt to wipe at the sweat on his forehead.

I forget how to walk at the sight of his stomach. I just stop halfway across the yard and stare. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before. Totally got up close and personal with it (with a lot of him) yesterday. But there’s something about seeing just a peek of it that unravels my brain. His jeans also hang perfectly on his hipbones, and I swear if I snapped a picture I could sell it to some magazine or clothing designer. He looks that good without even trying.

I watch him take a drink of water and I think for the hundredth time that I’m a jerk. I feel awful for what I said to him earlier. It’s all I thought about while I worked. The way his expression locked up and he wouldn’t look at me—I’m drowning in guilt. Here I am wanting to help this guy because I see something in him, something worth protecting and cultivating, and instead I stomp all over it.

And why? For Henry? To keep the walls up between my two worlds? Or maybe it’s because where my jail buddy is concerned, my control is a frayed thread that could snap at the slightest provocation.

Maybe I want it to snap, and that terrifies me.

I take a deep breath and with my head down, march over to the water cooler. I spend a few moments filling up a cup to let myself adjust to his nearness, to the fact that he didn’t move back even an inch when I stepped up beside him.

“How’s it going?” I ask, my head still down.