“That wasn’t-You didn’t.” I dragged my damp hands through my hair. “I’m really beat, August.” I tried to pass by him, but he held out his arm to bar my path.
“Who made you feel expendable?”
“No one. I don’t know even know why I said that.”
“Ness-“”It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
“If it didn’t matter anymore, then you wouldn’t look like you were about to have a meltdown.” He didn’t lower his arm. “You might’ve changed, but I haven’t. I’m still a great listener.”
My lips quirked into the smallest of smiles. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather gnaw off my arm then have a heart-to-heart with you about boys. No offense, but it would just be weird. And not because of the link, but because you’re a guy.”
He still didn’t lower his arm.
“Fine. Want to tell me why you broke up with Sienna?” I asked, trying to prove a point, not because I wanted to discuss his ex.
The memory of the other night twisted in my gut like a dagger. Once the initial shock of finding Liam with another woman had worn off, I’d realized that something else had hurt even more: the fact that he’d done this with so many people present. It was tacky. Again, though, he hadn’t cheated on me. I had to stop seeing this as a betrayal. He’d betrayed no one.
“No,” August said.
It took me a second to remember what question he was answering. “See?”
He finally lowered his arm to let me through. I walked over to Evelyn and Isobel and talked exclusively with them for the next two hours. The skin on the back of my neck prickled more than once. At some point, I turned around to see if I was going crazy or if someone was watching me. I caught August staring.
At least I wasn’t going crazy.
I squeezed a smile onto my lips, feeling as though our talk had somehow dismantled some of the tension between us. If only a talk could also dismantle our link.
Five more months.
What was five more months?
There was a knock on the office’s glass door. I looked away from the three tabs I’d opened on the desktop to check who’d arrived.
“Hey, August.”
He walked toward me, hands in the pockets of a pair of olive-green cargo pants that had a couple small tears in them, as though they’d gotten snagged on the construction site.
“I bought cake for one of the guys. It’s his birthday. Want some?”
“Um. Sure.” I started to wheel myself away from the desk when I caught the time on the upper right hand corner of the screen. “Actually, I’m going to have to take a raincheck on that cake.” I gathered up my stuff and wedged it inside my bag.
“Going somewhere?”
“Driving test. I sent your dad an email that I’d be taking off for an hour.”
“Oh.” He thumbed the seam of his lips.
“Was I supposed to inform you, too?”
He dropped his hand from his face and shook his head. “Break a leg, or should I say a side mirror?”
I smiled. “I think that if I break a side mirror, I won’t get my license.”
His thick lips crooked into a smile. “Yeah. Try to avoid that.”
“Will you be here when I come back?”
He nodded. “I’m working from the warehouse today.”
“Good. Because I found some discrepancies on invoices from this one lumber company. Anyway I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I come back.” I dashed through the warehouse just as my phone started ringing.
“I’m outside,” Jeb said.
I stepped through the wide-open loading dock entrance. “Me too.”
I returned to the Watts’ warehouse an hour and a half later, clutching a piece of paper so hard I’d wrinkled the crap out of it.
August and Uncle Tom were bent over a thick plank coated in a palette of stains. August must’ve sensed me approach through our little tether, because he looked up.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
I thought it would be obvious by my shit-eating grin, but apparently it was too subtle for August.
“Did you have any doubts I would?”
He smiled. “Well done, Dim-Ness.”
“Dimness? That’s a new one.”
“I meant, Ness. Just Ness.”
“I know. I was just teasing.”
August scratched the base of his neck. “Hey, Tom, does your nephew still work at KPR?”
Uncle Tom tweaked the button of his overalls and gave a quick nod.
“Can you tell him to warn drivers about a blonde at the wheel of a big black van?”
I stuck my tongue out at August. “That’s very mature.”
Uncle Tom grinned, which made his candied-apple cheeks puff out.
I raised my chin in the air. “I’ll have you know I’m an excellent driver.”
August chuckled.
“The guy who gave me the exam said I was a natural.” He’d then asked if I wanted to have dinner with him sometime, but I left that part out. I’d just smiled pleasantly even though I’d found it a little icky. He was a good two decades older than I was and missing a tooth, and not a molar. I wouldn’t have noticed a missing molar.