Page 16 of You Say It First

Anger crested inside Colby like a flash flood, sudden and dangerous. “Did my brother ask you to talk to me?” he demanded. “Because I don’t actually see how it’s any of your business who I work for.”

“Dude, easy.” Keith held up the hand that wasn’t gripping his grocery basket, his jamboree-leader smile falling a little bit. “I haven’t seen your brother in months. I’m just asking, that’s all.” He shook his head. “You know Doug Robard?” he asked.

Colby frowned. He did know Doug Robard, actually; he’d worked as a lead carpenter for his dad and Uncle Rick when Colby was a kid, though he’d gone out on his own and did super complicated, finicky residential shit now. How he made money like that in a place like Alma was beyond Colby, but judging by how many trucks the guy had now, he certainly seemed to. “What about him?”

“He’s a friend of mine—”

“Oh yeah?” Colby asked, wiggling his eyebrows pointedly.

“Fuck you, Colby.” Keith scowled. “It’s not like that. He’s got more work than he can handle, and he mentioned he was looking for help. Seems like the kind of thing you’d be good at.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dude,” Keith said, “I remember how you used to help your dad out on jobs all the time when you were younger. And I know how your brother can be, and I get if you don’t want to work with him, but something tells me that hauling two-by-fours around at a big-box store isn’t exactly the kind of gig that’s gonna light your fire forever.”

“Oh no?” Colby smirked, even as some small, traitorous voice at the back of his head wondered if Keith might have a point. He wasn’t embarrassed about what he did—he’d announced it to Meg from WeCount, hadn’t he, basically daring her to say something snotty and prove his point—but the truth was he hadn’t wanted to tell her, exactly, and eighteen hours later he still wasn’t sure what that had been about. “What do you think would light my fire, exactly?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Just check the guy out on Instagram, okay? If you think what he’s doing is cool, shoot me a text and I’ll put you in touch.”

Colby hesitated. On one hand, he didn’t know what Keith’s game was here, butting into his business and blowing smoke up his ass. On the other, he couldn’t act like some dumb, gullible part of him wasn’t the tiniest bit intrigued. “Sure,” he said finally, more to get out of here than because he had any intention of actually doing it. He had a job, even if it wasn’t a super exciting one. There was no point in tying himself in knots trying to get something better that probably wouldn’t even work out. “I’ll take a look.”

Still, once he’d loaded the groceries into the car and gotten into the driver’s seat he found himself pulling his phone out of his pocket, curious in spite of himself. He didn’t have Instagram, but Doug’s account came up with a minimum of Googling. He did do nice work, Colby had to admit that, restoring historic houses all over the county—so that yuppies could buy them, Colby guessed, though he didn’t know how many yuppies there were in Ross County. It was super advanced carpentry, huge built-in bookcases with dovetailed corners and antique staircases with complicated trim, the kind of stuff his dad would have totally loved.

He had scrolled almost six months back without entirely meaning to when his phone buzzed in his hand with a text from a number that wasn’t in his contacts list—Meg, he realized with a jolt.

Are you also falling asleep standing up? she wanted to know.

Colby smiled; he couldn’t help it. Sitting down. But pretty much.

What are you up to?

Just headed home from work. Then, before he hit send, he added: Got accosted in the grocery store though.

Accosted! The grimace emoji here, its tiny teeth bared. By who?

Friend of my brother’s, he said, leaving out the part about the water tower. He wants me to apply for some job. At the very last minute, he pasted in the link to Doug’s Instagram page.

He meant to put the car in drive and head out, but instead he sat where he was with his phone in his hand like a moron, waiting for her to text back. And she did, the phone vibrating in his hand a couple of minutes later: This is so cool! You know how to do stuff like this?

A little, Colby typed, hesitating for a moment. The truth was he hadn’t done any kind of fancy work like that since his dad had died—or before that, he guessed, since at the end there his dad hadn’t been doing much of it, either. Been a while.

Are you going to apply?

Colby chewed the inside of his cheek. Probably not, he admitted.

Why not?

Well. Colby stared at the screen, debating. He was still trying to figure out how to answer when the phone buzzed again, more insistently this time: holy shit, she was calling.

“Um,” he said, tapping the button to answer and clearing his throat a little, trying to sound like a person whose heart wasn’t doing a tricky acrobatic thing inside his chest. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she said, casual as anything. “I figured this was easier than texting.”

Colby laughed a little. “Makes sense,” he said, though it didn’t really. Already this was the most he’d ever talked on the phone with someone in his entire life.

Meg seemed unbothered. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m very sensible. So who’s this guy?”

Colby tilted his head back as he told her, the setting sun making patterns on the insides of his eyelids. He wondered again what she looked like, but as soon as he had that thought, he opened his eyes and reminded himself to stop being such a loser.

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