Page 21 of Done

“No kidding! Oh my God,” Francesca both gasped and laughed. “What are the chances of your ex popping in on you, scaring the shit out of you, and then you move to a new town and someone else shows up unexpectedly? You have to be kidding me.”

“I wish I were. I had been so scared he had broken into the house, that I didn’t bother covering myself. I think the towel stayed up, but it was all I could do to lunge for Max and hold him against me. Luckily, I realized quickly that he wasn’t Clay, he was a firefighter, and I figured out why he was there. Poor guy had no idea I was in the shower any more than I knew he was standing in my bedroom.”

“Max must have been thrilled,” she continued to laugh. “He loves his fire trucks.”

“You know he was,” I rolled my eyes, thinking of how proud of himself he’d be if he realized what he had actually done.

“So was the firefighter hot and single?”

My laughing immediately stopped with reminders of Easton’s wide eyes, and the way his chest heaved as he caught his breath that night. Then I pictured his messy hair, the way he looked hammering on that fence, and the way his biceps flexed under the shirt he wore at the station. Was he hot? Absolutely. Was he single? Apparently, yes.

Was I going to tell Francesca any of that?

No way.

“I have no idea,” I fibbed. “He was gone in a flash.”

Francesca hummed as if she didn’t believe me. My extended pause while I thought about Easton was a dead giveaway that there was more than I was telling her, but she took mercy on me and didn’t push.

“It's not far, right? Maybe an hour?”

“Not far at all. In fact, I’m probably gonna drive in for a meeting in a few weeks if all goes well with this deal for the Kings’ pro shop. Maybe we can have lunch.”

“That’s a plan,” she agreed. “Oh hey, someone just walked into theshop, gotta go.”

After a quick goodbye, I hung up, feeling better than I had before the call. It was just enough to help me get a little more work done before I started missing Max again.

“Knock! Knock!”

My head lifted from my computer and toward the front door. I had left the main door open, leaving just the screen door locked, and Ms. Ellison waved happily through the thin veil between us.

“Hi,” I jumped up, unlocking the latch and letting her in. “Good morning!”

“It's almost lunch time,” she laughed, making me double-check my clock.

“Whoa.” I must have been working longer than I thought.

Ms. Ellison didn’t sit, or even come very far into the room, like she usually did. Instead, she lifted a box out of a reusable grocery bag and handed it to me. “I just came to deliver this.”

“What is it?”

“No idea,” she shrugged, then began backing out of the house. “But I was told to let you open it alone. Oh, and you have to read the note first.”

“Who—?”

“Just someone that now owes me a favor,” she winked. “I’ll stop by for coffee tomorrow, but I need to get going and run a few more errands today.”

“But—”

“Bye!” She laughed as she made her way down my sidewalk and to the gate.

After latching the lock on the screen again, I turned to the box and flipped it around a few times. It was a white gift box, similar to something you would get during the holidays, with a robe inside. Or, based on the size of the box, a T-shirt. There was a pink ribbon wrapped around it and a small note taped to the front.

Pulling it off, I opened it swiftly, suddenly anxious to know who sent it, and why. There wasn’t a name, but the short sentence was all I needed to realize who had sent it.

You answered the wrong questions.

Pulling the ribbon off, I lifted the top of the box and saw, laying gently in tissue paper, was a thin, three-ring binder. It was white with black marker, handwritten across the front.

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