Page 70 of Good Guy Gabe

We pull up to Joss’s place as I’m flipping the straw around to stick the spoon side in my mouth so I can make obnoxious slurping sounds in Jeff’s ear. He does contract stuff at the stadium, usually constructing platforms and sign posts, theextra stuff we need for special events and the VIP tailgate village. He gets passes to a lot of the events he crafts for, so I knew him well enough I was comfortable with him working around Joss’s place when I couldn’t be there.

But I prefer to be here, even if I am hungover.

His crew’s already arrived. Just two other guys, Sam and Dennis. Sam’s his dad, Dennis is his cousin. Wilmington’s like that. They’re sitting in a car, engine and heat on, holding their coffees close to their faces to warm up in the pre-dawn frost.

Nah, that’s not for me.

I haul myself out of the truck, toss my can in Joss’s recycle bin and straw in the trash, unsure of the type of plastic it is, and pull the flag off the pile of lumber at the back of the truck. It’s a massive stack of 2x8s and 6x6s, and I go straight for the thick ones, hauling two up onto my shoulder.

“Well now, don’t go hurting yourself,” Jeff warns, attempting to take one back.

“I’m good.” Technically, I feel like I’m going to barf, but I’m good with the weight. “Why don’t you get started on digging those post holes? That’s going to be a bitch.”

It takes me an hour to unload the truck. Or, it takes me fifteen minutes to unload the truck and forty-five minutes to shovel and salt the path after I nearly bust ass with 250 pounds of lumber on my shoulder. The guys use a propane torch to thaw the earth as they go, so we’re all working at about the same pace. By the time I’ve got all the lumber sandwiched between tarps and join them, I’m winded and working up a sweat, but I want more. Dennis swings a pickaxe to break through the spot he’s working on. It’s loud as fuck, giving me a damn headache, but I wanna do that.

I strip off my winter coat and shirt, sopping sweat off with it and tossing it onto the tarps. Jeff gives me a look like I’ve lost my mind, and sure, it’s below freezing, but I’m Minnesotan, born and raised. My skin may have thinned out some in the more moderate climate of Wilmington, but I’m basically a polar bear.

Dennis hands me the axe, and the rest of the crew steps back as I take a swing. And another. And another.

And another.

It feels good. Just beating the shit out of the earth for a minute while drifting snow steams off my skin feels good. When I start hitting frozen earth again, Sam brings the torch over, but he’s been torching another spot. I don’t need to stop swinging. So I don’t.

I hit a rock on the next swing, one too large for the pickaxe to break through. It bounces off the impenetrable wall, reverberating through my arms and into my body. Usually, I would hate this sensation. I’ve done this sort of work for my dad enough times, and it always sets my teeth on edge. It does now, but it’s also one of those sensations that at the right time can scratch an itch. A deep, metaphysical, cosmic itch.

My arms go limp at my sides, the pickaxe landing with a thud against my calf as my shoulders roll back and my head tips up. I groan at the sky, loving this second where every kink in my body, not just from last night’s bender or my recent stress but the whole season I’m meant to be recovering from, melts away.

The sun feels good on my face.

And there on the second floor, her coffee in her hand and her forehead pressed against the window, her jaw lax and her eyelids heavy, Joss is watching me.

Chapter 30

Joss

HE SAW ME.

Oh no.

I didn’t mean to linger at the window when I heard the crew. My plan had been to glare at them for starting so early and then either go back to bed or start my coffee once I decided if I was actually getting up or not. I wasn’t going to say anything, and I wasn’t even that mad. This is a smart renovation, and I’d rather it be done now when I haven’t started work on the inside. Once they get it set up and put the new entrance in, it’s going to change the whole flow of the apartment.

There’s a box in the attic Gabe will need to get down for me. It’s got outlet covers, furniture bumpers, cabinet locks. No point buying fresh when I’ve been saving them all these years for this moment.

That’s what I’m thinking about when I get to the window and look down. I see Jeff and his crew down below, attempting to dig holes in the ground, and I do feel bad for them having to do this in January, but that’s on Gabe.

Gabe appears while I’m still at the mercy of the coffee maker. I want to be pissed and go down there and yell at him for hauling lumber around when he’s a goddamn football player and taunt him for the loss for good measure, but I can’t. When I look at him, I tell myself to feel anger, but it’s only ever grief. Longing. Heartache. This desperate, self-defeating need to yell at him butonly so he can hold me because the freer the people in my life have gotten with hugs, the more it’s sunk in that none of them feel as good as him.

And I hate him for that, but that’s not what I feel when I look at him.

That’s definitely not what I feel when he throws that pile of lumber down, chugs an entire bottle of water, and tugs his shirt off.

Dammit. God freaking dammit.

He’s a floor below me, but he’s larger than life. In the dead of winter, his skin holds enough of a tan still to be freckled, those little flecks sprinkled across his shoulder and chest, those biceps too big for me to get my hands around and that giant torso that looks like it would be soft until the light hits just right, revealing the grooves of dense muscle.

His hair is overgrown, his beard in need of tidying, but it makes him look like a feral mountain man standing in the snow naked from the waist up. And from the waist down, he’s wearing the jeans that I secretly obsessed over even when we were together because his ass is so perfectly formed in them. Yeah, his workout stuff is hot. The sweatpants are hot, that stupid pink hoodie is hot for being an inch too short on him, but these jeans?

This has to be a pregnancy hot flash I’m feeling.

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