Page 14 of Barbed Wire Fences
I cock my head to the side, folding my arms across my chest like it can shield me from this conversation. “And how did you hearthat? I know this town is small, but there’s no way word got to you that quickly.”
He smiles wider, reminding me of the dimples he has in his cheeks. They might be covered by a shortly trimmed beard now, but they’re so deep it’s undeniable.
“You called my business for help.” He points to the logo of a toilet and sink mashed together that’s clearly printed on his work shirt, which now finally registers as reading ‘Whitewood Creek Plumbing.’
I guess I’d been too busy checking him out to realize the work boots, shirt, and tool belt aren’t because he works in construction, but because he’s the plumber that I hired to retrieve Bentley’s bone.
“Since when did you become a plumber?”
“Ten years ago. When we graduated and you disappeared.”
I wince at the subtle jab and reminder of how I left town and everyone behind without a word, but Rhett just continues on like it’s nothing.
“I went to trade school after we graduated and then worked for old Larry and his business for two years after that. When he decided to retire, I took over the business that he’d been managing for the city. Bought him out and rebranded the company toWhitewood Creek Plumbing,” he says, shrugging as he turns out of my bedroom, tapping on the frame. “Come show me what happened in the bathroom.”
But I’m still stuck on the fact that Rhett owns his own business.
Larry Silverston owned Silverston Plumbing which had managed the plumbing for the entire city of Whitewood Creek for decades including all government buildings, our towns public schools, and the local, community hospital. So, to takeover responsibility for all that is a big deal, and one that I can’t believe Rhett is glossing over like it’s no big deal.
Rhett had always been great with his hands, spending our summers together working on an old truck his mom bought him with what little she could afford and doing other handy work and odd jobs for the families in the trailer park who could rarely pay him, but I’d never thought he’d spin those skills into a lucrative trade career. And it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in him, I probably did more than most of the people in our town, it’s that Rhett was always a bit of a goof, never that serious about his future.
But clearly, this grown-up version of him is something entirely different. I suppose in someways, everyone and everything here is stuck in my mind the way that I left it. But the reality is that eighteen years old Rhett is nothing like twenty-eight years old Rhett and that’s a strange thing to realize.
I guess that’s the thing about people and places. They change. It’s not like I’m the same person who I was when I lived here either.
“So, you handle all the city’s buildings now?” I ask, growing interested in how things have changed since I left as I follow him into the cramped hallway.
He grins at me as his hand rests on the worn silver doorknob to the bathroom. “I sure do. But don’t get any ideas, I’m not looking for a gold digger,” he says, shooting me a wink.
I playfully punch his arm as he opens the door to my mother’s bathroom and steps inside.
“So, what happened to the toilet? You flush tampons down here again or some something?”
The memories flood back – becauseof courseRhett would remember that and bring up the time I got my first period thesummer I moved to Whitewood Creek and was too scared to tell my mom.
I flushed tampons down the toilet for two weeks straight until they caused a major blockage for all the other trailer parks in the court and Larry had to come out and dig wads of expanded, white cotton out of the drainage system so that everyone could go back to using their toilets again. I remember Rhett standing on the curb watching, howling like an idiot and teasing me mercilessly.
Who knew how much moisture those little tampons could hold.
I roll my eyes. “No, know-it-all. But maybe you should thank me for your first plumbing lesson. Did that spark something inside you to become a plumber?”
He throws his head back and barks out a laugh before scratching at the back of his neck. His eyes twinkle as they look at me with nothing about affection and I wonder if the way we left things might not get brought up. “Nah, looking at your tampons strewn out across the lawn wasn’t what did it for me.”
My lips tip up at the corner as I fight back a smile. “Bentley tossed a bone down there while I was flushing.”
“Ew, is it going to have shit on it when I yank it out?” he asks teasingly, his eyes sparkling with that same playful humor he’s had since he found me in my room.
“It was a pee. And you’re a real asshole for bringing up that tampon incident, you know that, right? I wasmortified.”
He laughs. “I think you’ve told me that a few times before. I’m just glad you didn’t ask me how to put a tampon in and went to Molly for that lesson instead.”
Heat crawls up my neck at the reminder of the things I used to go to Rhett for back then. Sure, I’d told him Molly was the onewho taught me how to use a tampon—she was a year older, more experienced, the closest thing I had to a big sister, even if she was usually off with her own friends. But Rhett had given me lessons of his own, ones Molly never could’ve given I wanted a males’ perspective on things like sex. And if he’s thinking about those right now, he doesn’t let it show.
Rhett crouches over the back of the toilet, twisting knobs to shut off the water before pulling a longer pipe snake from his tool bag, this one tipped with a retrieval claw sharp enough to do some damage.
“You scratched this bowl up pretty good,” he says as he carefully and slowly winds the snake into the hole.
“How do you know I did that and not my mom?”
