Page 66 of Fall for Me

Seamus

When the doorbell rang on Saturday night, I knew it wasn’t her.

Though I’d completely forgotten until only a couple of hours ago, tonight was poker night, and this month, it was my turn to host.

Still, I held my breath when I opened the door.

“Shay-shay!” Winona said, raising up her fist.

My stomach sank. There was a woman there, but it wasn’t Chelsea.

If I was a different man, on a different night, in a different world, I’d be thrilled to see a woman who looked like Winona Chambers standing at my door.

Winona was the owner of Heartbreaker Plumbing, an all-woman plumbing outfit; and, incidentally, the best plumbing outfit in Quince Valley. We subcontracted or recommended Heartbreaker to all our clients. Winona herself was a little spitfire: barely 5’3” with blonde hair and knuckles lined with grease. She fixed her own car, could ID a plumbing issue just by listening to the way the water drained, and had been known to drink men twice her size under the table. I’d known Winona for years, since she first moved here as caretaker to her younger brothers. She spent a good five years trying to set me up with various friends of hers—can’t let a good man go to such waste, she kept saying—until I told her point-blank I’d stop talking to her if she kept trying. She’d listened, but I still saw her sizing up every woman I crossed paths with, her hands folding under her chin if I looked like I might possibly want to say more than hi to them.

So, while it was nice to see Winona on my doorstep, she very much wasn’t Chelsea.

I’d sent that text to Chelsea close to twelve hours ago now, and had been kicking myself ever since. Me telling Chelsea I didn’t want to see her yesterday—that was my last-ditch attempt at salvaging this situation. But watching her go, and then hearing her voice outside as she talked to my dad, clearly trying to get away as fast as she could—it had been torture. Last night with almost no sleep had been torture. So I’d sent her that text.

And hadn’t heard a peep since.

It was a chickenshit thing to do, to put the ball in Chelsea’s court. But I knew it was the only thing stopping me from doing something much more foolish, like running straight over to her place and banging down her door, begging her to forgive me for what I’d done, and what I still wanted to do, more than anything.

But even though showing up unannounced seemed to be Chelsea’s M.O., I shouldn’t have been surprised she wasn’t there. And that made my already dark mood grow more sour.

What a fucking asshole.

“Hey Bets,” I said.

I gave Winona a half-hearted fist bump.

“Don’t look so fuckin’ happy to see me, b’y” she said, jamming a fist to her little hip.

Winona also swore like a sailor, and said words like ‘b’y’—pronounced bye, due to her family being from way up in Newfoundland, Canada.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Aw, now you’re soundin’ like a Canadian,” she quipped, giving me a punch on the shoulder to rival Eli’s right hook.

“Would you calm down?”

She grinned, peering around my shoulder. “I’m the first one here?”

“My dad can’t make it tonight,” I said, “and Eli’s going to be late. But Ulrich and Ben are on their way.”

As if on cue, the rumble of an engine sounded before I’d even closed the door, and a motorcycle and a black pickup rolled into my driveway, and the two aforementioned players were walking up my path a moment later.

Ulrich Benito owned the record shop down on Riverfront Way, and Ben was the head chef at the restaurant next door, Viande et Patates, a French ‘peasant-food’ restaurant popular with tourists.

“Seamus,” Ulrich said, giving me a fist bump of his own as he came in. Ulrich, or Ulli, as he preferred—pronounced Oo-lee—was almost as tall as me, with thick curly hair and olive-colored skin. Winona liked to say Ulli’s face looked like it belonged in a painting—she meant a renaissance kind of thing, I knew. Ulli was born to a German mother and Italian-American father, but grew up in New Jersey and dressed like a grunge artist from the 1990s—all plaid shirts and ripped jeans.

I met his fist with my own. “Ulli.”

Eli had met Ulli when he’d first opened his record store down on the riverfront.

I didn’t know him as well as Ben, who I’d gone to high school with. Ben frowned at my doorstep now, eyeing me suspiciously. He was thick across the shoulders, had a beard, and was covered in tattoos. He looked like part of a motorcycle gang, but Ulli drove the motorcycle, not him, and we all knew he was more of an artist than a gangster. Ben was my go-to for cooking tips, and once he’d run out of his restaurant to stop traffic in order to let a family of ducks cross the street.

“Seamus, the fuck’s wrong with you?” he said as he passed through the door, a broad box in his hand, stamped with his restaurant’s logo. Was I that obvious?

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