Page 24 of Fall for Me

Seamus

By half-past four, the numbers on the spreadsheet in front of me were going blurry. I leaned back in my desk chair, rubbing my eyes. While I didn’t normally sleep more than five hours a night, since the crash I still wasn’t clocking more than a couple hours, and I felt it.

Only this time, it wasn’t just the nightmares keeping me awake.

“I told you that you ought to stay home,” Dad had said when I’d turned up to the office this morning.

“We’re too busy,” I said.

He huffed, but he knew I wasn’t lying. Reilly and Sons was growing—we had more business than we knew what to do with these days, given the effort I’d put into taking those bigger-scale jobs. Dad and I had argued about it this morning—he reminded me he’d wanted to keep doing the smaller house renos, while I wanted to take on more commercial projects. But Dad and I argued about a lot of things. And he wanted me to take over the business, if he ever got around to retiring, so he usually put up a fight but let me win.

Still, now I wished I hadn’t bid on so many jobs this summer. We’d hired a good number of sub-contractors, but we needed permanent help in the office now, too.

It couldn’t have been a worse time to get into a goddamned accident.

It couldn’t have been a worse time for my head to be everywhere but here.

But there was something else. I pulled up the email I’d minimized a few minutes ago. It was from someone called Graydon Mitchell, CEO of Grayscale Contracting, over in New York State. I’d met him and his partner, Chris Slade, at a building conference last year in NYC. They were from the town Eli used to live in, and he’d given me Graydon’s info and told me to look out for them. Gray and I had bonded over a talk from this Japanese architect we were both really into. As it turned out, Grayscale and Reilly had similar business models, and we’d kept in touch to share trade news and updates on our various projects. We’d always joked about collaborating on a project one day, but it had always been just that—jokes. We worked in different states and were both booked years out on home jobs.

But now, Graydon had a real opportunity for me.

He wanted to bid on a massive hotel project in his county, Jewel Lakes. It was a luxury, near net-zero hotel property, 350 rooms plus a conference center, and way too big for them to handle on their own. The project, called Flux, would be featured in magazines and trade shows around the world, and would boost our portfolio into the stratosphere. But it would also take me away from our business here. And it would mean I’d have to pass on the Rolling Hills job, if Cass decided to offer it to me. The Rolling Hills job was big too, but not that big.

But it was local, which was a huge draw. Having our name on that project would cement us as the top builders in the region.

They were both incredible opportunities.

You’ve got about a month to decide, Graydon said in his response to me after I’d asked him to send me the info. He’d signed off with, Please think seriously about it. It would be a blast working with you, buddy.

I shut the email for the tenth time that afternoon and kneaded my neck.

Maybe leaving Vermont for a bit would be the best thing for me. It would force us to hire a third like we needed to anyway—Dad could get used to some new faces around here.

But it would mean leaving him. Leaving my place.

Leaving Quince Valley.

“You need anything before I go, honey?”

I looked up to see Joyce Cruz, our long-time receptionist, standing in the doorway of my office, her eyes slanted in motherly concern. She looked different, I noticed vaguely. Her silver hair was done in a stylish swoop, and I think she was wearing rouge on her round brown cheeks. Or was that blush?

She lowered her glasses, her smile-lined and conservatively made-up eyes inspecting the shadows under mine; her hands-on-matronly-hips stance, taking in the weariness considering my slumped shoulders.

I looked like shit, I knew. This morning when I’d passed the bathroom mirror on the way to the shower, I’d been shocked at my appearance. Not just the circles under my eyes and bruise on my lip, but what looked like new lines on my forehead. I didn’t have any gray hairs, somehow—my hair was as dark as ever, but it was only a matter of time, I knew. Especially at this rate. I was thirty-five, on my way to thirty-six in a few months.

I knew I looked as wrecked as I felt. Still, I put on a smile for Joyce. “I’m good, Joyce, thanks.”

I could tell she was itching to tell me to go home, but Dad must have had a talk with her because she pinched her lips shut and pressed her hand against her collar, looking like she was biting back words.

“Really.” I sat up to show her.

Joyce looked up and blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry. I made it through the whole day without crying.”

So much for my winning grin. “Shit, Joyce—”

She shook her head. “I’m just so glad you’re okay, sweetie.”

My chest tightened. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like being mothered by her. Other times—like when she tried setting me up with one of her multitude of grandnieces and second cousins twice removed—not so much. I didn’t love interference with my love life—in fact, I preferred not to have a love life at all, thanks. But she’d been with us since our very first day—through our darkest days. She’d been at Kevin’s funeral; later at Mom’s.

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