I swear, I see a hint of something in his eyes that’s not all bad. He might even be teachable under all his bluster. Time will tell. With a grumble, he drops his gaze and begins collecting cones.
When he’s out of earshot, Chevy ambles over. “You know that’s Billy and Wolf Waters’s nephew?”
I groan. Can’t I escape that family?
“I did not. But now the attitude makes sense. Hasn’t anyone ever put him in his place?”
“People tend to let the Waters do what they want around here. I’m glad you said something. And I’m not the only one.”
Chevy lifts his chin toward the bleachers where the Bobs are grinning and clapping.
“That’s all it took? I would have skipped the donuts if I’d known. Now, what are you doing the rest of the day?”
I’m planning to pick up some supplies so I can fix Lindy’s upstairs toilet. I have a long list of home improvements, but this one seems like a good place to start. I’m not keen on the three people to one toilet ratio and going downstairs to use the bathroom is pretty annoying. With Lindy and especially Jo in the house, urinating out the window feels more than a little inappropriate.
“Not much,” Chevy says. “I’m not on duty until tomorrow.”
“Good.” I clap a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve just been promoted to plumber’s assistant. I’ve got a broken toilet with both our names on it.”
A few hours later, I’m bent over the back of a toilet, sweaty and shirtless, a wrench in my hand. Chevy is a terrible assistant, especially for a man who renovated his own home. Instead of lifting a finger, he just watches me work, occasionally chuckling at my unsuccessful attempts to make any headway with the toilet.
I hope it’s not a sign of things to come because there are a lot of things on Lindy’s list. In addition to the toilet, there is no A/C, no dryer, and no television. Add in the temptation of sleeping across the hall from Lindy, and I’m living in a specially designed hell.
“How do you dry your clothes?” I’d asked, when Lindy gave me the grand tour yesterday. Not like I needed it. The house is more of a bungalow. The laundry room is a closet with bi-folding doors in the kitchen. The woman doesn’t even own an iron.
Lindy had tapped the top of the washing machine, smiling in amusement. “I wash my clothes right here. And then I dry them on the line out back.”
She’d pointed to a clothesline strung between two posts, where some shirts flapped in the breeze outside the kitchen door. I didn’t even bother asking about the television in case Lindy has some kind of moral objection rather than a financial one. I’ve already ordered one to be delivered next week. I tried for two-day, expedited shipping, but Sheet Cake is too far from, well, everything.
“You’re no help.” I glower at Chevy. “I thought you renovated your whole house.”
He takes a sip of his beer. “I did most of the work on my house, but I knew what was beyond my pay grade and hired it out. We should call a plumber.”
We should. And I can’t explain the stubbornness in me that won’t allow me to do so. Am I trying to impress Lindy with my handyman prowess—which doesn’t exist, by the way—or is it Tank’s penny-pinching influence?
Tank was the kind of dad who made us all pitch in for yard work. “Just because we can afford to pay for something,” I remember him saying more than once, “doesn’t mean we should.” We were quite literally the only family in our neighborhood who didn’t hire a lawn service. Same with the pool, which we cleaned and maintained. He also taught us to cook and clean.
Unfortunately, his training did not extend to plumbing.
“There are easier ways to impress a woman,” Chevy says.
I point the wrench at him. “Shut up.”
“Did you, like, watch a YouTube video on fixing toilets or something?”
“TikTok,” I mutter, removing the lid from the back of the toilet and staring down into it, as though it will answer my questions.
“TikTok? Aren’t those videos, like, thirty seconds long?”
“I got the gist of it.”
“Did you, now?” Chevy asks, laughing. “Because I’m not seeing a lot of results here.”
I’m about to tell him to shut up again when I hear familiar footsteps padding up the stairs. Chevy straightens as Lindy appears in the doorway. She was gone when I got back from football practice and the store—probably working. She told me yesterday she often writes in a coffee shop, which I think is actually her way of avoiding me. She has an office upstairs. Small, but tidy and perfectly usable. Not that I’ve peeked. In any case, I was hoping to get this done by the time she came home.
Leaning on the door jamb, Lindy crosses her arms. “And what, pray tell, is happening to my toilet?”
I twist something inside the toilet with a wrench, unable to resist the urge to look like I’m doing SOMETHING important. Replacing the lid, I casually lean back against the wall. Perhaps I choose a pose I used in a sports drink endorsement. Maybe I flex my pecs unnecessarily. Lindy definitely notices. Faking a yawn, I stretch my arms above my head, which makes my jeans slip down my hips a half-inch. She notices that too.
Lindy rolls her eyes. Not the reaction I was hoping for, but it’s a reaction.
Shaking his head, Chevy says, “Nothing is happening to your toilet, because Mario here doesn’t know how to fix it.”
“Mario?” Lindy and I ask at the same time.
Chevy grins. “Of Mario and Luigi fame. They were plumbers.”
“You’re such a dork,” Lindy says.
“Never pretended otherwise,” Chevy says. “Imma grab another beer while Mario here flexes a few more times for you.”
I look for something to throw at him and settle on an empty water bottle, which bounces off his back and falls to the tile floor. Lindy grins and steps inside the small bathroom to let Chevy pass. I shuffle through the tools on the counter like I have a plan for the next step, when the next step is definitely to call the plumber.
Lindy picks up the hammer. “What are you going to do with this—hit the toilet if it’s bad?”