The Happy Ever After Playlist - Abby Jimenez Page 0,28
been sending me texts nonstop for the last half hour,” I said.
He nodded at my phone. “What do they say?”
I set my drink down and picked up my cell. “‘Ask him if you can touch his guitar.’”
He shook his head. “That’s not too bad.”
“‘Guitar’ is in quotes.”
His howl of laughter turned heads at the other tables.
“She wants to know if you smell like pine cones and flannel.” I tilted my head toward him. “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
He beamed. “When do I get to meet her?”
“Hopefully never. She’ll interrogate you the whole time. Then Josh will get you alone on the premise that he needs help grilling or something and he’ll make threats about what he’ll do to you if you hurt me. You’re better off never meeting either of them, trust me.”
He laughed. “I can’t wait. Just let me know when. But it can’t be this weekend, though, I’m going for a short visit to Minnesota on Friday.”
“Oh.” My face fell a little. “You just got here.”
“Are you gonna miss me?” His eyes sparkled.
I held in my smile. “Who’s watching Tucker while you’re gone?”
“I was going to take him with me—unless my dog-sitter’s available.” He grinned. “But he’s coming with me on tour, though.”
I scrunched my forehead. “You have a tour? When is that?”
“June first. Four months, fifty cities.”
He was leaving in three weeks? For four months? Well, that sucked.
“Will you come visit me when I’m on the road?” he asked.
“Right now, I’m just trying to make it through this meal without hyperventilating.”
* * *
“Now, on to our next adventure,” Jason said after dinner, starting the engine of his truck.
“Where’s that?” I asked, rolling down my window.
“Home Depot.”
“Home Depot? For what?”
“For parts to fix your sink,” he said, backing out of the parking space.
I shook my head. “No. Definitely no.”
“No?” He glanced at me.
“No. I can’t let you fix my sink. That’s…just no.”
He smiled over the steering wheel. “You’d rather let a stranger do it? You, who wouldn’t even tell me where you lived until your kitchen was an inch deep in water?” He gave me a comical wide-eyed look and then turned back to the road with a grin.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Also, bonus, if you let me do it, Tucker stays over longer.” He smirked, knowing he had me.
“Fine,” I said, putting my mouth into my palm, not wanting him to see my smile.
“Anything else that needs fixing?” he asked.
“The whole house,” I mumbled.
“It’s not in good shape?”
The house had begun to feel like a sandcastle at high tide. It was crumbling around me.
“No. When Brandon and I bought it, he was going to fix it up. He was good at that stuff…” I said, trailing off, not knowing if I should be talking about my dead fiancé on a date. But Jason’s expression stayed neutral.
“Give me a list. I’ll do it,” he said, turning onto Roscoe Boulevard.
I smiled. “You’re a handyman in addition to being Jaxon Waters?”
“We’re self-sufficient in Ely. I could build you a whole new house if you wanted. So what do you need done?”
“Jason…”
“What? I like fixing things. Besides, my dog likes you. I bet he’d like to come over. Come to think of it, I like you and I’d like to come over too.”
His unrelenting flirting was going to give me a heart attack. But I couldn’t really argue with his reasoning. The pipe did need fixing. Josh did two day shifts at the station, so if he had work tomorrow that would leave me without a kitchen sink until at least Wednesday—that was provided he dropped everything on his day off to come help me, which I hated. And frankly, I couldn’t afford to pay for a professional to do it. I already lived paycheck to paycheck.
Brandon’s fire station had set up a GoFundMe for me after Brandon died. That had helped bridge the gap until I was up to working again. I made okay money doing astronaut cats from the volume alone—I’d always been fast. But the ancient water heater just needed replacing and the month before that, the air-conditioning unit broke. Now my kitchen had flooded, and I wasn’t sure if the floors were going to survive the damage. If I had to pay for a new kitchen floor, I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage this month.
I should have sold the house after Brandon died. I couldn’t afford it on a single income. It was too big for me and too broken. But