“Charlie?”
I tugged out an earbud, pretending that was the reason I couldn’t hear and not the fact that I’d been thinking about how critically embarrassed I was that Garret had told me to go when I’d shown the slightest interest.
I’d thought—
Well, I hadn’t exactly been thinking with my brain.
“Sorry, what?”
“I’m picking up lunch. Burrito bowls. Want one?”
I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.”
Tig’s brows drew down. “You good?”
Ugh. This is why I hated having friends sometimes. Tig and I had met almost four years before, coincidentally over burrito bowls, mine getting spilled because the oaf had knocked it off the table I was eating at.
Tig had insisted on buying me a new one, even though I’d been almost done and the line had been out the door.
I’d refused.
He’d given me his bowl.
I’d given it back.
Then he’d sicced Delia on me—
And somehow, I’d found myself sharing my table and Tig’s bowl and then having dinner with them the next night. A few years later, we still grabbed a bite or chatted on the phone a couple of times a month.
Which meant he knew enough about me to be able to tell when I wasn’t feeling myself.
Or embarrassed because I’d been lusting after a man who I’d thought was giving me signs he was attracted to me, too. Sigh. So, I was lonely, a work-a-holic, and delusional.
A trifecta for the win!
“I’m good,” I said before I went back down the Garret line of thought.
Beautiful men weren’t interested in frumpy, slightly pudgy female plumbers. That was that.
At least he’d been gentle in his rejection.
But fuck, the way his face had gone carefully blank, the softness in his tone telling me I should go get some rest.
Ugh.
“Charlie?”
I picked up a pipe cutter. “Yeah?”
“You sure this job isn’t too much for you?”
My gut twisted, and I set the cutter on the ground. “What?”
Did he not want me to do it? Was he regretting asking? That would be just like the Tig I’d come to know, bending over backward to protect and help a friend. Even if it came at his own expense. Literally, his own expense in this case.
Maybe Garret had been right the previous week. I was taking advantage.
Fuck.
Tig crouched in front of me. “Hey.”
I blinked. “It’s fine,” I said. “You didn’t have to give me a pity hire.” I reached for my tools, started dumping them in my box. “No charge for the parts or labor. I’ll patch up and you can find someone—”
His hands covered mine. “What’s this now?”
I slipped free. “No worries. I get it.”
“Get what?” He slammed his hand down on the toolbox’s open lid, preventing me from shutting it. “Charlie, what the fuck is this? You’re not a pity hire. You’re my friend, and I wanted you to do the job because I trust you.”
Fuck.
Now my eyes stung.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” he asked, voice soft. “The Charlie I know is more than confident when it comes to her work.”
Garret happened.
Because I thought I’d read him right and . . .
No. That was a convenient excuse.
Maybe Garret was a blow to my ego, maybe it was embarrassment on top of a long, tiring weekend, but it wasn’t the reason I was feeling out of sorts that morning.
“I’m—” I fumbled to grab on to another excuse. This wasn’t Tig’s problem to deal with. This was mine. But then his hands covered mine again, and his eyes stayed glued to mine, and . . .
I’d never been able to lie for shit.
Sighing, I tried to keep my tone light, “My grandmother sent me a letter.”
I hadn’t seen it in my mail until this morning, having just grabbed the stack on Saturday evening from my box and chucked it on my kitchen counter without bothering to look through it.
“Oh shit,” he muttered.
“Yeah.”
“What does she want?”
I let my gaze drift to the pipes. “She’s dying.” A beat. “Or so I’m guessing.” Mainly, because I couldn’t think of another reason she would want to contact me after all this time.
He made a disgusted noise. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”
My head whipped back toward him, and he lifted his hands in surrender.
“I’m sorry, I know that makes me an asshole, but she let you go into foster care after your parents died. She’s one of the richest women in the state, and she let you go into the system just because she didn’t want your mom to marry your dad.”
So, yeah. I’d told Tig and Delia a few too many personal details after a few too many margaritas.
But he wasn’t lying.
It was fact, a painful one but . . . still the truth.
My mom had shrugged off the socialite life, had gotten a real job, had met my dad and fallen in love . . . then they’d had me.
And I’d had them for eleven awesome years.
Until they’d been killed by a drunk driver and I’d been left alone, unbroken except for my right leg and my heart. Sometimes, even all these years later, I still had nightmares about the accident, being startled from sleep by metal shrieking as it compressed around me, glass shattering and cutting my skin, the seat belt tightening painfully against my abdomen and chest . . . and then quiet.
Nothing but quiet.
Three had become one that night in the hospital.
I still remembered the nurses checking on me until the social worker had shown up.
That had also been the first time I’d met my grandmother. She’d shown up in a navy suit—the kind with the structured jacket and below-the-knee skirt. I remember her wearing a strand of white pearls and high heels that matched her suit.
My mother never wore heels.
She was an artist, and I’d never seen her in anything but paint-splattered sandals.
It didn’t matter that the streets of New York weren’t known for being clean or that in the wintertime, there might be snow on the ground. Her feet had needed to breathe. And I’d loved seeing what color she’d painted her toenails, loved being old enough so that she’d paint mine to match hers—sometimes we’d have a rainbow of purples and blues, oranges and reds, other times black or pink or mint green. God, we’d both hated that mint green color. We’d quickly covered it with rainbow sparkles the next day.
Which had made it even more hideous.
She’d been wearing the combination during the accident.
I’d kept mine on, my heart slowly crumbling to pieces as the paint had flecked away.
My grandmother’s toes had been covered in those navy pumps, though her fingernails had been polished. A pale, unassuming pink.
But there had been nothing unassuming about her demeanor.
She’d known what she wanted . . . and it hadn’t been me.
“You’re Charlie?” she’d asked, tone cold, lip raised in a sneer.
Maybe she’d been expecting a boy, or maybe she’d never expected I would be the spitting image of her daughter.
Maybe it was all too painful, and she’d reacted badly.