Page 39 of After the Rain

WADE

Istood in front of the Victorian house on Old Johnson Street, keys heavy in my hand, still amazed at how much had changed in the three years since I'd bought this place.

But it was still a work in progress. My work in progress. My sanctuary.

Three years of weekends had taught me that restoration was as much about patience as it was about skill. You couldn't rush the process of bringing something back to life. You had to strip away the damage layer by layer, assess what could be saved and what needed to be rebuilt from scratch, trust that the foundation was strong enough to support the weight of transformation.

Some days the metaphors were so obvious they made my chest ache.

I unlocked the front door and stepped into the main hallway, breathing in the scent of fresh wood stain. The original hardwood floors gleamed under the morning light streaming through the restored stained glass windows I'd salvaged from an architectural firm in Portland. The cramped galley kitchen had been opened up into a spacious room with custom cabinetsI'd built myself, and the tiny, dark bedrooms upstairs had been reconfigured into fewer but larger spaces that actually felt livable.

But as I walked through the rooms, I realized my mental plans kept including details that didn't make sense for a divorced man living alone. A kitchen island designed for multiple cooks. A reading nook with two chairs by the bay window. Storage solutions for more belongings than I currently owned.

My phone buzzed with texts from Kane and Jazz, my Saturday renovation crew for the past two years.

Kane

Coffee's getting cold. Where are you?

Jazz

If you're not here in ten minutes, I'm starting without you. And I'm using your good beer as payment.

I grinned and headed back outside. My truck was loaded with supplies for today's project—installing the custom built-ins for the master bedroom and finally tackling the bathroom renovation we'd been planning for months.

Kane and Jazz were waiting on the front porch, coffee cups in hand and a cooler full of beer at their feet. The sight of them together still made me smile—Kane in his perfectly pressed weekend clothes looking like he'd stepped out of a magazine catalog, and Jazz in paint-splattered work clothes with her hair pulled back in a bandana, looking ready to demolish something.

"About time," Jazz said, raising her coffee cup in greeting. "I was about to start without you, and you know how that ends."

"With perfectly executed work done twice as fast as planned," Kane said dryly. "The horror."

Jazz Thompson had been helping with my renovation projects for the past couple of years. She ran her own contracting business and could outwork most men half her age, but she also had a gift for seeing the emotional blueprint of a space. She understood that houses held memory and intention in their bones, that every renovation choice was really a choice about how you wanted to live.

We'd met when Kane recommended her for electrical work on a commercial project, but she'd stuck around because she said watching me renovate this place was like watching someone learn a foreign language—slow at first, then suddenly fluent in ways that surprised everyone, including myself.

Kane Woodward and I went further back—best friends since college, though on paper we didn’t make sense. He was sharp suits and spreadsheets, a luxury real estate guy with a taste for single malt scotch and brutal honesty. He’s also openly bisexual, autistic, and unapologetically himself in every room he walks into. That combination made some clients nervous and a few contractors dismissive. I hired him anyway. Not in spite of who he was—but because I knew the kind of mind he had. Focused. Meticulous. Loyal to the bone.

He didn’t do small talk unless it mattered. But when it did—when itmeantsomething—he listened in a way that made people feel seen. I trusted him with every major decision on this house, and most of the ones in my life. Still do.

"She speaks renovation," Jazz had told Kane after our first weekend working together. "But she's still learning to speak herself."

"Where are we starting today?" Kane asked, surveying the front of the house with the critical eye of someone who'd helped plan every detail of its restoration.

"Master bedroom built-ins first," I said. "Then if we have time, we can start demo on the bathroom."

"Finally," Jazz said with satisfaction. "I've been waiting three years to tear into that bathroom. Whoever installed that pink tile deserves to be haunted by the ghosts of good design."

"You say that about every room we renovate," Kane pointed out.

"Because every room in this house was a crime scene of bad decisions," Jazz shot back. "Remember the kitchen?"

"The kitchen wasn't that bad," I protested weakly.

"Wade," Kane said with the patience of someone explaining basic math to a child, "you had avocado green appliances from 1975 and contact paper that was supposed to look like wood grain."

"Contact paper that was peeling off in strips," Jazz added. "Like the house was molting."

"It had character," I said.

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