Page 24 of The Edge of Summer
“Shit!”
When I look down, I find that there is a steadily-growing puddle on my kitchen floor that could rival the lake this island sits on. The room was pristine when I went to bed last night, and it still is—minus all the water.
I wonder if this is a sign. Finding this house and connecting with Clara, it all seems a little too good to be true after the shit I’ve had to deal with the last nine months. The house itself is perfect. At least, it looks like it on the outside. Maybe this leak is the universe’s way of saying it’s on to me. It knows that I am in way over my head and I’m struggling to keep it all together. This is a glaring reminder of that.
The first thing I do is call Clara. Despite often staying at Dockside until close, she’s still an early riser and has probably already been awake for an hour. Hopefully she has a plumber on speed dial because I amwayout of my element here.
“Good morning!” she sings when the call connects.
“It’s certainly morning, but I wouldn’t call it good,” I grumble. “We have a bit of a situation.”
“What’s going on?”
“How would you feel if the house had a swimming pool in the kitchen?”
“Oh, shit.”
I grab the tea towel hanging on the oven handle and throw it on the puddle. It soaks through immediately. “That’s exactly what I said.”
I crouch in front of the cupboard under the sink and open it. I can’t tell where the water is coming from, but it doesn’t seem to want to let up anytime soon. I notice a knob that looks like it would stop the water from reaching the sink, but when I try to turn it, it won’t budge.
“Ugh. I’m at Dockside receiving our produce shipment right now. I’ll find someone to come help you.”
“I’ll do my best to save the floors.”
After I set my phone on the island, I exhaust every single towel we have in the house, trying to sop up the mess so it doesn’t migrate to the living room. Meanwhile, the water still streams from the open cupboard. I try the knob again, just in case something magically changed in the last few minutes. No such luck.
I’m thinking about starting to use blankets now that all the towels are soaked when a knock sounds on the front door. This has me breathing a sigh of relief.Thank God.
When I open the door, I find an unimpressed Luke standing on the porch. I cross my arms over my chest as his gaze drops to my bare legs, my sleep shorts, and then my old t-shirt. I lay a hand self-consciously over the now-messy braid I slept in. Luke’s jaw clenches and he averts his eyes.
When he speaks, his voice is strained. “Clara said there’s a leak.”
I open the door wider, making room for his broad frame to enter. When he does, his eyes sweep the room, almost like he expected it to be completely destroyed.
“I think I caught it early,” I say. “It hasn’t managed to make it past the kitchen.”
He takes in the heap of towels and the still-gushing pipefrom under the sink. He stalks over, and then he turns to me incredulously. “You didn't think to shut the water off?” he snaps.
While I’m certainly no plumber, I’m not stupid either. “OfcourseI did!”
“You must’ve thought about it real hard, then, seeing as water is still gushing out of the pipes.”
I glower. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. If you took two seconds to step off your high horse, you would know that the knob is stuck!”
He looks somewhat taken aback by my outburst. But this is what happens when I am running on little sleep and haven’t been able to have my caffeine fix—I get a little confrontational. I inhale a deep breath, trying to reel my temper back in.
This, of course, is the perfect moment for my t-shirt—stretched at the collar and a size too big—to slide down my left shoulder. It exposes a large portion of my tattoo, but it also exposes my bare skin. I pull it back up, and then look back to Luke. Though it’s now covered, his gaze is still trained on my collarbone. And his jaw is locked tight.
“Luke?”
He shakes his head and averts his stare. When he finally settles back on the task at hand, he takes a moment to assess the kitchen sink. Then he reaches up and flips his baseball cap backwards, rendering me speechless. He shouldn’t look that damn good doing something so innocuous.
I stand by, watching as he crouches down to get a good look under the sink. I can hear him struggling with the water shut-off knoband then?—
“Fuck!”
Water begins to gush even harder, and what was once a steady trickle is now a rushing stream. When Luke emerges from underneath the sink, the whole front of his white t-shirt is soaked. The material is translucent now, almost transparent, and the ridges of his abs areveryvisible.
