The Grumpy Roommate Gamble (Heroes of Huckleberry Creek #1)

7. Gabe

SEVEN

GABE

“Are you sure Felicity actually wants to keep this stuff?” Clint levered the end table he’d carried into a hole beside the sofa where it had been wedged in the kitchen. “It’s all so water damaged.”

“I don’t know. But I need the last of this out of the way so I can finish the tear out of the flooring in the living room and find out whether the damage stops with the subfloor or if I’ll need to deal with joists.”

“I mean… you could just ask her, given y’all are roommates and all.”

“Thought about it. But she hasn’t been over here once since I started work. I think seeing it all upsets her. Reminds her of what she’s lost.” I hadn’t forgotten how she’d looked when she’d tried to shrug off those losses. She’d put on a brave face about it, but I could tell it still hurt. I wasn’t about to poke at that wound if I didn’t have to.

“Fair enough. How’s that going, anyway? Had to be a hell of a surprise to come home to somebody in your house.”

My brain helpfully flashed back to the image of Felicity in that barely there towel that had become permanently imprinted on the backs of my eyelids. “It was a damned sight better than being surprised by insurgents.”

“Truth. Gotta be putting a bit of a crimp in your fulfilling the pact, though.”

I grabbed the coffee table from the middle and played dumb as I hefted it up. “Pact?”

Clint just leveled a gaze at me. “You know, the one we made when we all thought we were gonna die? About getting off our asses to woo the women we were interested in? You said you were in.”

“I’d have said anything to get out of that conversation.”

“Nuh-uh. You made the pact. So who is it?”

When facing confrontation, always take offense over defense. “I’m not like the rest of you. Kellan is obviously going to do something about his feelings for Tate. Rhett clearly wants to win Pepper back. You’ve got a thing for his sister. I don’t have some woman I’m secretly pining for.”

“Uh-huh.”

Don’t react. Don’t react. I adopted what I hoped was a bored expression. “What?”

Clint folded his arms. “You forget I’ve known you since high school.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing. Except I remember you happen to have a bit of a soft spot for your current roommate.”

To buy myself time, I took a swig from my bottle of water. “She was a sweet girl, and she’s a nice woman. I say again, what does that have to do with anything?”

“Just that if you didn’t already have someone in mind, it seems like maybe the Universe does.”

“The Universe? Did you get that in your horoscope along with your Cheerios this morning? ”

“Dude, I’m just back from deployment. It’s totally Lucky Charms. Which is beside the point. I think you should take a second look at Felicity.”

He said that like it was a hard sell. I’d taken so many extra looks at Felicity over the years. Being interested in her had never been the problem. I recognized how awesome she was. The past couple of weeks of living with her had only clarified that fact, as I’d gotten to know her better. But I also recognized she deserved better than the likes of an anti-social son of a bitch like me.

“You’re suggesting I pursue a woman who’s been stuck in an absolute shit situation, while she’s vulnerable and, in some ways, dependent upon me? Dude, no. That would be beyond uncool.”

“Agreed. I’m not saying you should pressure her or anything, just… I don’t know. Dig up some charm or something.”

This time, I didn’t have to feign my skepticism. “Remember that part where you’ve known me since high school?”

Clint laughed. “Okay, charm might be asking too much.”

“I’m not pursuing Felicity. I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable in the place she’s calling home until I can get through the shit show of this renovation. She has a right to feel safe and not like the roommate she didn’t actually choose herself is perving on her somehow.”

“Nowhere in here am I hearing that you’re not actually interested.”

I rolled my eyes. “Subject change. Are you available as a second set of hands this weekend?”

“I’m not, actually. I’m going to a wedding.”

“Whose?”

“Some cousin of Austen’s.”

“Ah.” Turnabout was fair play. “So you are interested in Rhett’s sister.”

Clint jerked his shoulders. “We’re friends. We’ve always been friends, and we got closer during my deployment. We wrote a lot. Letters and shit. And she sent me all those books.”

“So how’d you end up as her date for the wedding?”

“It’s a long story. But I figure I might as well take advantage of the opportunity and feel out the situation.”

“In front of Rhett?”

“Nah. Rhett won’t be there. Hasn’t made it home yet. Still doing rehab at Walter Reed. And you know, he doesn’t go to weddings since he and Pepper divorced. I think that’s the only reason Austen asked me. I’m meant to be the stand-in boyfriend, so her obnoxious aunt doesn’t try to match-make her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey, I give good wedding date.” Clint did some kind of dance step he probably thought was smooth. “I’ve got moves.”

“You are full of shit, brother.”

He tapped his water bottle to mine in a toast. “Takes one to know one. Let’s finish things up for the day. I want time to clean up before I hit Doc’s for the night. There’s a pizza with my name on it.”

We moved the last of the furniture, and Clint helped me rip out the last of the flooring and sub-floor, with minimal shit-stirring in the process. It was a good day’s work, especially as it turned out the joists were fine. I’d take the wins I could get.

Still, once he’d left, I couldn’t stop thinking about that damned pact or of the woman I’d been picturing when I made it. I’d lived alone most of my adult life. I liked it that way. I was set in my ways and didn’t like most people, so I’d expected to be annoyed at having someone else in my space. But I actually liked having Felicity around. All the little touches she’d added around the house softened it somehow. Made it more homey and comfortable. I’d learned she was a hell of a cook. She preferred tea over coffee. She sang in the shower—girl power ballads, mostly. And she talked to her plants like they were pets or people. It was oddly charming.

I considered it progress that she’d finally stopped assuming I was going to object to every little thing she did. And yeah, okay. I could admit that having her around had made me a little less surly than usual. Nana had drummed manners into me with questionable success in my formative years, and having Felicity around meant I was making an effort to be less taciturn and more polite. I had actual conversation every day, usually over whatever delicious thing she’d made for dinner. It didn’t suck.

And her food. Oh man, her food. That whole adage about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach just might be true. Maybe that made me a bit of a sexist caveman. But she’d insisted repeatedly that she enjoyed cooking, and that seemed to actually be true. I wasn’t making her cook for me. I hadn’t asked her to. Turning it down seemed positively rude, and I was bad enough on that front by accident. I didn’t want to risk doing anything on purpose.

Thoughts of Felicity’s cooking had my stomach growling. I checked my watch. Shit, it was later than I thought. I needed to wrap up here and get on home for a shower. As Nana had drilled into me, food was meant to be eaten when it was warm, so being late for a meal was the height of impolite.

I opened the hall closet to put away the boxes of books we’d packed up from the shelf. The top one slid off the stack, scattering paperbacks on the floor. Swearing, I knelt to pick them up and glanced at the covers. I’d expected romance novels. Felicity seemed the type who’d be into all that happily ever after stuff. But what I found was a wide array of what appeared to be dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Huh.

She was so damned sweet. This didn’t seem like her.

Idly, I paged through a few and found they were inscribed to her by the authors. Most of those inscriptions had bled when the books themselves had gotten soaked. I wondered if these were some of what she’d meant when she’d said many things destroyed in the flood couldn’t be replaced. Filing that away, I repacked the books and put them in the closet.

Time to get home for dinner.