Half-Sweet at Sunset

The ceiling above my bed dripped onto my laptop while Cal Ellis held a mixing bowl under the leak. "Move it left," I said. He shifted the bowl six inches. A drop hit the rim, bounced, and landed on my trackpad. "Other left." "I know what left is." "Then we're both worried for your future." I snatched the laptop out of danger. The audio file on my screen showed a waveform full of interviews I'd recorded before the pipe burst in my apartment. I had six days to finish the episode for a small public radio station in Bellwether Cove, and the room over the Ellis garage had become my studio, bedroom, and temporary proof that my life could fit into two suitcases. The bowl caught another drop. Cal looked up at the ceiling. "I'll get a tarp." "Your mother said the roof was fixed." "My mother says a lot of things." He went down the narrow stairs before I could ask whether he meant the roof or his mother. I listened to his footsteps cross the garage, then the clatter of the side door. The room smelled like wet pine and the cinnamon candle his mother had put on the desk for me. I'd never lit it. It felt too much like a welcome I hadn't earned. My apartment had flooded on the first Monday of May. A pipe above the kitchen had split while I was out recording a retired harbor pilot. The building manager had called the damage "unfortunate" and the lease "still in effect." My mother, a traveling nurse, was three states away on a twelve-week contract. She'd called June Ellis, her oldest friend, before I could decide whether to sleep in my car. June had offered the spare room. Cal had carried my boxes up the stairs. He'd also brought me coffee the next morning, black with a spoonful of sugar, exactly how I took it. At sunset, he'd sometimes sit on the garage roof with me and split a pastry from the bakery. He always took the sweeter half and gave me the flaky one. Those details had seemed to add up. Cal came back with a blue tarp and a toolbox. I held the ladder while he climbed to the low roof outside my window. "Tell me if I'm about to step on your window," he said. "You're about to step on the gutter." "Good. I'd rather break the house than your window." "June would agree." "June would agree with whatever kept you from calling a plumber." I held the ladder tighter. "She likes me." "She likes everybody." The answer was too quick, too light. I told myself not to search it for meaning. When he came down, he had rain in his hair and a smear of black sealant on his wrist. He wiped it on his work pants, then looked at the laptop. "You still have to finish that today?" "By Friday." "Then I'll try not to flood the room again." He sounded so ordinary that the next words came out before I could make them safer. "When the apartment's fixed, I don't want to go back." Cal folded the tarp. "To the apartment?" "To anywhere I have to pretend I'm fine being alone." I laughed once, but the sound was thin. "I know that's not a great reason to stay here." He stopped folding. The open window showed a slice of bay, silver beneath the low clouds. I'd practiced the confession in my head on the drive back from the grocery store, in the shower, at two in the morning when the house was quiet. None of those rehearsals included the moment when Cal's hands were still and his face was so close. "I think I'm in love with you," I said. For a second, he didn't move. Then he put the tarp down. "Nora." "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make the room weird." "I'm letting you stay because my mom asked me to." He looked at the bowl, the laptop, anything but my face. "I'm trying to be decent. That's all." The words landed harder than I expected. Not because he didn't love me back. I could survive that. It was the clean way he folded every kindness into a duty and handed it back to me as though I'd misunderstood the receipt. I nodded. "Okay." "I didn't want you to think—" "I know what you said." He picked up the toolbox. His knuckles had gone white around the handle. I turned back to my laptop. "Thanks for fixing the roof." "Sure." At the bottom of the stairs, he paused. I heard the silence before his shoes moved again. I stayed at my desk until the leak stopped. Then I opened my phone and searched for short-term rentals. The first room I found had a shared bathroom and a deposit I couldn't afford. The second was available the following week, above a bakery on Harbor Street. It was small, overpriced, and mine if I could find the money. I sent a message to the landlord asking to see it. The bowl sat on the floor beside my chair. Every few minutes, another drop struck it with a hollow, metallic note. I counted them until the room went dark.