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Excerpt 🪜 🔦 🪛

“Have you been having any other electrical issues? Do I need to check out the lights in your bedroom?”

She narrowed her eyes at me and scowled. “My bedroom is just fine, thank you.”

Shit. “I’m not planning to…” I swallowed the first word that jumped onto my tongue and substituted, “get into your bed.” I waved my hand at her outfit. “I figured you couldn’t see when you were getting dressed. If your lights aren’t working upstairs, I can look at them, too.”

Ellie glanced down and shrieked the word I’d self-censored, then raced out of the kitchen, papering her path with more f-bombs and a few s-bombs too. Her rapid thump-thump-thump up the stairs and along the hallway traced her path. The dishes in the cabinet behind me rattled as she slammed shut the door directly above the kitchen.

Before I’d stuck my size-ten steel-toed boot in my mouth, I’d intended to ask her where I’d find the fuse box. Without being able to ask her, I figured the basement was a safe place to start.

Hauser House had been built in the days when they laid stone walls with slate slabs over packed earth. A single incandescent bulb swung from the middle of the room, casting long shadows over everything. Creepy. But going into people’s basements, whether modernly finished or ancient pits like this one, was part of my job. To be honest, it wasn’t the worst basement I’d been in. That honor belonged to my grandparent’s old farmhouse, which may be why I have a fear of old basements even now.

Luckily, the basement was empty, so I didn’t have to move piles of furniture or boxes to get to the fuse box tucked behind a newish gas furnace. Since the light didn’t reach this corner, I shone my flashlight over the fuse panel.

After assuring myself that Ellie had turned off the main power, I leaned in closer, examined the fuses, and removed several, muttering, “What the fuck?”

I doubted old Mrs. Hauser, the previous owner, had screwed in these fuses. From what Joshua had told me, she’d been an old lady who hadn’t been able to manage stairs for years. Which meant someone else had put the entire house at risk. Perhaps it had been Ellie’s dead husband or maybe old Mrs. Hauser had hired some handyman who didn’t give a fuck what amperage he used. Whoever had done it, if I met them, I’d sound them with my damned threading driver.

“What’s wrong?”

I jumped because I hadn’t heard Ellie’s approach. How long had she been standing there? Had I voiced my threat aloud?

She descended the rest of the stairs, her lips pressed together in an expression totally different from any I’d been familiar with back in high school. Hesitant. Insecure? The high school Ellie I’d known had been confident, outgoing. Bubbly and chatty, always smiling. Someone had burst her bubble, changed her. Would her husband’s death have done that? Or had something happened to her that had deflated her self-confidence?

High school Ellie wore pink sweatshirts with teddy bears on them, soft comfortable jeans if she was in school, or when at home, fuzzy pants, equally inscribed with teddies or bunnies, and her feet encased in fuzzy slippers complete with floppy bunny ears. Grown-up Ellie wore a dark-green t-shirt with a graphic that said “If Only Sarcasm Burned Calories” beneath a thick pink sweater that looked hand-knitted, neon purple yoga pants which clung to her curves, and—I bit back my urge to laugh—fuzzy pink slippers complete with bunny ears.

It took all my effort not to gather her in my arms and cuddle her. Tell her everything would be all right.

For a brief period in high school, I had seriously considered dating her. After a debate about the wisdom of dating my best friend’s sister, I’d given in to temptation and kissed her once, planning to ask her to be my date at my prom. Two days later, her brother made me promise to never approach Ellie for the rest of my life. A blood oath too, not a simple pinky swear. I don’t know if he’d seen us or if Ellie had confessed that I’d kissed her, but I’d had to make a choice between my best friend and his sister.

The ancient bro code won, and I’d stayed home instead of attending my prom.

In return, I’d demanded Josh make the same promise not to pursue my older sister Chantel, not that it was any hardship on his part because he and Chantel couldn’t stand each other, and at the time, I suspected Chantel preferred her own gender over guys. Something she later confirmed when she brought home her college girlfriend and announced they were a couple.

But now here I was, over twenty years later, and those old feelings stirred up again, making me imagine Ellie in my bed. Me in her bed. Us getting down and dirty on the stairs. On the kitchen table. Me on top of her, her on top of me.