Four words that carried more weight than most conversations he'd had in the past 3 years. He told himself it was just a repair job right up until the moment he knocked on her door on Saturday morning and she answered it wearing the same Howard sweatshirt and paint splattered jeans holding two cups of coffee again like it was already a routine and something in his chest settled in a way it hadn't settled in a very long time. Not excitement deeper than that, more dangerous, familiar. You came back, she said. I said I would.
A lot of people say things. She handed him the coffee. Not everybody comes back. He looked at her over the rim of the mug. She was looking back at him with that direct unblinking gaze that had been living rent-free in the back of his mind since last weekend.
And for a moment, neither of them said anything. Then she turned toward the wall. Let's see what we're working with. They got to work. And somewhere inside the rhythm of that work, the steady back and forth of rollers, the comfortable silences, the small talk that gradually became less small.
Marcus Carter felt the wall he had spent 3 years carefully constructing develop its first crack. He did not notice it happening. That was the thing about Olivia Bennett. She didn't push. She didn't pull.
She simply existed fully and without apology in the space beside him. And somehow that was more disarming than anything deliberate could have been. Around 9:00 a.m. she said without looking up from where she was cutting in along the trim. Tell me something true about yourself that nobody around here knows. Marcus stopped his roller.
That's a heavy question for 9 in the morning. I work better when I'm talking, she said. And I'm tired of weather conversation. He thought about it. Actually thought about it, which was unusual because most people who asked questions like that were really just looking for an opening to talk about themselves.
"I taught myself to code when Ava was born," he said. Denise was sleeping, the baby was sleeping, and I had 2 hours in the middle of the night where I couldn't do anything loud and I couldn't close my eyes. So, I started learning online tutorials, textbooks from the library. Did it for two years, and I built something, a routing optimization program. Nothing glamorous, logistics software basically, but it worked.
Got it to the point where I sold the licensing rights to a midsize supply chain company. Olivia's roller slowed. She glanced at him. Sold it enough to pay off the house and put some away. Then I went back to the regular jobs because I didn't know what else to do with myself and sitting still has never been something I'm good at.
She was quiet for a moment then. So you have a safety net. I have a cushion. He said carefully. There's a difference.