Best Kind of Broken

4 Levi

Sexual tension is like a ruthless pigeon. Feed it once and it will follow you around forever. It never tires or goes on vacation. It just lingers. And it’s lingering all over me every time I’m around Pixie.

Like right now, in the kitchen.

I carefully keep my eyes fixed anywhere but on Pixie’s blonde hair or the yellow bow of her apron at the base of her back as I finish my task. But I can still hear her. The shuffling of her stained sneakers as she scoots around the counter, the soft inhale-exhale of her concentrated breathing as it flows between her lips…

Yeah. I have to get out of here.

I quickly finish with the fire alarm and spend the next hour checking the remaining ones around the inn before heading for Ellen’s office.

Along with the lobby, kitchen, and dining room, the downstairs has two small converted bedrooms. One is the library, where guests play chess beside tall windows and pretend to enjoy books by Ernest Hemingway, and the other is Ellen’s bright yet incredibly cluttered office.

The wooden planks just outside her open office creak as I step into her doorway, and she looks up from a pile of papers, sticky notes, and pens.

“What’s up?” She smiles.

“The fire alarms look to be in working order, but they’re pretty ancient,” I say, not stepping fully into the room for fear of being swept into one of her famous conversation traps. “You might want to think about installing a whole new system.”

She nods and chews on the end of a red pen. “Yeah, I figured as much. I’ll add it to my ever-growing list of New Crap the Inn Desperately Needs. Thanks for checking everything.”

“No problem.” I turn to leave.

“Your mail’s still at the front desk,” she says to my back, halting my exit. “It’s been collecting dust for almost three weeks now.”

I slowly turn back around. “Is that right?”

Her eyes narrow. “Don’t make me open it up and read it out loud to the waitstaff. ’Cause I will, and then you’ll have to face the music.”

I scratch my cheek, which feels oddly bare since shaving. “I’ve never understood that phrase. There’s nothing scary about music.”

“Says the guy who’s afraid of his mail.”

I cock my head. “Must you bust my balls at every given opportunity?”

“Someone needs to.” She smiles, but it’s half-sad. “Just pick it up so I don’t have to listen to Angelo complain about how untidy the desk is, okay?”

Angelo’s incessant need for things to be clean and organized spills over to all areas of the inn, not just his bar. And it is his bar, as he likes to remind everyone.

“I’ll be sure to pick it up today,” I say, wiggling a hinge on the door I’ve just realized is loose. “Anything else?”

“Just the lobby chandelier.” She grins.

I sigh. Chandeliers are a pain in the ass. They’re heavy and cumbersome and contain more wires than any lighting fixture should. I honestly have no idea why people still use them. And by people, I mean Ellen.

Her grin widens.

“You don’t have to look so amused,” I say.

“Oh, but I do,” she says. “I find the look on your face right now very amusing.”

Ellen knows of my severe distaste for her choice in lighting fixtures. She doesn’t care. It’s pretty and it adds charm, she says. There’s nothing charming about a five-hundred-pound hanging lantern.

“Whatever,” I say, moving down the hall. “I’ll fix your precious chandelier.”

“I love you!” she calls after me.

I shake my head but can’t help smiling.

After turning off the main electricity, I retrieve the inn’s only ladder from the maintenance closet and set it up in the lobby beneath the chandelier. It wobbles as I climb to the top, and I make a mental note to add “ladder” to Ellen’s New Crap list. This one is probably older than the alarm system.

I carefully begin unhooking a few chandelier wires under the close and obnoxious scrutiny of one of the inn regulars, Earl Whethers.

I’m not sure what it is that draws retired men to my side while I’m fixing things—maybe they find handiwork fascinating, or maybe they’re horribly bored—but I sometimes feel like the Willow Inn sideshow.

Take Earl for instance. He’s pulled up a chair in the lobby and is now watching my every movement with expectant eyes.

And for my next act, I shall fall from this prehistoric climbing contraption and break both legs—with no hands, because they’ll be dangling from this hanging candelabrum after being torn from my body during my amazing fall!

I should set out a tip jar.

Earl scratches his white-whiskered chin. “You sure you know what you’re doing, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

The skin around his faded blue eyes crinkles as he squints up at me. “You look too young to be running the maintenance around here. How old are ya?” He crosses his arms over his short and stocky frame, once probably stacked with muscle, and leans back. His balding head shines a bit in the light streaming in from the lobby windows.

“Almost twenty-one,” I say, shifting the chandelier to my left arm and clenching my jaw under its weight. I find the problem wire and slowly untangle it from the others.

“Did you disconnect the electricity before climbing up there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you check for frayed ends before you started pulling at those wires like a chimpanzee?”

A chimpanzee?

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you—”

“Leave the poor boy alone, Earl.” Vivian, Earl’s wife and one of the inn’s more outspoken guests, enters the lobby with her short blue-black hair wrapped in pink curlers and her thin, pursed lips coated in pink lipstick. She’s tall and slender and manages to look poised even when she’s gripping a martini and slurring her words—which is often. “He doesn’t need you distracting him.”

“I’m not distracting him, Viv. I’m helping him.” Earl gestures to me, like I’m an idiot.

“Uh-huh.” Vivian glances up at me through a pair of dark brown eyes. “You just go on and do your fixing, honey. Don’t mind my meddlesome husband.” She walks to the front desk and starts complaining to Haley about the bar’s hours.

“Meddlesome, my ass,” Earl mutters.

Vivian and Earl travel from Georgia every summer to stay at Willow Inn. Their visits are never shorter than four weeks and they make themselves right at home, hence the pink curlers.

They make an odd couple, with Vivian being a good five inches taller than her husband and at least a hundred pounds lighter. Side by side, they look like a pink giraffe and a white-whiskered monkey.

Earl watches me wobble. “Have you ever had professional electrical training, son?”

Good Lord.

I steady myself and keep my eyes on the wire. “Did you catch the game last night, Earl?”

He starts rambling about idiot referees, and I know I’ve bought myself a few minutes’ reprieve from the tutorial on everything I’m doing wrong.

“All I’m saying,” Vivian’s Southern drawl carries through the lobby, “is the bar should be open before noon.”

“Yes, well. I’m sure Ellen has her reasons for the bar’s hours.” Haley lowers her voice a smidge. “It’s probably because of everything that happened with Mr. Clemons last year.”

“… things are different now.” Earl’s voice pulls me back.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I was just missing the good ol’ days.”

For the next ten minutes, Earl picks apart my electrical skills and chats my ear off about how the world was so much better when he was young and how people these days don’t know anything about hard work. He says these things to me as I’m balancing on the world’s oldest ladder while holding a lighting device that weighs more than I do.

“What can I say,” I grit out as I finish with the chandelier. “We’re a lazy generation.”

I climb down the ladder and turn the electricity back on before returning to the lobby. Earl is still in his front-row seat, eagerly waiting to chat my ear off about politics.

Like hell I’m touching that subject.

On my way to the light switch, my eyes catch on a flyer pinned to the activities board by the front desk. It’s an advertisement for the annual Copper Springs Fourth of July Bash, one of the few festivities my hometown actually does well.

Every resident attends, and the town spares no expense on live music, games, food, and pyrotechnics. This will be the first year since I was nine and had a mad case of chicken pox that I won’t be in attendance.

I flip the light switch, and the chandelier lights up in all its ridiculously complicated glory.

The Amazing Levi, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be here all week.

Just as I’m turning to walk back to my ladder of doom, Pixie rounds the corner and slams into me. Chest to chest, body to body.

The smell of lavender wraps around me as she looks up through startled eyelashes and, for a moment, it’s thirteen months ago and everything is okay. Nothing is broken. Nothing is lost. Her green eyes slowly sink into mine, soft and safe, and I like it. I like it a lot.

Panic floods my veins.

Desperate to rectify any hope, or memory—or God, anything good—I see reflected in her gaze, I give her an annoyed look and make my voice as sharp as possible. “Can I help you?”

The softness vanishes and a sneer twists her face. “Nope.”

She moves past me with a jerk and my heart starts to hammer. I head back to the ladder, my thoughts jumping in and out of memories.

The fourth grade when Pixie would drink all my chocolate milk when I wasn’t looking. Junior year when she would sing along with the radio at the top of her lungs as I drove her home from school.

It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday.

“Mm, mm.” Earl stares after Pixie’s retreating form. “I love watching that girl walk away.” He makes another appreciative throat noise, and my fists tighten around the rickety ladder as I fold it up.

“Easy, Earl,” I warn.

I swear to God, between Ellen and Pixie and all the assholes that gawk at them, someone’s going to get their face smashed in.

A gravelly laugh tumbles from his mouth. “Nothing about that girl looks easy.”

I sigh. Tell me about it.

After a few more repairs, I finish for the day and head back to the front desk to collect my mail. Angelo is leaning over the counter, speaking to Haley in his thick Jersey accent.

“Vivian Whethers was trying to get a martini from me before breakfast had even started. That woman can drink her share of liquor, I’ll tell ya that much.” He leans closer to Haley like he’s spilling some huge secret. “And I swear to God she leaves her sticky fingerprints all over my bar top on purpose.”

Haley giggles. “She probably wants to leave her sticky fingerprints all over more than just your bar top.”

“Well, that’s too bad for her.” He winks at Haley. “ ’Cause Vivian ain’t my type.”

I try not to make a face as I step behind the desk. I’m pretty sure Angelo and Haley are sleeping together, which is unsettling because Haley is sweet and bubbly and Angelo is… well, terrifying.

He’s nearing fifty, but carries himself like an angry forty-year-old. He’s built like a bulldog and resembles one too, with his shaved head, golden canine tooth, oversized jowls, and sleeves of tattoos. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a mob boss with minions and a shovel resting beside a bulk supply of hand sanitizer in his trunk.

“How goes it, Levi?” he says, turning his head in my direction.

“It goes.” I frown at the beige envelope topping the pile of mail Ellen set aside for me. Its placement is no accident.

“Good to see you’re finally picking up your letters,” he says. “They’re an eyesore, ya know.”

“Oh, I know,” I say. They’re hurting my eyes as we speak.

Gathering the stack, I go up to my room and toss the top letter on my desk, where it joins five other beige envelopes. All unopened. All making my chest tight.

I’d rather fix a thousand chandeliers than deal with one of those envelopes.