I wasn't looking for a boyfriend

The drawer used to have drill bits in it. Warranty paperwork, the furnace manual, a bag of wall anchors I bought for a job in 2019 and never opened, a charger for a phone I don't own anymore. I hauled all of it out to the garage on a Sunday back in June and put it in a bin on the shelf and I didn't say anything about it to anybody. The next week there were shirts in it.

He sets tile. Ruben. I got his number off a guy who was bidding a bungalow with me over on Tennyson, a bathroom where the owner wanted herringbone on a floor that was out three quarters of an inch corner to corner. I needed somebody who'd float it instead of telling me it'd be fine.

He told me it wouldn't be fine before I got to say it, then he stood out in the driveway and argued with me about the mud bed for twenty minutes, and he was right. After that I put him on everything I had going. It's cheaper to hire one guy you never have to drive back out and look at.

In March his truck wouldn't turn over at a job in Green Valley Ranch and I ran him home and we stopped for food on the way. He came in to use the bathroom. He stayed. In the morning I made eggs and neither of us said anything about it and he was back Thursday with his own coffee.

So that's seven months. He's here Mondays and Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then Sunday he's here for his laundry.

My dog's a heeler. Nickel. One ear never came up right. She knows his truck.

There's a toothbrush in the cup that isn't mine. I bought it. They come two to a pack.

I've never called him anything. Not to him and not to Kyle, who's been with me nine years and whose wife does my books.

My mom called on a Tuesday about the fifteenth, which was two weeks out. She drives down from Scottsbluff, which is three and a half hours the way she does it. She wanted to see the kitchen. I'd been telling her about that kitchen for six years before I finally did it, and I sent her a picture of the counters in August and she's been on about it since.

Four nights, she said. She'd take the spare room. My brother's in Wichita and doesn't come, so it's her.

The spare room has Ruben's wet saw in it. There's a gym bag in there too, and a box of shirts that didn't fit in the drawer. A milk crate of his paperbacks. I told him Thursday night that my mom was coming and she'd need that room. He said okay and went back to his plate.

He loaded the box and the saw out to his truck Sunday afternoon. Monday night I went in to brush my teeth and there was one toothbrush in the cup.

I never asked him to do that part.

He didn't come Wednesday. He texted me about a change order on the Lowry job and that was the whole message. Thursday I cooked like he was coming and ate it standing up at the counter. Nickel got up on his side of the bed, which she's not supposed to be on at all.

Friday I drove out to his place off Chambers with my small impact driver and told him he'd left it at Lowry. He hadn't. It'd been behind my seat since August.

He took it off me. We stood in his lot under that orange light they put in those places and he asked how long she was staying and I said four nights. Then I said come Saturday.

He said, what am I supposed to be. I said she eats at six. He looked at me for a good while and then he said okay and went inside with my driver.

My mom got in Saturday around two with a cooler in the back seat, like there's no food in Denver. She walked the kitchen twice and ran her thumb along the seam where the counter meets the wall and asked me if I did that, and I told her Kyle did it. Then she wanted to see the bathroom, and I showed her the tile, and I said a guy who works for me put it in. I've said that sentence a hundred times.

I almost asked him to park around on Krameria. I didn't ask him.

He came at six with a bottle of that sweet red she drinks. I never told him that. I must have said it sometime.

He carried her cooler in from the car before I got to the driveway. He called her ma'am twice and she told him to quit it. After we ate he went out and tightened the mirror on her car that's been loose since Fort Morgan, and she stood in the cold with her coat over her shoulders and watched him do it and told him about her neighbor's driveway, which is a thing she can go on about for a while. When she came in she asked me when I was going to do the gutters and I said I'd get to them.

Later she was drying and I was washing. She said, he's easy to have around, that one. I handed her the pan. She stayed through Tuesday and left me a coffee cake and a bag of frozen corn from her neighbor's garden, and she hugged me in the driveway and told me to call her Sunday, which is what she tells me every time.

Ruben came back Wednesday. His box was in the corner of the spare room and I don't remember him carrying it in. There's two toothbrushes in the cup.

Saturday morning I got the ladder off the side of the garage. He came out with his coffee and put his boot on the bottom rung and held it and didn't say anything, and I went up.

Wednesday Kyle came by early for the bid on the Xavier place and Ruben's truck was in the driveway. He took the folder off me and said he'd call me after lunch and got in his van. I had to be at Lowry by eight.