My Father's Best Friend Fixed My Roof, Then Never Left My Kitchen novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Shingles

Carly sets rules on the porch swing and Milan agrees to every one. Her cousin Rick arrives with a realtor and says Frank asked Milan to look in on her, so she should not flatter herself.

I read Rick's text twice and I didn't answer it.

I put the phone face down on the counter.

I put Milan's coat on over my nightgown and stood in the kitchen with the sleeves hanging past my hands.

At seven the next morning his truck came up the driveway.

I was on the porch before he'd shut the engine off.

"Morning," Milan said.

"Morning."

He got a bundle of shingles out of the bed and set it on his shoulder.

He looked at the coat I was wearing and at my bare feet on the boards, and then he looked at the roof.

"Boots," he said.

"What?"

"Put boots on. There are nails all over that yard."

I went in and put boots on, and I was smiling at the hall floor when I did it.

By nine the sun was out, thin and cold, and the roof was steaming.

I held the ladder.

When he called down, I carried a bundle of shingles up three rungs and handed it over.

He took them out of my hands without touching my fingers.

I noticed that.

Across the street the neighbor had come out onto her porch with a cup of coffee and a sweater around her shoulders.

She'd lived there forty years.

She raised her cup to me, and I waved.

"That's Frank's friend," she called, loud enough to carry.

"Yes, ma'am," Milan called down.

"He's a good man, your father's friend," she told me. "He doesn't have to do all this."

"I know," I said.

She nodded and kept watching.

Milan looked at me from the roof for one second, and I looked at the ladder.

At eleven he came down for more nails.

He took the last two rungs together, and I let go of the rails and stepped back, and my boot caught a shingle scrap.

I started to fall sideways.

His hands closed on my waist and held me there.

They covered my ribs on both sides, and his thumbs pressed in just above my hips.

He lifted me back onto my feet with no effort at all.

I was standing against him, my thighs against his thighs, in broad daylight, in front of the whole street.

"Careful," he said.

His thumb slid down my arm and stopped on the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was going hard.

He felt it.

I know he felt it, because his thumb didn't move.

Then he let go, took the nails off the ladder, and walked around behind the truck.

He stood there on the far side of the tailgate, where the street couldn't see him, for a full minute with his back to me and his hands flat on the truck bed.

His shoulders were rising and falling, slow and deep.

I told myself it was the cold.

It was forty-one degrees, and he'd been up on a roof since seven.

I looked at the clean, new shingles in the sun, and I knew I was lying, and I did it anyway.

When the roof was done we sat on the porch swing.

Milan had washed up at the garden hose and he sat at the far end with a mug of coffee I'd made.

I'd made up my mind on the ladder, and I said it fast.

"I have rules."

He turned and gave me his full attention.

"One," I said. "Nobody knows. This town talks, and he's my father's name. Nobody."

"Nobody," Milan said.

"Two. I go back to Pittsburgh on November first. Whatever this is, it ends then."

He didn't answer right away.

His eyes held mine, and what they said was November first, and he did not like it.

"All right," he said.

"Three," I said. "Nobody says my father's name in a bedroom. Not you, not me."

"No."

"Say yes."

"Yes," Milan said. "To all three."

I was so nervous it hurt.

I wanted to say, don't agree so fast.

I wanted to say, argue with me.

I drank my coffee and said nothing, and the swing creaked under us.

A pickup pulled to the curb with a diesel rattle.

The man who got out wore a ball cap and a Carhartt jacket and had a red face.

Behind him came a woman in a blazer, carrying a folder.

"Carly!" Rick shouted from the walk. "Told you I'd bring her early. Tuesday's too far off."

I stood up.

Rick came up the steps and gave me a hug that smelled of cigarettes and gas.

"The roof's done," he said, looking up. "That'll help the price."

"Rick," I said.

"This is the realtor. She'll walk the place, we'll talk numbers. Forty under market, my buddy pays cash, you're out by Thanksgiving. Easy."

"I haven't decided anything."

"What's to decide?" He glanced at Milan, and the smile changed.

"Milan. Didn't know you were still here."

"I was finishing the roof," Milan said.

"That's real good of you," Rick said, and looked at me.

"Frank asked him to look in on you, Carly. Before he went."

He grinned at me. "So don't go flattering yourself. Milan does favors. He fixed my mother's porch for free."

Nobody said anything.

I looked at Milan.

His face was calm and still, and his hands were closed on the empty mug.

Milan said, "Rick."

That was all he said.

Rick took the realtor inside, and I heard the screen door slam.

I stood on the porch with my face burning.

Frank asked him to look in on you.

Milan had never said it, and he hadn't said it wasn't true.

I told myself I'd known all along, and I'd been stupid to feel anything else.

"Carly," Milan said.

"Don't. I'm fine."

He came up beside me, close, but not touching.

"Tomorrow at six I close the store," he said, low. "Come by the back door."

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