I Don't Need Your Blue Roses Anymore novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Roof

Anneliese's POV

On Sunday morning there were three men on my mother's roof.

I stood in the gravel drive with a coffee in my hand and watched one of them pull a strip of rotten shingle off the live-oak side.

A flatbed truck sat behind Nate's van.

The lettering on its door said *Altadena Roofing*.

Nate came out of the cellar door with a clipboard of his own.

He saw my face and stopped.

"You didn't ask me," I said.

"No."

"I told you the one rule I had."

"I know what you told me." He set the clipboard on the van's hood. "I booked them Friday night, from the shop. It's supposed to rain Tuesday, and the ceiling over the kitchen has a hole in it the size of a dinner plate."

"You could have asked."

"Yes."

He didn't defend it.

He stood there and let me be angry.

That was almost worse, because I could feel myself looking for the fight and not finding enough of one.

"You asked me everything else," I said. "Whether I wanted a coffee. Whether I wanted the light on."

"I know."

"Then why not this?"

"Because I didn't want to hear you say *no* to a roof," Nate said. "I wanted it fixed."

That was an honest answer, and it was a bad one.

I let it sit between us.

"Don't do it again," I said.

"Okay."

It wasn't a fight.

It wasn't finished either, and something in how carefully he watched me told me he had more to say and was putting it off.

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