Read Online Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler - Free Book Online Page A

hot as hell up here.”
    He moves down a rung to check the second-floor windows, the muscles in his tanned shoulders and arms tightening as he grabs the sides of the ladder. I watch the way his bare back twists as his hands move along the wood frames searching for flaws and fractures. I’m just spotting him, of course, in case he slips. I need to assess his approximate weight so I can best position myself to catch him if he falls, so he’ll land on top of me and…
    I force my eyes back to the notebook. “Find anything?” I ask, head down.
    “Windows in good shape. Glass solid. Looks fairly new. Write that down.”
    “Good. Solid. New. Got it. What about you? What do you do when you’re not fixing stuff or breaking hearts onstage?”
    “Write this,” he says. “Exterior and shutters need work. Get estimates for paint or siding.”
    “Got it. So?”
    “Breaking hearts? Not exactly. I do what everyone around here does,” he says, climbing down to grab his Nalgene bottle. “Swim. Hike. Water stuff. Kayaking on the lake is fun—I’ll take you sometime.”
    I close my notebook, my eyes involuntarily tracking the tiny rivulet of water trailing down his chin… his neck… his collarbone…
    He steps closer and offers me the water bottle. “You’d like it, I think.”
    “Water?”
    “Kayaking.” He’s right near me now, officially past my “just friends” space, smiling with his amber-honey eyes and those dimples, and I’m so hot standing out here on the hot grass in the hot sun next to the hot house…
    “Patrick?” Jack. Patrick takes a step back, still smiling as I grab the water bottle from his outstretched hand.
    “Man, it’s funny to see you two like this,” Jack says, a grin plastered all the way across his broad, tanned face. “You were inseparable as kids. Even after all day playing, you wouldn’t leave each other’s houses. Half the time we’d let you sleep over just to avoid the fight.”
    “Um, Dad?” Patrick shades his eyes from the sun and looks at his father. “Did you need something?”
    “I gotta make another hardware store run. Those nails I got aren’t the right size—wood’s thicker’n I thought.”
    Patrick hands over the keys from his pocket and smirks. “You know it wouldn’t kill you to walk, right, old man?”
    “Maybe not. Wouldn’t kill you to keep your clothes on, either.” Jack’s still laughing as he heads next door toward the green-and-white Reese & Son Contracting truck.
    I look to Patrick’s reddened face. “It’s nice to know my mother doesn’t have a monopoly on embarrassing her offspring.”
    “Oh, you think that’s funny?” Patrick sticks his arms through the holes in his shirt and grins at me, a little bit of devil in his otherwise perfect smile. I drop my notebook and run, Patrick close behind, both of us laughing like the kids we used to be, laughing harder than I’ve laughed in months. I’m squealing and sprinting and dodging Patrick all around the house, nothing but happy and sun and warm all over me, and I feel a release, a free fall of carefree summer days with no end in sight. But on our second trip around, when we near the back corner of the house, I look up and notice them—the curved panes of the bay windows reflecting the lake, the windows Little Ricky and I used to curl up against to read when the rain kept us inside. Like a new movie starting in my head, I see a red cardinal and I stop, remembering the bird trapped in the enclosed sunroom, confused by all the windows. Papa was in his wheelchair and couldn’t do much to chase it out, so he called Jack. Ricky and I stayed close behind Mom, watching from the height of her elbows. When Jack finally coaxed the bird to the open door, it shot out and sped away toward the lake, sailing over the trees beyond. All of us cheered and clapped and retold the story a hundred million times, so happy were we that the bird could reunite with his family.
    Except for Nana.
    I don’t remember