The Rivals

“We got a dog together,” Bryce said. “Or rather, she picked out a dog, and I got to feed it and walk it.”

“What kind of a dog was it?”

“Is, not was. I got the dog in the breakup. Sprinkles is a shih tzu. She was the one who wanted the dog, yet she showed up at my apartment with some clothes I’d had at her place and the dog. Said if I didn’t take it, she was going to the vet to get him put down. What kind of a person does that? Anyway, now I have a girly-looking dog named Sprinkles.”

I laughed. “Did you not want the dog to begin with?”

“I wanted a dog, but I’d been thinking more along the lines of a black lab named Fred.” He shrugged. “The little guy is a damn yapper, but he’s grown on me. He sleeps on my pillow right next to my head and likes to lick my ear at five o’clock in the morning. If I’m being honest, it’s pretty much the only action I’ve seen in a while.” Bryce laughed.

I had a smile on my face until I saw the man walking toward me. Weston did not look happy. His long strides ate up the distance between us.

“The front desk said you would be here. I didn’t realize you were on a date.” He didn’t say the word date so much as spit it at me.

“I’m not—I mean, I wasn’t… We aren’t…” I shook my head. Motioning to Scarlett, who’d turned around, I said, “Scarlett and I came for happy hour.”

Weston glanced over at Scarlett, gave her a curt nod, and returned his angry glare to me. “You were dealing with a busted pipe in the laundry room?”

“Yes, why? Once the plumber arrived, I came back to finish my drinks with Scarlett. Is everything okay?”

Weston’s eyes slanted to Bryce and back to me. “The plumber wants you to sign off on the repair estimate since you hired him. I told him I could take care of it, but apparently you’re the only one capable of making such a decision in his eyes.”

I stood. “Oh. Okay. I’m coming.”

Weston did another sweep of our group, and his jaw flexed. “Scarlett.” He nodded, turned around, and marched back out of the bar.

“Umm…” I stood. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Bryce stood also. “Was that your manager? He was a little gruff the way he spoke to you. Do you want me to walk with you to meet the plumber?”

I held up my hands. “No, I’m good. It shouldn’t take too long.”

Weston was nowhere in sight as I made my way down to the basement laundry room. At first, when he’d walked in and found me sitting at the bar talking to another man, I’d felt guilty. But as I rode the elevator, my mindset started to shift.

What an asshole.

How dare he storm into the bar and give me such an attitude?

He hadn’t even spoken to me the last few days.

He’d been completely unprofessional.

By the time the elevator doors slid open in the basement, whatever misplaced guilt I’d been feeling had morphed into anger. My heels echoed loudly on the floor as I marched to the laundry room and swung open the door.

Finding Weston inside, I tossed him a dirty look and walked over to the plumber, wearing the fake smile I usually reserved for when my father was around. “Hi. Mr. Lockwood said you wanted my approval on the estimate?”

The plumber had been kneeling on the floor packing away his tools. He snapped the top of the metal box shut and stood, extending a piece of paper to me. “I capped off the water that goes to the two machines on the end for now. But you got some pretty bad rusted pipes overhead.” He pointed to the ceiling where a few tiles had been removed, exposing the plumbing. “Looks like you have original pipes in here. They should have been replaced twenty years ago. You’ve been lucky. I gave you an estimate for re-piping all the machines to the main and an estimate for just getting these two machines up and running again.”

Great. Rotted pipes.

Looking down, I eyeballed the bottom line on the estimates. My family kept a database of approximate prices of most repairs. Managers could approve up to five percent more than the average, based on the job. When the pipe had burst earlier, I’d checked the average cost of replacing a broken pipe in the laundry room, and the repair estimate in my hand was in line with that. But I hadn’t checked what re-piping an entire laundry facility should cost.

I looked over at Weston. “Do you have any thoughts on this?”

He didn’t even glance at me as he responded. “I hopped on a washer and took a look at the pipes in the ceiling myself. No point in doing just a repair when everything up there is rotted. It’s a fair price.”