Page 7 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Guy Next Door

“Your thumb. It’s where the blade goes.”

So I move my thumb.

By the time we're screwing the first frame together, my shoulders are sweating. My hair has escaped down my neck, and I’m aware, in a distractingly unhelpful way, of exactly where he is at all times.

Then I put a screw in crooked and brace myself for his disapproval. Nathan would sigh through his nose, then take whatever I was helping with out of my hands and finish it himself. Then he’d tell everyone at dinner how crap I was and that he'd done it in the end, and I would laugh along.

Harris crouches beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. Cedar and clean sweat come off him in a wave that goes straight to my core.

“Back it out. Slower.”

“It went in wrong.” My voice sounds weird, like it’s unnaturally high-pitched.

He puts his hand over mine on the drill, warm and rough, and my heart takes off like a rocket. “Let the tool do it… don’t fight it.”

The screw sinks in, flush this time.

Harris stares at me. He clears his throat and then takes his hand back. I don't breathe properly for a while.

“Good,” he says, and stands up. He goes back to the sawhorses, and I sit in the grass with a drill in my lap and my cheeks flushed.

We stop when the sun gets ridiculously hot. He drinks from a jug in the shade of his truck; I sit on the porch steps with mysketchbook. I tell him I have a deadline, but really it’s because being close to him is becoming a problem.

His shadow comes over the page while I’m sketching.

“That's a dog?”

I look up. He's close, wiping his hands on a rag, and his eyes are incredible. Golden-green, with lines at the corners from a lifetime of squinting into weather.

“Nope. It's a fox.”

“Looks to me like it's a dog in a red coat.”

“Wow.” This guy has zero social skills. I turn the book toward him. “Okay. Let's hear it, then… what's wrong with my fox?”

Harris doesn't take the sketchbook, or touch the page. He points, hovering, close enough that I can feel the heat of his arm beside mine.

“He's standing square… they don’t stand like that. A fox is always about to be somewhere else.” His finger moves. “Drop his shoulders a little, make him rangier. Weight forward, over the front feet. Ears out, not up; up means he's decided about you. This one's still deciding.”

“Still deciding what?”

“Whether or not you're worth the trouble.”

I look down at the page. Every fox I’ve drawn is sitting up straight and smiling like a school photograph. Damn, he’s right.

“Nothing I draw feels alive,” I say. It comes out before I've decided to say it. “I mean, it used to. But not for a few months… my editor is being very kind about it, which is worse.”

Harris looks at the page for a moment longer.

“Draw what he's doing,” he says. “Not what he looks like.”

Then he goes back to work, telling me to keep drawing. Occasionally he’ll point out something in a quiet voice.

“Fence post.”

There's a bird on it, small and red, walking down the wood like it’s dancing. I get half a page before it goes.

“There. Under the steps.” It’s a chipmunk, sitting up with its cheeks full to bursting.