A man fixes what’s broken in a woman’s house long after he’s stopped being able to fix what’s broken between them.
Brett was on the phone with Kelly, listening as she recounted the small dramas of her workday.
“So-and-so was complaining about this and that,” she said, her voice running out of steam until resignation set in.
Then a younger voice broke through in the background.
“Mom? Did you turn on the hot water somewhere?”
“No,” Kelly said, doing a quick mental fly-by of every faucet and pipe in the house.
“Oh—because the water just went cold. I hurried to rinse the shampoo out before it froze me. I had the valve turned all the way hot and nothing.”
Kelly sighed. “Shoot.”
Brett heard her chair scrape back, footsteps cross the floor, then fade toward the backyard and up the narrow side path to the water-heater cabinet.
“Great. This is all I need,” she muttered, defeat and resolve sharing the same breath.
He pictured her wrestling with the bent metal door. Years of half-successful attempts had warped it, each one making the next worse. Tin snapped and clanked until it finally gave.
“Whew. That door’s harder every time,” she said.
“Yeah, I know it’s bent. I’ll straighten it next time I’m there,” Brett replied, imagining the heater from memory as she stared at it in person.
“Dang, Brett—it’s leaking.”
“From where?” he asked, already moving into fix-it mode.
“I don’t know… everywhere, it looks like.”
“Top or bottom?”
She pushed deeper into the cramped space. “Bottom. Water everywhere. Great. What am I gonna do? It’s Saturday and Callum’s already gone to work.”
Callum—her son—worked at the big-box hardware store. He wore the orange vest at work but never seemed to think of putting it on at home.
Brett was already pulling on his boots. He knew what came next.
“Oh my God, Brett, who am I gonna call? I don’t know any plumbers this time of day.”
He could hear it in her voice: the damsel in distress, hoping, knowing, regretting what he was about to say.
“I’ll be there in a bit,” he told her, trying to sound like the knight in shining armor while keeping a little distance from full commitment.
Over the years, Brett had answered this call many times—broken drains, outlets, tripped circuits, sprinklers, shower doors.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help, but he lived an hour away. After long weeks of work, sore back, stiff hands, weekends were for healing, not fixing. Still, he never said no. He didn’t want tired to sound like weak.
He wasn’t weak. Just worn down. Generous beyond reason—his bank account often reminded him afterward.
Kelly saw it differently. She asked because, to her, there was no one else—and that’s what boyfriends did. She cooked for him sometimes, brought little treats she knew he liked. More than that, she gave him her attention, her approval, and once upon a time, her love—expressed in every physical way she knew how.
In those days she’d wear the short shorts, sneak behind him, bend over just so—teasing, playful, a promise of reward. That was their trade, the unspoken agreement. Not sex for hire, not exactly, but a kind of economy. Everyone trades something.
For a long while, it worked.
But things changed. Brett came over less. Kelly complained more. The intimacy had thinned to nothing—it had been twice in almost two years, and both of them knew it.
He wasn’t the same soft-spoken man he’d been. She wasn’t the flirty, forgiving woman she once was. What remained were smaller transactions: resentment for service, silence for effort.
He felt used.
She felt neglected.
He felt neglected.
She felt used up.
No one was winning.
Brett drove to the hardware store, bought what he thought he’d need, and headed to Kelly’s.
She met him at the door with her best version of a smile—relief disguised as affection.
He told her to order a new water heater online; he’d seen one that could be delivered that day. Tomorrow he’d install it. For now he’d drain the old one, cap the lines, and at least restore cold water for the night.
Then he was in his element—work mode. Focused, efficient, steady.
Kelly watched from the doorway. She loved Brett in that state: all muscle, sweat, and purpose, as if God had made him for this exact moment fifty-seven years ago. It still stirred something in her, though she’d never admit it.
But the teasing days were gone. The apologies had lost weight. He fixed things, wrote her poems, told her she was beautiful. She needed the new language—the therapy words, the pop-psych affirmations that promised understanding.
He tried. But he was still himself.
And wasn’t that the man she’d fallen for?
He wiped his hands and called through the window, “I’ll be back—need another plug, both lines are leaking,” then drove off again.
At the register, entering the company name for tax purposes, he thought of all the receipts—each one a small record of care never repaid. He filed this one the same way he filed the memory: somewhere he could feel but never find.
When he returned, the new heater was already there, a clean cardboard box, slightly shorter but wider than him. He muscled the old one out, heavy with twenty-five years of rust and sediment. It refused to drain.
He thought of Kelly.
Of himself.
Clean water came in, but what came out always ran through the rust. Hot, cold, tepid—touched by what had settled over the years. Like them. It still worked, sort of, so they lived with brown water.
He sat back a moment, watching the old tank leak into the dirt. The water darkened the ground, spreading slowly before sinking away. There was something almost merciful about it—the way even waste found a place to disappear.
Bridget, Kelly’s daughter, appeared in the doorway.
“Hi, Brett. What happened?”
“It rusted through,” he said. “Shut itself off. No flame, no heat.”
“Geez, no wonder it was freezing.” She laughed and shivered.
“Yeah, I bet. Where’s your mom?”
“She went to the store or something.”
“Typical,” he said. “Didn’t want to get put to work.”
He meant it as a joke, but the loneliness caught in his throat.
Once, she would have stood right there, watching him, pride and heat in her eyes.
Now only silence.
The dead water heater lay beside him, smaller somehow, diminished in both size and meaning.
When Kelly finally returned, she called softly, “Want something to drink?”
“No, I’m good,” Brett said. “It’s all connected. You should have hot water soon.”
He waited, half-hoping for a spark, a glance, a brush of her leg—anything to remind him they still lived inside the same story. But nothing came.
He wondered, not for the first time, if he was enough.
No.
Too much, maybe. Too eager. Too something.
She’d once said, It’s not you, it’s me. Lately it had become, It’s you—so it becomes me.
A sleight of hand that left him carrying most of the weight.
He packed up his tools. Kelly and Bridget thanked him.
At the curb she waited, parade-like, arms folded as he loaded the truck.
He made a half-joke about her sexiness, hoping to draw the old spark back, one last flicker.
Instead, she stepped forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him deeply.
Brett liked this too—maybe even more.
He didn’t know if it was need or want that kept him orbiting her, only that the pull still existed.
Kelly, in all her splendor—everything he’d ever wanted in a woman—held him like he mattered.
It would be enough to carry him through till tomorrow.
He’d already left a couple of tools behind on purpose, a reason to return.
For tonight he was in motion again,
a moon orbiting his Venus,
bright, alluring,
pulled by a gravity only they could feel.
The next day,
worlds collided.
BB Grey--musings 
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