“How’s it going here?” Janice said, racing up the stairs, her arms full of pillows. “Will you be finished by three, do you think? They’re having a housewarming party! Tonight! It’s just crazy! I have to stage the whole house, get fresh flowers and make all the beds and hang the towels and put this damn cow statue somewhere, what was I thinking when I ordered it, oh, and guess who doesn’t like fake orchids? My lesbians, that’s who!”

Good for the lesbians. “Can I help?” I asked. “I’m just in Noah’s way, and I’m great at making beds and such.”

“You’re an angel, Sadie! An angel! Noah, three o’clock?”

“No problem,” he said, looking back down at his work.

By three o’clock, the house was more or less in order, Noah was finished, Janice was thrilled with the window seat and now on her phone, yelling at someone. She handed us two envelopes, mouthed, Angels! and waved goodbye.

We walked out of the brownstone, despite the fact that I’d sort of been hoping to meet the owners and be invited to the party and end up snogging Noah on a pile of coats somewhere.

Noah opened his envelope. “Holy shit,” he said. “This is twenty percent more than my estimate.”

“She pays a rush fee. She’s a little crazy, but she’s kind of wonderful, too.”

“I should work here more often.”

Words I would’ve killed to hear once upon a time. I let it go, but the casual way he said it scraped my heart. “Well, now that she’s seen your work, she may well call you again.”

“Thanks for the referral, Sadie.”

“Of course.”

“You gonna see your boyfriend tonight?” he asked as we walked toward the truck.

“Oh. No. We broke up. He had a girl in every port, as the old saying goes. Or two ports, anyway.”

Noah stopped in his tracks. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“You heartbroken?”

For someone with the kind of verbal diarrhea I had, it was oddly hard to talk about this. Because it was him. Noah, the real breaker of hearts. “A little bit. I feel pretty dumb.”

“Because you didn’t know?”

“Yeah.” Naive, dopey, innocent Sadie.

“Because you trusted him to be honest.”

“Yep.”

“That’s not dumb, Sadie. That’s just . . . you. You believe in people.”

The wind rustled the maple leaves, which were so green and fresh they glowed. “Thanks, Noah.”

“You want me to beat him up for you?”

I laughed. “Nah. He’s a soft yacht salesman. You’re a badass carpenter. It would hardly be fair.”

The corner of his mouth tugged up. “Well, then. You wanna eat? I’m starving.”

“You mean here? In this horrible city you hate?”

“I don’t hate Brooklyn. Brooklyn’s nice.”

“Jump on the bandwagon, why don’t you? Sure, let’s go eat some street meat. It smells incredible.”