How Plumbing and Romance Connect

Love, Christmas, and Plumbing

Hello! This is a romance short story. Enjoy.
Lian woke up at exactly 1:12 on Christmas and didn't know why the hell she did. It was the one night of the year that she normally slept peacefully, going to bed early at the urging of her dad. Nonetheless, she was awake, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, and she was perfectly awake. She took in the sounds around her. There was the running of the washing machine that she turned on before bed, the quiet buzzing of the lights on the Christmas tree downstairs, the faint beat of bass coming from someone's party down the block. Other than that, there was the quiet pattering that she might've just imagined of fat snowflakes landing on the ground.
She looked out the window, turning onto her side. It was snowing, like it normally always was in New York around Christmas. These snowflakes were plump, the size of quarters, the size of dumplings in her mom's soup. The streetlights were on, and illuminated each flake in their halos of light. The ground was blanketed with a thick layer of white.
Sighing, she turned on the lamp next to her, reaching for her sketchpad. She would draw until she felt sleepy again.
Then, at the corner of her eye, she saw a light go on. She turned her head. In the window directly across the street, someone had turned on a lamp. A figure sat on the bed. What the person looked like, she couldn't discern. She began to draw.
The edge of a snowflake, filling the page, axes all meeting in the center, branches of ice. She drew for a while until motion caught her eye again. The person in the window was waving, waving with both arms. When they saw her turn, they quickly put a sign to the window: HELP ME?
Her heart beat quick and steady. She pretended she didn't notice the sign and went back to drawing, but her focus was really across the street. Help him or her with what? What if it was a rapist who wanted help with his boner? That was flat out creepy. She was about to turn out her lamplight when he held up another sign. PLUMBING?
Oh. She let out a breath through her lips. She lived in her dad's shop, or really the space above her dad's shop. Below her was the sign for Zhao's Plumbing. This time, she used a page in her  sketchbook to draw a big down arrow. Hopefully he was smart enough to figure out that it meant go down to the street. She held it up to the window for a minute, closed the curtain, and got a jacket and shoes on. She tucked pepper spray from her backpack into her jacket, and grabbed her dad's toolbox, one of many that he used for call-in jobs.
She passed her dad's bedroom and walked down into the street. The toolbox was hella heavy. Her boots made deep indents in the snow. The guy was already waiting in the street.
Because it was a guy. He was tall, much taller than her, with dark skin and closely cut hair. He was big, too, not muscely but not obese. He had a round face. His long eyelashes caught the snow, and he had a wide nose and lips. He had big feet- hands, too, she saw, glancing over him. He was wearing flannel pajama pants, a winter coat, snow boots, and a scarf. She thought the scarf was cute for some reason. She hoped that she didn't look too bad. Her hair had the tendency to create big tangles while she slept.
"Hi, um, sorry for making you come out here. But I really need some help." The guy scratched at the back of his neck.
"It's all right. I'm Lian." She stuck out her hand to shake his. He had a firm grip which she returned, just like her dad taught her.
"I'm Kamar," he said, his voice deep and pretty quiet. The wind easily caught it and whisked it away.
"So what do you need help with?" she asked, her voice grainy from sleep.
"Well, I think it would be better if you came inside. I mean, if that's all right, I know this is weird." He bit his lip. "Sorry bout waking you up."
"No, you didn't wake me up, I was already awake."
"Really?" he asked, sounding curious.
"Yeah, I just woke up on my own," she said completely truthfully. He smiled and then laughed- one merged into the other in a quick, beautiful evolution.
"Well, I'm glad you did." She couldn't say she was glad about her lack of sleep, but things sure were looking up. "So, uh, let's go inside?" Kamar spoke awkwardly, which made her feel at ease.
"Sure!"
He unlocked the front door, and they walked through a dimly lit hallway. Two guys came stumbling down the stairs, laughing so loudly it echoed through the stairwell, holding beers. They shoved past Lian and Kamar and then wobbled out the door.
"Sorry 'bout that," Kamar said with a sigh.
"It's not your fault. There's always a party going on, it seems like," Lian said as they walked up the stairs.
"Tell me about it. This apartment building has mainly college students. And you know college students," he said, sounding exasperated. Lian noticed Kamar's frame was wider than most, but the smoothness of his motions didn't make it seem like he was taking up that much space. He fumbled with the key when they got to his door.
"So, um, you're a college student?" Lian asked. He suddenly seemed much older and more intimidating. Lian was a senior in high school, and college seemed distant. Kamar wasn't her mental image of the average college student.
"Yeah, a freshman," he said. "Now, don't mind the mess," he warned as they entered his apartment.
It was perfectly neat. There were a few plates left on the table, sure, and shoes lying prone on the floor, but other than that it was neat. "I have a roommate, and he's really messy."
"It looks just fine to me," Lian said. They walked through his room, apparently going into the bathroom. That's usually where plumbing malfunctioned. There was not a thing out of place in Kamar's room; in fact, his bed was even straightened up a bit. A Star Wars poster hung over his bed, and his signs, posterboard with thick Sharpie letters on them, were lying on the floor near the window.
"Oh right," he said, as if just realizing that it wasn't completely trashed. "I'm kind of a neat freak. I forget that- yeah."
"It's okay," Lian said, laughing a little. "Your signs were a good idea," she said. He looked at them.
"Yeah, I kind of used the back of every poster project I've ever done, but hey. What can you do?" They stepped into the bathroom.
Hearing a loud rushing of water coming from the toilet brought her back to what they were supposed to be discussing: the plumbing problem.
"So, what happened exactly?" Lian said, setting down her tool kit.
"I woke up to go to the bathroom, and then when I went back to bed, the toilet kept making sound. That's never really happened. And I googled it, but the instructions didn't really make sense."
"Ah," she said. "That's simple." She got out a few things from her tool kit, glad it wasn't something complicated like a hot water problem. She took off the top of the toilet and checked the fill valve. She had a replacement fill valve in the box, so she switched out the old one. Liam was done in a few minutes. Kamar stood to the side, carefully watching her work.
"Thank you," he said. "Here, let me give you some money." He reached for his pocket and pulled out his wallet.
"No, please-"
"I insist."
"I really don't want money."
"Here." Kamar handed her a twenty dollar bill.
"I really don't want money, for once in my life I'd like to not do something for money," she said, sharper than she intended. He stared at her for a long split second, and then tucked the money back onto his wallet.
"Sorry," they said at the same time.
"I didn't mean it like that," Lain explained. "I just- yeah. I don't want to be paid for something done at 2 am on Christmas."
"I understand," he said. "Hey, well, I'll see you around?" She slowly got her tool kit back together, arranging and rearranging things.
"I guess." She stood. "I never asked— what are you majoring in?"
"Statistics and mechanical engineering," he replied.
"Sounds really complicated," she said. Math was always her worst subject.
"I guess. Lots of number and graphs and shit." Hearing him curse was weird for some reason. "What about you? What year are you in?"
"Oh, I'm just a senior in high school," she said, putting my hands in her pockets. "Not going to college yet." If she could even pay for it, she didn't say.
"You seem smart, you'll be fine." Kamar paused, his eyes searching her face, and then immediately backtracked. "I didn't mean it like that- because you're Asian or anything. Damn. I meant, you just seem smart to me."
"Um, thanks, I guess?" she replied, and then they both laughed awkwardly.
"You better get back to bed then, sorry I interrupted-"
"It's fine," she said quickly. "It really is." He smiled, shifting from one foot to the other.
"I mean, I can probably think of a lot of things you could do other than this- not saying I'm not enjoying this, talking to you and everything-"
"Can I have your number?" she interjected, grinning. Why not? He was fucking adorable.
"Uh, yeah, Lian." She took out her flip phone and entered the numbers he gave her, and then tucked it back in her pocket.
"Thanks," he said. "Again."
"You're welcome," she said.
"So, uh... What do you think you'll major in in college?" The dreaded question, but he meant well.
"The only thing I love is art, drawing specifically, but I don't know what I could do with that." She heaved a long sigh from her lips, heart still beating quickly from asking his number. It was so bold, so out of character, but on the other hand, it was 2 am on Christmas morning and she was in a stranger's apartment. Why let him go?
"You could do lots of things with that. You could do graphic design! That's a combination of art and engineering, what I do."
A combination of what he did and what she did. Him and her. "Yeah, I think that would work," she said with a smile.
The bathroom was small, so they were standing close when he slid an arm around her waist and their faces drew close. His breath smelled like mint, and his hands were large and strong. He closed the gap between them and gave her a long kiss.
They broke apart, and Lian stepped back. She ran a hand through her knotty hair. "Oh," was all she could say.
"I gotta get some sleep, but we'll talk?" he said, posing it as a question.
"Mhm," she said, and then with her heart beating quick, she leaned forward and gave him another short kiss. Or at least it was intended to be short. He slid an arm around her waist, under my jacket, and they closed their eyes. Just as their lips opened up and she felt his tongue on her lower lip, he let her go.
"Another time?" he said.
"Another time. And Merry Christmas," she said, hoping she wasn't blushing. "Bye, Kamar."
"Goodnight, Lian," he said. He smiled again, that evolution of a smile, and it was almost so bright that Lian had to look away. She turned and left. In the doorway, she realized she forgot her tool kit, and spun around to see that he was holding it out for her. They stood in the threshold, and Kamar said, "Bye, again." She laughed.
"Bye."
Outside, the snow had thinned, and tiny flakes were now falling from the sky. The distance across the street between the two places seemed much smaller now as Lian opened the door and returned to her house. Tiptoeing up the stairs, she imagined how she would tell her dad this story tomorrow.
She sat on her bed and let out a small giggle. Kamar's smile kept replaying in her mind, not to mention their kiss. She took out her sketchbook again, turned the page, and starting sketching him, the tip of her pencil moving swiftly.
Just before she she was about to go to bed, she got a text from him: Hi plumber girl. And she looked out the window and saw that he was holding a sign up to his window. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
The world was as wild and beautiful as a sky swirling with snowflakes and Santa sleighs as Lian smiled to herself, and then finally fell asleep.