Omar Reyes checked the work order once before he killed the van, then checked it again with the engine off—not because he'd forgotten anything. First calls always got a second look: address, unit, name, complaint, whatever the customer thought mattered enough to put in the request. Cassidy. Kitchen sink leaking into cabinet and onto floor. Mildew smell. Getting worse. Straightforward.

His tool bag sat upright on the passenger-side floor, zipped and packed the way he liked it. Adjustable wrenches, channel locks, basin wrench, flashlight, meter, plumber's putty, tape, and the small organizer of washers, nuts, screws, anchors, and fittings that solved more household problems than they had any right to. Enough for most sink calls. If it wasn't enough, he'd identify what was missing and go get it. That was the job.

The building was older without being interesting about it: trim softened by too many coats of paint, a handrail polished smooth by years of use, a floor that complained in a couple of predictable spots. Somewhere behind one of the doors a television argument was loud enough to hear without being clear enough to follow. Normal. The smell on Cassidy's floor was the first thing that broke the pattern.

Omar caught it halfway down the hall, faint enough that he could not separate it at first. Not garbage. Not cigarette smoke. Not an air freshener trying to cover either one. There was mildew in it when he got closer to her door, damp wood and old water, but underneath that was something warmer and more lived-in. He knocked. Something bumped inside.

"Shit."

Then, farther away, "Coming." The lock turned. Omar had a greeting ready. It disappeared when the door opened. Pink hair registered first, not styled-for-company pink but a loose messy knot already coming apart around Cassidy's face, strawberry-blonde showing at the roots. Then the oversized oatmeal-colored shirt, soft and loose through the shoulders and draped over a large, heavy bust, the placket hanging open in a lazy V that shifted whenever she moved. Then the pants.

They were cheap flare pants riding absurdly low on her hips, the kind of thin stretch fabric that probably looked harmless on a hanger. On Cassidy, the material had a much harder job. It hung normally below the knees, but through her thick thighs and broad hips it stretched until the pale skin beneath softened into view. So did the yellow thong.

The thong straps climbed high over her hips while the pants sat below them. Dark curls of pubic hair escaped above the front waistband and showed again at the upper inner thighs where the tiny underwear and low pants simply failed to contain her bush. Nothing looked shaped for the outfit. Nothing had been tidied into a neat border. It was just Cassidy's body hair doing what it did. On one upper inner thigh, a faint dried track had left the fine hair slightly clumped and the cheap fabric sticking differently against the skin, too ambiguous for Omar to name and too specific for him not to notice. Omar looked. Then his eyes dropped a little farther.

The front of the pants was pulled tight over a naturally prominent mound that still looked swollen from something he had no professional reason to guess at. The fabric had thinned most at the center, enough to show the darker shadow of her hair beneath it and the exaggerated fullness pressing outward behind the yellow thong. The line down the middle was deep enough to catch his attention and keep it there for a beat too long. Cassidy was still speaking. Omar realized he'd missed part of the sentence.

"Sorry."

She either did not know what he was apologizing for or did not care.

"You're Omar, right?"

"Yeah. Reyes Handyman." He lifted the tool bag slightly, because apparently he needed evidence. "Sink leak."

"That's me. Well. That's my sink. Come in."

She stepped aside. The instant her attention moved into the apartment, Omar's eyes dropped again. That was the first thing he learned about himself around Cassidy: when she looked at him, professionalism was easy. Face. Conversation. Work. When she looked away, his gaze developed its own priorities. The pants were worse from behind.

The waistband sat so low that the top of her butt crack showed even while she stood upright. The fabric stretched tight over a broad, heavy ass before loosening farther down, and the yellow thong underneath became a bright little line riding over her hips and disappearing between her cheeks. Dark curls showed again where the waistband sat too low and where the fabric pulled over the backs and insides of her thighs. Omar looked away. Then looked back because she was still facing forward.

The apartment gave him somewhere else to put his attention. She had completed every stage of laundry except being put away and now lived in a soft heap beside a chair. Dirty mugs and a plate with dried sauce occupied the coffee table. A charger crossed the couch. Books leaned sideways on a shelf. Her work bag sat near the door with a Montessori lanyard hanging partly out of it. Nothing had been arranged for company. Then he noticed the towel over the coffee table.

It had been thrown there rather than placed, and it did a bad job of hiding what was underneath. One long black shape extended beyond an edge. On the other side, the textured end of something much larger remained visible. Omar gave it one look. Mostly one. A bottle of lubricant stood on the kitchen counter. Another sat near the couch. Beyond the kitchen, an open doorway revealed a tripod, lights, monitor, cables, shelving, and farther back a machine with a motor housing and adjustable arm. Omar knew what it was. He had never repaired one.

That did not mean he had never seen one. The apartment answered the question of Cassidy's side work without requiring him to ask, so he did not. Then the smell reached him properly. Mildew came from the kitchen, but underneath it was the apartment itself: old food, warm fabric, skin, sweat, and the unmistakable lingering musk of sex. Not perfume trying to suggest intimacy. The actual smell of a body and the things a body had done in a space that had not been aired out or scrubbed down for company. Omar inhaled before he thought better of it.

The scent caught warm in the back of his throat. He had been in homes that smelled bad. Cassidy's apartment was dirty, definitely, and unwashed in a way most customers would have apologized for more seriously. But it did not feel rotten or abandoned. It felt used. Private. Intimate. He liked it enough that liking it immediately became a problem.

"Sorry about everything," Cassidy said, waving vaguely at the room.

The gesture could have covered the dishes, laundry, toys, lube, camera equipment, clothes, smell, or all of it.

"It's fine."

"That sounded professionally diplomatic."

"I've seen worse."

"Everybody says that."

"Everybody thinks they're the worst."

Cassidy laughed, low and real, surprised out of her rather than offered politely. Omar liked that too.

"The sink?" he asked.

"This way."

She turned. His eyes went straight to her ass. Of course they did. The pants traced her closely enough that he could see the weight of each step beneath the fabric, the yellow thong narrowing into the center. Omar looked at the kitchen, then back at Cassidy, then at the kitchen again. He could control his hands. He could control his mouth. Apparently his eyes had entered negotiations. Cassidy reached the counter and bent slightly to move a mug. The pants changed completely.

The waistband dipped. Half of one cheek rose above it, then nearly half the other. What remained covered stretched thin enough that the fabric went from merely translucent to nearly transparent over the fullest part of her ass. The yellow thong sharpened beneath it. So did the dark hair along the upper thighs and the deep line between her cheeks. Omar stopped walking for half a beat.

Cassidy had to know the pants did that. There was no way she'd ever bent in front of a mirror without learning it. But knowing did not make the movement feel staged. She was moving a mug. That was all. She straightened and started to turn. Omar was already looking at the sink.

"Under here," she said.

"Got it."

His voice sounded normal. Small victory. The floor in front of the cabinet was damp, but not evenly. The freshest water clearly spread from beneath the sink. Farther forward were cloudy dried edges and a faint yellowish patch that did not follow the same path. Omar looked at it for an extra second. He had thoughts. He did not need them. The cabinet was the job.

"How long has it been wet?"

"I noticed the mildew last night."

"The water?"

"Also last night."

"Before that?"

"I wasn't inspecting the floor."

Fair. The cabinet door stuck hard enough that Cassidy had to crouch and give it a real pull. That put Omar at exactly the wrong angle to be a decent man with working eyes. The waistband slid down the back of her hips, leaving the upper half of both cheeks bare. Below that, the cheap fabric stretched so tightly over the lower curves that the yellow thong might as well have been uncovered. Cassidy yanked the door. It popped open.

"See? Functional."

Omar was still looking at her ass. She started to turn. His eyes dropped into the cabinet.

"Technically."

Her laugh followed him under the sink. The cabinet bottom had darkened around the disposal and trap, the particleboard swollen near the front edge. Mildew had established itself in one rear corner. This had been wet longer than one night. Omar felt the underside of the disposal. Wet. Then the trap connection. Also wet. He dried both with a rag and waited. A new bead formed along the disposal housing. Another collected at the trap. Two failures. Useful, diagnostically.

"Can you run the water?"

"Yeah."

Omar positioned himself partly beneath the cabinet while Cassidy stepped to the sink.

"Cold first."

The faucet started. The trap began to weep faster, and a second wet line appeared along the disposal body.

"Hot."

Same failures.

"Off."

Silence returned except for the drip. Cassidy came closer. "How bad?"

"Bad enough I don't want you using the sink until I fix it."

"That sounds rude of the sink."

"Very."

He found the crack in the disposal housing, small but real, and the trap connection was deteriorated enough that he did not trust a washer-and-prayer fix.

"What is it?"

"Disposal housing is cracked. Trap connection's going too."

He pointed with the flashlight. Cassidy crouched beside him. Close. Her shoulder came within inches of his. The loose shirt shifted forward as she leaned, the weight of her breasts changing the drape and opening the placket enough to give him a pale glimpse of their inner curve before he redirected the light and his attention toward the pipe.

"Here. See the wet line?"

Cassidy leaned farther. Her hair dropped over one shoulder. The smell of her intensified. At the door, Omar had thought the apartment smelled like sex. Beside her, he understood that the apartment smelled like Cassidy because Cassidy herself carried the same warm mixture in stronger concentration: skin, sweat, the faint sourness of not having showered, and a thick intimate musk rising from between her legs. He breathed in. Then, because the first breath had not been accidental enough, he did it again.

"Yeah," Cassidy said. "I see it."

"The disposal needs replaced. Trap too."

"Can you do that?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

"I don't have the parts."

"Less cool."

Omar smiled before he meant to. Cassidy caught it immediately.

"Oh, good. You do have facial expressions."

"Limited package."

"Do I have to pay extra?"

"Depends how bad the sink is."

She laughed again, and the ordinary conversation helped. It gave him something normal to hold onto while her scent was making the space under the sink feel much less ordinary. He checked the disposal model plate, measured the trap run, and looked over the dishwasher connection. Standard enough. He was building the parts list in his head when he realized the sink basin was too full of dishes for the access he wanted from above.

"I need you to clear some of this."

Cassidy looked at the sink, then at him, then back at the sink as if she'd hoped the problem might reconsider.

"Right."

Her solution was to relocate every dish to the nearest available horizontal surface. A bowl went on the counter. Two plates went on the stove. A mug landed on the windowsill. Another bowl started to balance on the first until Omar reached up and separated them.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

She leaned across the sink for something at the back. Omar looked. He was beyond pretending the glances were accidental. The reach pulled the flare pants tight from every direction. The upper half of both ass cheeks rose bare above the waistband, while the stretched fabric over the rest became almost transparent. The yellow thong showed cleanly underneath, and dark natural hair was visible along the upper backs and insides of her thighs. Cassidy reached farther. The waistband dipped another fraction.

The pants seemed to be staying up mostly because her hips were too wide to let them fall. Omar let himself stare while she focused on the dishes. One second became two, then three. Her ass shifted when she moved a plate, and his eyes followed. He wanted to look. That was the truth of it.

Wanting to look did not mean he was going to touch her, comment on her body, forget the repair, or make her responsible for his reaction. It simply meant that Cassidy looked the way she looked, and when she turned away, Omar's attention went with her. The shirt rode up with the reach. The pants rode down. Dark curls of her bush escaped along the low waistband and continued beneath the thinned fabric at the upper thighs. Nothing about her looked arranged for him. That was what kept getting him. Cheap pants. Comfortable shirt. Body hair left alone. A woman moving around her own kitchen without treating any of it as an event.

Then Cassidy straightened partway. His gaze shifted to the front, which was no safer. The cheap knit pulled tight over the swelling left from the previous night, with the yellow thong and dark shadow of her bush visible beneath it. Omar looked longer than he should have.

Cassidy shifted her stance. The work light caught the stretched fabric and made it thinner still for a moment. He dragged his attention back to the trap. Turn the nut. Check the fitting. Do the job. Above him, Cassidy stepped closer to clear the last few dishes. One bare foot landed beside his hip, then the other. Now she was almost directly over him. The cabinet trapped the warm air. Her scent settled into it.

Here it became more than background. Sweat. Skin. Genital musk. The mustier funk of an unwashed body. Old sex lingering on skin and fabric. Something faintly damp and salty around her thighs. The mildew was still there, but this close it lost. Cassidy overwhelmed it. Omar realized he was breathing through his nose on purpose. He closed his eyes for half a second. That was worse. Without the visual distraction, the smell became everything. Warm. Animal. Intimate. He opened his eyes and found the cabinet again.

Pipes. Work light. Cracked disposal. Normal things. Then Cassidy bent over him for the last glass. His eyes moved immediately. Half her ass came out above the waistband. The rest showed through stretched-thin fabric below. The yellow thong disappeared between her cheeks. Natural hair framed the upper thighs. Omar stopped working. For maybe three seconds. Maybe four. Long enough to admit the word for what he was doing. Ogling.

He was not ashamed of wanting to look. The private part of him that liked pretty things, feminine things, watching, lingering, and being visually overwhelmed had existed long before Cassidy opened her door. She had not created that part of him. What was new was how perfectly she collided with it while doing something as ordinary as moving dirty dishes.

She was not performing for him. The pants were cheap. The shirt was comfortable. Her bush escaped because she did not care enough to groom it into obedience. Her ass came out because the waistband was ridiculous and she already knew that. Her smell filled the apartment because she liked her home lived-in. Cassidy was simply existing. Omar was the one turning it into an event inside his own head. She began to turn. His eyes snapped back to the disposal.

"Is that enough room?"

"Yeah."

Normal voice. Another minor miracle.

"There's one more glass."

"Go ahead."

She turned back. His gaze dropped again before she finished turning. So that was the rule, apparently. When Cassidy looked at him, he looked where he was supposed to. When she didn't, he indulged himself. For now, he could live with that. The last glass came out, and Omar finally had the access he needed. He checked the mounting assembly and drain connection from above and below, inspected the trap properly, and confirmed what he already suspected. The disposal housing had failed. The trap connection was too far gone to trust. Both needed replacement.

He turned the disposal by hand. Rough.

"You put coffee grounds down this?"

Cassidy paused.

"Maybe."

"Eggshells?"

"Maybe."

"Anything else?"

She thought about it. Omar looked up at her.

"Don't answer that."

Cassidy laughed.

"Probably safer."

He shook his head and checked the dishwasher connection. Serviceable. Trap run was standard one-and-a-half. Nothing exotic.

"I need a replacement disposal, trap assembly, and a couple fittings."

"Today?"

"If the supply house has them."

"How long?"

"About an hour."

Cassidy nodded.

"Okay."

"Don't use the sink while I'm gone. Don't run the dishwasher either."

She looked at the dishwasher like she had just remembered it existed.

"Also achievable."

"Leave the cabinet open. It'll help the wood dry."

"Cabinet open," she repeated with exaggerated seriousness.

Omar began packing the tools he did not need to leave out. Cassidy wandered back toward the living room. He watched her go. Of course he did. The pants settled slightly as she walked but never climbed high enough to cover the top of her crack. The yellow thong ghosted beneath the fabric across her hips. Her ass moved heavily under the thin material. She stopped by the coffee table and looked down at the towel.

"Oh."

One of the objects underneath had shifted enough that the long black end was obvious. Cassidy pulled the towel farther across it, briefly exposing more of the textured shape on the other side before covering that too.

"That's probably more polite."

She said it the way somebody might say they'd moved shoes out of a walkway. Omar looked at the towel, then at her.

"Your apartment."

"Exactly."

No embarrassment. No test. Just fact. She came back toward the kitchen, and his eyes went down again. He was going to need that hour away more than he'd expected. As he stood, his gaze crossed the open creator room again: tripod, lights, camera equipment, the machine farther inside. Cassidy noticed him looking. Her expression changed slightly, not defensive so much as curious, like she was waiting to see if he was going to become weird now that he had connected the obvious dots. Omar pointed at the wet cabinet instead.

"If the water spreads while I'm gone, put a towel right at the cabinet edge. Don't worry about what's already farther out."

Cassidy glanced at the floor. For the first time, Omar wondered whether she knew he'd noticed that not every mark there looked like plumbing water. Something almost amused crossed her face.

"Got it."

Nothing else. Fine. He picked up his tool bag. Cassidy followed him to the door.

"I might not hear you when you come back."

Omar stopped. "You going out?"

"No. I'll be here. Just..." She made a vague gesture toward the apartment. "Doing stuff."

The creator room sat open behind her. The towel-covered shapes waited on the coffee table. The lube was still on the counter. Omar understood the sentence in several possible ways and decided not to choose one.

"I'll knock."

"If I don't answer, come in. I'll leave it unlocked."

Omar looked at her.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'll probably have headphones on."

The permission mattered because it gave him a clear rule for the return, not because of what his imagination wanted to do with it.

"Okay. I'll knock first."

"Responsible."

"I try."

Cassidy leaned against the doorframe. The low waistband still showed the top of her crack, and dark curls escaped above the front as naturally as if they belonged there. Because, for Cassidy, they did. Omar made himself look at her face.

"About an hour."

"Cool." She smiled. "I've got stuff to do anyway."

There was nothing technically suggestive about the sentence. His body did not care about technicalities. He stepped into the hallway. Warm apartment air followed him. So did her smell. Mildew, food, fabric, sweat, sex. Cassidy.

"Hey, Omar."

He turned. She stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame, oatmeal shirt slipped slightly off one shoulder, pink hair falling out of whatever loose arrangement she'd started the morning with.

"Thanks for not being weird."

Omar was not sure which thing she meant: the apartment, the toys, the machine, her clothes, the smell, or all of it.

"I'm here to fix the sink."

Cassidy's mouth pulled sideways, almost approving.

"Yeah."

"See you in an hour."

"See you."

The door closed. Omar stood on the landing one second longer than necessary, then went downstairs. By the time he reached the van, the practical part of his brain had begun rebuilding the world into manageable pieces. Replacement disposal. Half horsepower. One-and-a-half-inch trap kit. Discharge tube. New washers. Maybe a coupling depending on what was available. Work first. That part was easy.

Less easy was the second inventory running beside the parts list: pink hair, oatmeal shirt, yellow thong, cheap fabric failing every time she bent, badly hidden toys, lube beside dirty dishes, the machine in the open room—and the smell. God, the smell. Omar sat behind the wheel and admitted something to himself without drama. He had enjoyed looking. A lot. He also knew where the line was.

His hands had stayed on tools, his mouth professional, his diagnosis correct. Cassidy had not become an excuse for him to stop being the man who had arrived to solve a plumbing problem. That mattered alongside the fact that every time she looked away, he had practically devoured her with his eyes. Both things could be true. He wrote the parts list into his phone, checked it once, and started the engine. An hour, he'd told her. Probably close to it.

Long enough for Cassidy to do whatever "stuff" meant in an apartment where private life apparently did not embarrass her. Omar pulled away from the building and headed for the supply house. He had no idea he was going to be back early.