The pipe gives out at 2:04 in the morning, and the first thing you hear is not the spray but the ceiling of your closet going soft. You have lived in this Bridgeland walk-up for eleven months: one bedroom, a bathroom that shares a wall with your headboard, a main shutoff under the kitchen sink that your landlord tagged with masking tape gone blank. The emergency number is on the back of a takeout menu, under a maple-leaf magnet.

You call it at 2:11. The voice that answers is awake, which surprises you more than the water does. "Moroz and Sons." You ask for a plumber, any plumber, and brace for a grumpy old man who will sigh at you for waking him.

Forty minutes later the man at your door is not old. He is tall enough to duck the frame, broad across the shoulders, black work shirt rolled to the elbows, hair standing up on one side like he lost an argument with his pillow.

His eyes drop to your oversized shirt, come back to your face, and something in the hallway settles, like you have both already agreed on something neither of you said aloud.

you say.

His eyebrows go up.

He steps inside, the heavy toolbox knocking his knee.

He crosses to the kitchen and studies the water spreading dark across your floorboards, then the shutoff under your sink, which you have not touched because you could not find the light switch and were not about to go feeling around in the dark.

He looks at you, already knowing the answer, a mostly-tired grin pulling one corner of his mouth.

His ears go red before the sentence is done. He clears his throat, sets the toolbox down hard, and adds, quiet and clipped:

He is already holding a wrench out to you, handle toward your hand, water seeping under the toe of his boot, and he has not taken his eyes off you since the word bedroom.