Assistant: You are a summarizer for a FanFiction Reader App (AO3). Your primary task is to generate concise summaries of chapter content, highlighting important ‘characters’, ‘events’, and ‘significant terms’. Ensure the summary is clear, written in understandable language and focused on key elements.
If queried about anything unrelated to the story, or the chapter, politely inform the user that you cannot assist with that. Maintain a friendly tone throughout, don't make things up, stay factual. 
Please provide a summary that is around 3-5 sentences long, if there is something to write about, incorporating essential keywords and highlighting pivotal events.
IMPORTANT: When the USER says bye, you will respond with %CLOSE_REQUESTED%, this will trigger the app to close the chat. This is very important, so don't forget it!
Assistant: Title: Nights Like This One
        Author: moderatelytroubled moderatelytroubled 
        Chapter: 1/26 
        Summary: It’s 2003. Joel Miller is hired by an elderly woman to fix up her home. However, in the middle of the renovations, she dies and her daughter, Lily, moves from California to Austin to live in her mother's home. Joel continues to work on the house despite the two of them constantly butting heads. Tensions rise and the two are destined to crash whether they like it or not.
  ______________
  
    Joel Miller finds the love of his life right before the world ends.
        Contents: Chapter 1: I.
    

    


  

  
  
    
    Part One (Before)
  “Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.” 

   — Pablo Neruda, Tonight I Can Write 
  “Something old and new, memories for you and me.” 
— Paul McCartney, Junk 
  February 3, 2003

   
Lily couldn’t remember this house ever feeling so empty.Not in the seven years she’d been coming to visit, not even after her father died.Not that her father’s presence ever made her feel full… in any sense of the word.But that was the thing, the house wasn’t empty, not in any physical sense. It was cluttered— trinkets crowded and stacked into each corner, adorning every shelf, piles of books littered the coffee table, the overflowing shelf at the back corner of the living room (mostly Bibles of every translation- the only literature her mother ever chose to read), her mom had taken up collecting tea cups in her old age— those occupied most of the space along the shelves in the kitchen. But even still, the place felt vacant— void of anything warm or alive.It even smelled wrong, musty, and slightly damp, like the walls were sagging with water damage even though they looked just fine to her.She exhaled sharply, her ribs rattling like the cage behind them was as empty as the house felt. She carefully sat down on her mother’s ratty armchair— the brown fabric was frayed and tearing off the arms, revealing the splintered wood beneath.This place was a dump, but it was also hers.Her mother had left it to her in her will, mortgage already paid off, ongoing renovations already entirely paid for even though they were barely underway.It was three times the size of the apartment she paid three-thousand dollars to rent in the heart of San Francisco’s Financial District.It had a backyard, a porch, a f@ck@ng garage.All of that was unheard of back home, especially on her meager SF Weekly salary.But did she really want to live in Texas? In her deceased mother’s home?She told herself that she was still on the fence about that decision, even though she was here, even though she’d already handed in her resignation at her job that she had worked painstakingly to get after graduating from Berkeley.Her manager had told her she could have her job back if she decided to move back to the Bay.She thought that maybe he’d only said that because her mom was dead.It had been a shock, in the way that it was sudden, heart attack, but not entirely surprising. Her parents had her late, her mother was forty-five when she’d been born, her dad fifty-two.She had always found it odd, in a heart-wrenching type of way, that her parents had waited that long to have a child that it seemed they didn’t really want.That thought alone made a swirling bout of guilt slosh away in her gut. She shouldn’t be thinking those things, not when her mom had died, alone, in this house that she now owned, less than a month ago.The funeral and the calls and obtaining the death certificate and the property titles and everything else you’re forced to think about when your parent dies had taken up the entirety of her physical and emotional life for the past month. She hadn’t even cried yet, didn’t know if she even would, which surely pointed to something being horrifically and disgustingly wrong with her. Did she possess any empathy? Any emotion? Was she perhaps a secret psychopath or something equally as cruel?She felt sick at the thought, her throat arid, her tongue a bit too big in her mouth, like maybe she might choke on it.She buried her face in her hands, elbows propped up on her knees. She was tired, the kind of tired that sinks into your bones, makes it feel as though your muscles have atrophied. Even when she was double-majoring at Berkeley— journalism and political science— on top of waitressing at a brewery downtown, she’d never experienced this brand of exhaustion, like if she let herself, she might be able to lie down and sleep through the next year.She couldn’t do that though. Now that her attention was no longer laser focused on the aftermath of her mother’s death, she needed to figure out what she was doing. Her things were still mostly packed, stuffed in boxes that were pressed up against the walls or overflowing onto the floor in the guest room that she had taken to sleeping in because she couldn’t stomach the notion of sleeping in her dead mother’s bed. If she was going to stay here, in the only house she’d ever have the chance of owning, then she needed to find a job, start networking, decide which things of her mother’s she wanted to keep, unpack.It all felt like too much, overwhelming in a way that made her feel like she was ten feet under water, thrashing and clawing, trying to fight her way to the surface without a life raft.Part of her wanted to give up, put the house on the market and lug all her things back to California. That would be easy. She’d lived in the Bay her entire life, she had connections there, she probably wouldn’t even have to ask to get her job back, they would offer it to her without question. She was a good journalist, too good for SF Weekly and they knew it. She would take back her desk and her title and be content with getting underpaid until she had enough articles under her belt to apply to the Chronicle.That’s what she wanted, right? It was certainly what she’d been working toward— sacrificing sleep and pay and relationships to finally see her name in the byline on the front page of the City’s biggest and most respected paper.But lately, even before her mother’s passing, she’d felt a little trapped— or maybe trapped wasn’t the right word. She kept thinking about Sisyphus— a man immortalized in Greek mythology that she’d learned about in the sole philosophy class she’d taken in undergrad— condemned to push a rock up a hill for all of eternity. She’d started to feel like that man as of late, monotonously pushing up a hill of her own creation.
  Work, gym, take-out, sleep, work, gym, take-out, sleep.
She’d lost contact with many of the friends she’d had in high school and college, she occasionally hung out with her neighbor, Laura, who owned a yoga studio in South Beach, but she couldn’t categorize their relationship as anything other than a step above friendly acquaintances. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since her freshman year of college, though her list of one-night stands and no-strings-attached trysts was longer than she’d like to admit. She had her work, and until recently, that had felt like enough. But the empty cavern that felt like it was growing to occupy most of her chest over the last few months only felt more substantial now that her mother was gone, even if she hadn’t had much of a relationship with her since her parents had up and moved to the outskirts of Austin a few months after she’d started at Berkeley. Still, she was alone now, not just in San Francisco, but in life. She had no one she could sincerely call a friend anymore, no boyfriend, and now, no parents. She was adrift, floating or in free fall, with no tether.That should have made her cry, but it just made her feel even more tired.Her destructive thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door— three timed strikes against the wood that made her jump, her heart hammering away in her chest.
  At least she could still feel her heart, maybe it hadn’t shriveled up and died after all.
She pushed herself up by the ratty arms of the chair, sliding across the hardwood in her socks, too tired, even, to really pick up her feet.She clicked the lock and tugged open the door, being greeted by a chest— wide and clad in a plain, dark blue t-shirt. She raked her eyes up the tall stranger until she finally met his face— her still beating heart jumping a bit in her chest as she met his eyes— warm brown and soft, looking like they belonged to someone else entirely, not this mountain of a man who was standing before her. The rest of his features weren’t nearly as soft— sharp jaw, hooked nose, faint lines between his thick eyebrows. His mouth was soft though, plush bottom lip a bit larger than his upper one, which was shadowed a bit by a mustache that grew into a patchy bit of scruff that covered that sharp jawline.She was studying that mouth when it moved, uttering her name in a brassy baritone that made goosebumps rise along the bare skin of her arms.
  Who the f@ck is this man and how the hell does he know my name?
She met his eyes again and was once again taken aback by how warm they looked in juxtaposition to the rest of his face.“Joel,” he said after uttering her own name, “we spoke on the phone.”She racked her brain, trying to remember speaking to someone named Joel in the slew of phone calls she’d had to take over the past month.He must have seen her struggling because he motioned down to the toolbox that sat next to his boot.“I’m with Miller Construction and Renovations. Your—” he coughed, reaching up to rub the back of his neck with one disturbingly large hand, “your mother hired me to redo the bathrooms and the kitchen.”She remembered now, vaguely. He’d called a couple days after she arrived in Texas asking for Pattie, who she had to inform him— along with all the people in her mother’s address book— had died. That’s when she found out her mother had already paid for the ongoing renovations on the house. She’d rescheduled his next visit three weeks out, which she realized as she stared up at him, was today.“Sh@t, I’m sorry, I— it slipped my mind,” she stammered, stepping back into the house to let him inside.“No worries at all, that’s um— it’s understandable,” he said, leaning down to grab his tools before he crossed the threshold, his presence buzzing through the dead house, his body looking a little too large for its walls, and not just in stature.She closed the door shut behind him, leaning against it as he stood a few feet away, his eyes ricocheting around the room before they landed back on her.Something about him made her feel small, and not just in size— though he was probably about two times hers in both weight and nearly in height. She didn’t normally feel small around men, at least not the ones in San Francisco— lean and docile for the most part, soft hands from working behind a desk their entire adult lives.
  What the f@ck did they feed them out here? Or was his bulking size just a result of manual labor and some hefty genetics?
“You might’ve seen it’s a bit of a mess back there, I need to install the tiles in the shower and rebuild the vanity— gonna start on that today.”His accent tickled something inside of her that she didn’t really want to acknowledge. She never had an affinity for cowboys. Growing up in California, San Francisco specifically, meant that she’d been fed the notion that most men out South were old fashioned in the worst way— right-wing politics in both the ballot box and the bedroom.“Alright,” she nodded curtly, suddenly hyper-aware that she was alone in the house with a stranger, and not just any stranger, but a very large male stranger who might— considering his geographical location— think her nothing more than an outlet for his frustrations.She swallowed hard despite how dry her mouth still was.“I’ll get to it, then,” he said, after a moment of silence that could only be described as tense (and/or) awkward.It was only when he disappeared through the hallway and into the guest bathroom that she felt like she could breathe again.__________Joel set his toolbox down, then dragged the box of tiles over from where he’d stashed them the last time he’d been here, only then did he allow himself to breathe, a deep shuddering breath that shook his chest.F@ck, she was pretty.Long, billowing brown hair that was so dark it nearly looked black when she stepped into the house from the doorway. Bright, piercing blue eyes that, despite their disarming beauty, appeared slightly hollow— though that was completely understandable considering her circumstance. Her cheeks were full, dusted with a light sprinkling of freckles that probably became more pronounced in the summertime, and her lips— pouty, pink, heart-shaped, biteable. As if that hadn’t been enough to kick alive some long-dormant feeling inside of him, the rest of her surely did the trick— lean, soft in all the right places, wide curve of her hips dipping into a waist he itched to place his hands on the moment she opened the door. Her right arm was covered in tattoo ink— twisting vines and delicate flowers, harsh and soft simultaneously, disappearing up under the sleeve of her too-tight t-shirt.How the f@ck had Pattie— as sweet as she had been to him— given life to that woman? And where had she been hiding her all this time?He shouldn’t be thinking that, shouldn’t be thinking any of the thoughts rattling away inside his head, not when that illusive woman had just lost her mother, not when he had been hired to come here to do a job. A difficult feat to accomplish when he didn’t think he’d seen a woman that alluring in all of his thirty-five years. Surely she must have just moved here, after her mother’s passing, because there was no way a woman that beautiful had been hiding under his nose this entire time.Not that he went out ever.But still, he would have seen her, at a restaurant or a festival or a grocery store.He passed his palm over his mouth, trying to focus on the job at hand when he could feel her presence tugging at him from down the hall.It would be inappropriate to ask her out, right?Right.She was grieving.He was here to do a job.But f@ck, he hadn’t felt that kind of pull toward someone in so long… ever… maybe.
  Jesus Christ he was losing it.
He’d seen her for all of five minutes and now he was convinced she was somehow the woman he’d been unconsciously holding out for…He needed to get out more. Maybe he could persuade Tommy into watching Sarah this weekend so he could try his luck at the bar down the street.He got to work on the mortar, trying to ignore the buzzing in his head that was making him feel like he was slipping toward insanity.
  Insane by thirty-five, I thought I had at least forty more years.
He was only about halfway done when he heard her socks sliding across the hallway, then stopping right at the doorway to the bathroom. The tug that erupted at the back of his neck was brutal, scorching his skin, like the back wall of the house had busted out and the sun was beaming directly onto his back.He risked a glance over his shoulder, to find her idling near the doorway, watching him intently, that plump bottom lip caught between her teeth.“Everythin’ alright?” he asked, trying to ignore the urge to drink her in again while he kept his eyes firmly on her face.“How did my mother find your company to hire you? She didn’t even own a computer, barely knew how to operate her phone.”Her question was somewhat accusatory, but he chalked her curt tone up to curiosity, or perhaps concern as to having a stranger in her house that she did not hire herself.He pushed himself up onto his knees from his previous position of leaning over the shower floor.“I met her at the hardware store over on Ladera. She was askin’ the clerk about redoing her bathroom and I was in line behind her, gave her my card.”“Miller construction, that’s you, right? Joel Miller?” she said it more as a statement than a question, hands propping themselves up on her hips.He nodded, trying to ignore the pang in his chest at hearing her say his name despite how it came out sounding more like a threat than anything else.
  Fiery little thing she was turning out to be.
“So…” she cocked her head a bit, like he was some enigma she’d just discovered the answer to, “you own your own construction company that has little to no presence online, and you frequent hardware stores hoping to find customers there?”His eyebrows furled together, a thread of annoyance suddenly weaving itself through the attraction he’d initially felt toward her.He’d built this company from the ground up, with no help other than what little Tommy could offer him, and this woman, this random woman who was receiving his free labor on her mother’s behalf, had the audacity to question his validity because he didn’t have a f@ck@ng website?“I’ve been doin’ this a long time,” his voice was stern, tinged slightly with irritation, “just because my company doesn’t have a website,” he spat the word out like it was vulgar, “doesn’t mean it isn’t reputable— I can give you some contacts, prior customers to call on my behalf, I understand that you didn’t hire me yourself, but—”She interrupted him by throwing one dismissive hand into the air, the gesture only made his blood boil even more intensely.“No need, your work will speak for itself, I suppose,” she said, piercing eyes flickering over the demolished vanity that he hadn’t started rebuilding yet.He was about to say something else, what, he didn’t know, but she turned on her heels and disappeared down the hall before he could even open his mouth.
  Brat. Infuriatingly attractive little brat.
He huffed, taking out the first tile and laying it down as he cursed himself for initially finding her so alluring. Her looks surely didn’t matter when she had an attitude like that.'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
Assistant: