I dry the mug. “I saved your ass. You’re welcome.”
He’s incredulous. “I didn’t need you to save me.”
“Looked like it to me. You’d still be tucked up asleep if it wasn’t for good old DB.” Alex was right. Tom’s never in a mood like this. “You need to shut that old guy Colin down. He’s trying to undermine you.”
Tom’s hand is on his hip now. “You want to tell me about undermining. Right. What the hell do you think you just did?”
“You started to drown a little. I just pulled you up.” I walk down to my studio, a grouchy shadow at my heels. “I just see where you need help.”
“Did I actually hear you threaten to fire Colin?”
I step over Patty’s welcome dance and pick up my camera. “He needed to be reminded whose name is on his shirt. Trust me on that.” Doesn’t he know that I am always Team Valeska?
“Colin’s done this forever. I really need him on-site.” His phone rings again. He answers it. “Can I call you back? One minute. Thanks.”
“You’re being such a jerk. Please don’t let this change us.” I mean the renovation, but my voice breaks a little. I’ve been a wreck over what I did. My overly honest get in me has turned into get away from me. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“I think it’s too late. It’s changed.” He puts a hand into his hair. “I’m being a jerk because I’m stressed, and I’ve got you walking around in the middle of everything.”
“Ignore me.”
“You’re real hard to ignore.” He looks sideways at the house, eyebrows pulling down. “Okay, here’s where we’re at. I’m attempting the first day of what should be the rest of my career, and I can’t focus on it.”
“Because you want to put me against a wall and kiss me.” I’m taunting that thing inside him that always responds to me. It protects me and hunts me. “And you’d do it in front of everyone here. You like having keys in your pocket. It’s what your whole life is about. You want to be the only one with a key to me.” I count his breaths. “Am I right?”
“I am not going to answer that.” His body answers anyway; a shrugging of his entire body, like something is dropping down onto him. He looks so desperate that regret fills me. What have I done to him? I love his inner animal so much that I’m stopping him from turning back into the calm, controlled version he needs to be.
I think I do an identical shudder-shrug. Get yourself back on your leash, DB. “What am I photographing?”
“Everything,” Tom says, raspy. “I want you to photograph everything.” He propels me up the back stairs with a hand on my waistband.
“For what purpose?”
“Two purposes. To keep Jamie in the loop, because if we don’t, he’s coming down here.” He positions me at the doorway of the hall. “And I need content for my website. A before-and-after section. Lucky for me, I’ve got a professional photographer right on hand.”
I don’t really care for how he put a little sarcasm on professional. I really screwed up just now in front of his crew.
“How many times in my life have you rescued me? I can’t even count. I will always do the same for you. I will not stand there and say nothing when I could step in and help. It’s what we do for each other.”
He blinks, trying to understand. “No one does that for me.”
“I do it.”
“How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?” Tom steps against my back and reaches around me. His fingers slide between mine and he raises my hands up until the camera is roughly in line with my eyes.
“Can you do your job like this?” When I line up the viewfinder on the hall, he moves our hands. I snap a shot that is, of course, garbage.
I try to shrug him off; he steps closer, dropping his mouth to the side of my neck. That mouth that sipped from my mug, telling every male in the room that I’m off-limits and untouchable. He’s still too far into the dark forest place we play in. He breathes me in. I feel the briefest scrape of his stubble on the curve of my shoulder and the most intriguing hard press on my butt. I feel like an animal about to be bitten, soft and slow, by its mate. Maybe he’d do it hard enough to leave a mark. When he finally releases the breath he’s been holding, his heavenly warm air goes down the neck of my top.
He says, “There’s so many things I’d do, if I could.”
“Well, seems pointless to tell me about them.” I bump him off.
Tom Valeska is a fucking liar. He does want me. He just doesn’t have the guts. In my pulse points, I’m nothing but Morse code: bed, bed, bed. And I’m disappointed in his lack of faith in me. No one could possibly succeed with messy Darcy Barrett around. That’s what I’ve been my whole life, right? A complication.
He puts another wobble into the camera as I try to take a shot. “This is how hard it is for me to do anything with you here.” Above my ear, his voice drops to a growl. “This house? This renovation? It’s what I do. Don’t step in again like that.”
“Get away from me. Safer, remember?” I sound bitter.
“Oh, you’re still on that?” Tom’s phone rings again. I’m ready to toss that thing into an active volcano. “I don’t think you fully got what I meant.”
“Of course I did, I’m not stupid,” I snap, and force my entire focus through the viewfinder.
“I was just . . .” There’s a pause so long I think he’s left. I take a few shots. “Surprised. I didn’t know that’s what you thought of me.”
“You weren’t surprised, you were traumatized. I heard you, loud and clear. From this point on, we’re going to ignore this thing between us. We’ll get ourselves a sold sign and we will see each other at Christmas. Maybe. There’s a festival in Korea around that time that’s always interested me.”
“Could you tell me why you did it?” I hear the floorboards under his feet creak. “Were you lonely? Mad? Trying to get back at me for something?” He hasn’t reached the conclusion that I want his body and his pleasure, more than I want water and food.
“I’m not telling you a damn thing,” I reply, because I know that’s what will annoy him the most. “I’ll tell you one day, when we’re eighty years old.”
I click the camera and look at the display. It’s hard to argue with reality, and here it is. This room—and this potential relationship with Tom—is not the flower-wallpapered version I’ve been carrying around in my head. This house is no longer beautiful, and Tom has receded out of reach. I’m down to zero.
His phone begins ringing again. “I’ve got to get this.” He starts to walk, but I stop him.
“What you did before, in the kitchen?” I snap a couple more frames. “With my coffee? Don’t do that shit again.”
“What did I do?” He looks up from the ringing phone, his thumb hovering. His brow is creased. He seriously doesn’t remember.
“You took a big slurp from my mug. Now your boys are looking at us like we’re . . .” I can’t finish.
Tom has the good grace to look embarrassed. “I guess not all sledgehammers are created equal.” He answers the phone. “Tom Valeska.”
I should get out of here and do my job. I should be taking advantage of the strawberry-sundae light.
I go down to the fishpond and hold the camera up to my eye. I haven’t taken an outdoor photo in probably a year, and it doesn’t help that my hands are shaking. What the hell just happened?
“I don’t know what to shoot,” I say to no one in particular. A tight feeling is in my chest now that I’m alone. Taking photos of this house? It’s too real. These are photographs of something I’m going to lose.
I want my white lightbox and mugs.
“Shoot everything,” a guy near me says, unfolding a metal table. He lifts a circular saw onto it with a grunt. “Because everything’s going to change.”
I walk around the outside of the house. “Just try to take one,” I whisper to myself. The first click is the hardest, and I barely look through the lens.
I take real estate shots, coaching myself through it, but before long, I’ve loosened up enough that I can pick out the little details. Just for me, so I can have them forever. I lean against the fence and shoot up at the crooked weathervane, topped with a galloping horse, that hasn’t spun in years.
This isn’t what Tom had in mind, but I shoot the moss and ivy clinging on the side of the wall, and the way the honeysuckle hangs low, dusting everything with yellow powder. I’m photographing this house like it’s a bride. As much as I ache to have it stand in the frozen fairy-tale clasp of roses forever, I know it’s time to let it go. The only way that I can is because it’s now in Tom’s care.
Inside, time is running out, so I click and reposition, zooming in on individual hydrangeas in the wallpaper. I probably look insane, but I take a shot of the tile Loretta replaced in the bathroom—one salmon-pink square in a sea of cracked buttermilk relics.
I’m chasing the clock, and guys are stepping out of my way, falling respectfully silent as I step back and take a portrait of the fireplace. I will not let so much as a sheet of sandpaper touch this mantelpiece.
Why didn’t I do this earlier? Why didn’t I take days, recording and archiving these memories I have? I truly forgot that this was a skill of mine, something that could be used for a purpose other than a paycheck.
A banging sound begins, like the outside world is trying to break in.
I think I take more than twenty minutes and I’m a little drained. I really want to load these into my computer. I look at the time. I was immersed up to my neck in a state of creative flow for an hour. I took over two hundred photos. How did that happen?
I look up in astonishment and make eye contact with Tom. I wonder if he even has a website.
He doesn’t smile, but I can tell he’s pleased with me. Maybe all is not lost.
“Good work, Darce. Now get gloves on and get to work.”
* * *
I’M WILTED WITH tiredness and it’s only Wednesday. Three more months of this? Stepping out of the way, tripping over power cords, and being covered in dust? I had a bar shift thrown in last night for good measure, and just finished a photoshoot for Truly. I think I need to go to bed at six P.M. tonight.
I’m sorting through photos of butts in underwear when Jamie calls. For once, it’s me answering the phone with my heart in my throat. Is he dead-dying-drowning? Surely it’d take an emergency for him to call after this long.
“What’s up?” How cool I sound.
“Voicemail Darcy is picking up her phone for once in her life. That’s what’s up.”
Even when my phone isn’t in urine, I’m not a great phone answerer. Most people love their phone like a baby, but I would have left mine on the church stairs.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Jamie decides how to proceed for a second. “I know something.”
“That must feel extraordinary,” I reply, and continue scrolling through the photos I’ve just taken. “You’d better let your employer know. They’ll be so glad they took a chance on you.” I grin as his sigh partially deafens me.
“How’s the progress on site?”
I’m not his employee. “I bet you feel like I once did. Those summers I watched you and Tom mowing all the neighbors lawns, raking in the cash.”
“We sweated for that. We worked like mules. Be glad you sat inside in the air-conditioning.”
“I wanted to do what you guys did, but I had to watch from the window. Just like you’re doing, right now.” I don’t hold much hope that he’ll understand what I’m telling him, or why it feels so important that I see this through. “The renovation is fine. Tom and I are making sure of it.”
“I know that you know. About Tom and Megan.”
“Oh, that. Sure.” I click and drop a file. “We’re buds. He tells me stuff.”
That’s a bit of a stretch. I’m permanently screwing things up around here.
“Sure,” Jamie says, dripping sarcasm. “But here’s the thing. You’re leaving him alone.”
“What do you—”
“Cut the shit. When he’s in the same room you’re a drooling mess. Like, for years, and it’s painfully obvious. That’s why he tried to not tell you.” Jamie confirms what I had just started to hope was a pathetic misunderstanding on my part. “He’s embarrassed to be around you. He’s never going to reciprocate.”
Only Jamie could make a word like reciprocate sound like he’s holding a turd with a pair of salad tongs.
“‘Drooling mess’ is a bit of an exaggeration. But yeah, he’s gorgeous. My eyes like gorgeous things. I’m a photographer.” I hate hearing my own voice being so flippant. Diminishing Tom down to a face and body feels wrong. “Don’t you go for beautiful women?”
“I go for women in my league,” Jamie says forcefully, “and I don’t go for childhood friends.” He laughs a little. “I can’t believe we actually have to have this conversation. You and him? Never happening.” A pause. “So you’ve decided you’re a photographer again?”
I’m not touching that one. “He told me it was completely over with her. He seems surprisingly okay about it.”
“He’s devastated. Did you know that?”
My stomach twists up. I didn’t exactly try to listen before I began tearing the world apart with my bare hands.
Jamie continues. “He’s been trying to find a time to meet up with her to talk it through and get back together. But you wouldn’t know that, ’cause he’s not your bud, and you never stop thinking about yourself.”
“You are weirdly possessive over your childhood friend. Something you need to tell me?” The thought has crossed my mind once or twice.
Jamie doesn’t take the bait. “That guy has had my back probably a thousand times by now. Now it’s my turn. I want to make sure he gets the future he deserves.”
“You should be a motivational speaker, Jamie. I’m inspired. He’s already got his business. His dream. He got it.”
“That’s only phase one. Tom wants the real deal. A house, a picket fence, a wedding. Taking triplets to Disney or some shit like that. Haven’t you ever noticed his obsession with taking care of things and fixing them? We’re not getting younger. Darce, he’s a husband and a dad.”
Goddamn it, I hate when my brother is right. I don’t say anything.
Jamie senses I’ve understood what he’s saying, and his next harsh sentence is spoken with unbearable kindness. “That’s what he wants. To be the dad he never had. He wants a wife and to make sure his mom is sorted out. Not a one-night stand with the queen of one-nights.”
“Maybe I want . . .” I trail off. I never thought about it before. Those sorts of things are for Megan-type girls.
“Not with him you don’t. Megan hasn’t given the ring back. He doesn’t want it back. Connect the dots, Darcy.”
I feel like throwing up. “Okay, I get it.”
“If you make him get all wrapped up in your drama and get a little crush on you, only for you to leave? Just like when we were eighteen? I will never speak to you again.”
I shouldn’t be surprised that Jamie knows about this. But I am anyway. “That was complicated.”
“That was something that should have been a no-brainer and you blew it. Just like the developer’s offer on the house.” Jamie says “One minute” to someone in his office, then says to me, “I’ve got someone on-site keeping an eye on you.”
“Colin.” His name is out of my mouth like a curse.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Prove it.”
“You dropped a nail gun yesterday and broke it. I’ve got to go now. Funny. You’re usually the one saying that.” He hangs up, and I put my head in my hands.
Of course he’s going back to Megan. Why wouldn’t he? He’s got an entire life built, painstakingly, over eight years. He just needs to walk back to it and flick on the lights and screw the house number on the letterbox.
After a minute, my door slides open and I hear the tink of Patty’s name tag. For the first time in my life, I wish Tom would turn around and walk away.
“Oh, great, what have I done this time?” I know what I did. I blew it.
Tom sits heavily down on the computer chair behind me with a tired groan. “What makes you think you’ve done something wrong?”
“You only talk to me when I have.” I smooth my hands over my face. I shouldn’t be a jerk. He’s got no animosity in him as he slumps. He’s so tired I feel sad. Beside me, my white backdrop is still up and there are robes and Underswears samples all over my bed. Maybe we can start over for the tenth time. Let’s try.
“Just spoke with my brother dearest.”
“What did he want?”
“Just to threaten me about behaving myself and to remind me of my failures.” That’s the top-level truth.
“He’s so hard on you.” Tom is far more empathetic than I deserve. “Well, keep sending him the progress photos and we won’t get a surprise visit.” Tom swivels his chair gently, side to side. “The ones you took on the first day were insanely good. You know that, right? Glad to see that again.” He nods at the white backdrop, set up against the free section of wall by the door.
“Everyone has a camera in their pocket these days. I’m obsolete.” I haven’t had enough time to pack down the emotions Jamie has just stirred up. Tom’s walked in here with a white flag. I should make the most of it. But it’s hard, coping with these two extremes between us. I make myself be grateful for the quiet and the civil, but I know what I want.
I crave his lust like a drug.
Let’s find a really civil topic. “How’s your mom doing?”
Tom groan-sighs. “She’s stressing me out. No. Her landlord is stressing me out. There’s someone you can go beat up for me.”
Tom’s mom, Fiona, is a sweet, spacey lady who always seems to be amid some kind of low-level crisis. She’s a pot permanently simmering, and if Tom takes his eye off her too long the smoke detector goes off. I’d like to say this was a recent thing, but he’s been trying to take care of her his whole life. I sometimes wonder what Tom’s dad must have been like. I’ve never met him, and I don’t think Tom has either. He must be big and handsome. And a total piece of shit, obviously.
“Can’t she move out?” I ask.
“She found a pregnant cat last year and couldn’t bear to rehome the kittens. They’re all black and white. I have no idea how she tells them apart.” He rubs the heel of his palm on his eyes. “Her landlord told me she could have one cat. She hasn’t filled him in yet that one has become six. Her hot water is playing up, and he’s not returning my calls.”
“Buy six cats, get the seventh cat free?” I point up at Diana’s bed.
“Don’t even think about it. The next place I carry her boxes into is gonna be the last house she ever has to live in. I can’t move her again. I don’t have it in me. A picket fence is what I promised her.” Tom looks ten years older in an instant.
At this rate, a picket fence paling will be my tombstone. “Is that what you’re saving for?”
He speaks like he hasn’t heard me in the crystal-quiet room. “The guys keep asking where you are. Well, Alex mainly. Your puppy dog doesn’t know what to do with himself.” His eyes sharpen on mine, watching for my reaction.
Every atom in my body knows that Tom wants to see indifference. I look back at my computer and shrug. “Little turd has gotten lonely without me kicking his ass, huh?”
“He told me things are fun with you around. He’s going to get the wrong idea if you keep leaning on him. He doesn’t know what you’re like.”
“I don’t lean,” I retort, then I remember my shoulder pressing on something warm. Me and Alex leaning together watching an excavator being unloaded out front. “Oh, I did lean a bit.”
“He worships you.” Tom has affection in his voice as he glances up at the house. “He reminds me so much of myself at that age.”
“Worshipping me?” I accidentally defy Jamie’s direct order and immediately gloss over it. “Well, that’s cute. The one I really want to worship me is that old bastard Colin. I want him to kiss my boots by the end of this.”
“Should I be jealous?” Tom answers his phone. “Hi. Yes, drop them around. Before four.” He hangs up. This is what our conversations are like lately. Everything is interrupted by that goddamn phone. I don’t know how he’s keeping it together.
“Jealous or not, it has nothing to do with me.”
“I forgot, I did come in here to yell at you. Who were they?” Tom means the girls who left twenty minutes ago. “You can’t just let people walk through a building site.”
“They were models.” I click through the images. “I just did a shoot for Truly. Funny, Tom. Last time we had a proper exchange, I got the impression that you needed me to stay out of your hair. And yet, here you are.”
“This is my site and you’re doing a photo shoot in the middle of it.” Tom leans sideways to look at the computer. He’s lip-pursed Mr. Perfect. “You should have told me. There’s safety issues with people on-site who aren’t inducted. If they hurt themselves—”
“Okay, I screwed up again. Don’t get grouchy, or I might not give you your present.”
“A present?” Behind me, the computer chair squeaks.
“Do you deserve one?” I’m stalling, because I don’t know how he’ll receive this tiny olive branch. It’s been made abundantly clear that he doesn’t need or want my help.
“I had to get a dead rat out of the wall cavity in the kitchen. I do deserve a present.”
“Dead rats are Alex’s job. You’re a boss now.” I click through my photo files, trying to feign nonchalance. “You’re sitting on your present. I made you a desk. I noticed it’s getting harder for you to work inside.”
This is my way of apologizing for putting a coffee ring on a fairly important report for the county. “And that apple crate down there is for Patty.”
Tom swivels and looks at the desk again. It’s just the old kitchen table, a lamp, and a jar of pens, but he runs his hands on the tabletop in a lustful way. “I was just about to start working out of my car.” He flips the lamp on. “Thanks, Darce.”
“I’m not trying to lure you in here for any nefarious purpose.” Ugh, why did I say that? I swivel around on my stool in a way that probably looks ominous.
Tom ignores my blunder. “Oh, I’m lured all right.” He gets up and leaves, appearing again with his laptop and a bulging folder. Business cards flutter mothlike in his wake. “There is no way I’m passing up a desk.”
He leaves a second time, returning with an armful of samples: tiles, carpets, laminates. Patty hops into her new bed and watches Tom, her big bug eyes lit with their usual worship.
I’m right there with you, Patty. I think I could sit here and watch him for hours, stacking bathroom tiles with that serious tilt to his head. He always was like this: a tidy boy with a straight spine and a neat desk.
Scratch that. Fast-forward things.
I could sit here and watch this gorgeous man forever, the glints in his hair and those big careful hands. The lamplight pools in those brown eyes and turns them to honey. He breathes, even and easy, under the lead-gray weight of my stare, and makes three piles of paperwork.
He finds the old trash can under his desk with the toe of his shoe and smiles to himself.
“You thought of everything, Darcy Barrett,” he says to me without looking over, and I realize he has always been aware of my staring, dazzled by the light shining through him. He’s probably felt this stare for most of his life. I am intensely grateful for how he’s erasing that one moment of insanity in the kitchen.
I’m not going to lose him. If I just stay laser-focused and careful, we can walk out of these three months as friends and part with a handshake.
If I can keep my mouth shut and not say things like, Get in me.
“This is really going to help. I can get organized.” Right on cue, his phone rings, and he grabs at a pen.
As he writes himself a note and looks up at the house, biting his lip, thoughtful and lovely, I think about how much he needs to get in me. And not just into my body. I want more than that. I want him to get in my head. I think that’s what I meant.
Unzip me, climb into me, don’t come out.
When he hangs up and looks over at me, I pretend I was just looking up at the house.
“It’s getting hard to think in there during the day.”
“Twelve weeks is a crazy time frame,” he says with apology in his voice. He looks back around at my room and smiles. “I feel better about you being in here now. Very cozy.” He looks down the long narrow space. It only takes up a quarter of the floor space, but the room feels like it is brimming full of bed.
I turn back to my laptop.
“I’m snug as a bug. Sorry, but Truly’s got a meeting with a brand consultant and she has to have a lookbook to show them. She’s going to be turning up any second, saying, Hi, are they done? So, off you go.”
“I haven’t seen her for years. How is she?”
“Fucking adorable as usual.” I scroll and try to squash down the panic when I look at the clock. “She thinks I have way more graphic design skills than I do.”
“That’s a big-deal meeting for her, isn’t it? So these are Underswears.” He ambles over to my workbench and laughs. “Who wears the word dipshit around on their butt?”
I prickle up defensively. “I do, every day of the year. Best underwear on earth.”
“I’m going to be intrigued about what yours say, every day of the year.”
“You couldn’t handle what’s written on my underwear.” It’s hard to ignore him when he’s leaning against the bench, probably looking down at the back of my neck. I can feel the warmth of his body, and out of the corner of my eye I see that his T-shirt is layered across his abdomen like fondant icing.
He makes it harder when he lifts a hand and touches my skin.
