An electrician arrives after lunch, walks in, and flips the switch beside the front door. There’s a pop sound, the lights blink, and the electrician curses, snatching his hand back. The house is a viper today. It wants to hurt somebody.
This mug says #1 ASSHOLE on the side. It would be the perfect birthday gift for Jamie. If we’re on speaking terms by then.
I click the camera, turn the mug slightly on the little white turntable, take another shot, and then record a three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation. Then I transfer the digital files and label them with serial numbers. I tick the checklist. If I lose track of which mug is which I will lose my mind. It’s slow, boring, meticulous work.
If I think about the fact that I won the Rosburgh Portrait Prize when I was twenty, I get a shake in my hand and have to redo the set. Why did Tom have to remind me of that? I’d nearly left the memory under Jamie’s bed, along with the canvas print.
“Number one asshole. Maybe I need this one,” I tell Patty, who is asleep on a cushion. “I’m pretty sure it’s my mug.”
I pick it up and spy out the window at Tom, who is currently looking professional and competent, all slid into his clothes in the right way, pointing up at the roofline with a saggy tradesman nodding by his side.
I have lost my goddamn mind in a short period of time. If I had my phone, I’d look at the photo of Megan’s engagement ring again to recalibrate myself. I close my eyes and I can picture it: cushion cut and colder than ice. Like she could press a button on the side and a white lightsaber would come out.
I wouldn’t want something like that. I’d want something like Loretta’s ring: a black sapphire. I should clarify: I want Loretta’s ring, full stop. The fact she left it to Jamie in her will is inexplicable to me. She knew I loved it. She let me borrow it for weeks at a time and said to me, Oh, sweetness, doesn’t it suit you. Was it her way of punishing me for something?
I offered in the solicitor’s parking lot to buy it from him, which was a tactical error. His gray eyes shifted into blue. “No,” he replied with relish.
Now that he knows how badly I want it, that ring is worth more than the Mona Lisa. Luckily for me, no one would be insane enough to marry Jamie either.
It’s sunset when I decide I should grow up and get things back to normal. I find Tom in the backyard alone, writing in a notebook. The tip of his tongue is caught between his teeth.
“Look at you, being all meticulous.”
“Sure am.” He takes a photo of the back stairs with his phone. I’ve never really noticed them before, but they are beautifully rustic. I clomp down them, feeling them bounce.
“I’m so sorry—” he begins what is probably a rehearsed statement. I wave him silent.
“It’s fine.” I take his phone and look at his last shot. “You could probably win an award with that shot. How annoying, I should have been the one to see that. Is there anything you can’t do?” I’m not really joking.
“Plenty. Why don’t you get your camera and do it? Or maybe you could start taking photos of people again.” This might be the closest he’s going to get to asking me to shoot his wedding. He hesitates, and I know it’s about to come. The request that I won’t be able to say no to. “If taking a photo of me—”
A big wave of don’t fucking ask me almost knocks me over. I interrupt him instantly.
“I’m taking more photos than ever, and I’m never going back to people again. Mugs don’t complain. They don’t have little mental breakdowns and ruin their mascara. They don’t write reviews online.”
“Did someone do that?” Googling me would never occur to him.
“Scathing” is all I can say. Apparently, I very much deserve those empty screw holes by the front door.
Unprofessional. Late. Hungover—possibly still drunk? Distracted. Poorly presented. Surly and rude to guests. Blurry. Badly framed. Ruined my memories. Contacting my lawyer.
Tom wisely tucks the impending request back in his pocket. He shouldn’t risk getting his memories ruined, too. “Maybe if I’d gotten the studio done, you’d still be doing portraits.”
He is now looking at the long, narrow building beyond the fishpond, against the fence line, that has had a lot of plans attached to it. It was once Grandpa William’s carpentry hideout, and it still smells like cyprus pine. Loretta used to sit in there on a folding chair, drinking coffee and thinking about him. It was going to be my photography studio, and before that, Loretta’s tarot room. One summer, Tom got as far as cladding the inside walls and putting down carpet before Aldo sent him on to his next job—then the next, and the next. An unfinished project would weigh heavily on Tom.
“Don’t feel bad,” I warn him, but I think I’m too late. “You’ve been busy. You are not the cause of my career change.” I mean, technically yes, but he doesn’t need to know that. I was already on a long downhill slide.
“If you’d called me, I would have come,” he says with the barest hint of accusation. “You know I would.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re here right when I need you most. Like always.”
Patty is standing on the edge of the slime-filled fishpond. One foreleg lifts. I pick her up and kiss her little dome head. From the laundry window, Diana’s aghast face is like the feline version of The Scream.
I tilt her up to me. “Patty, you’ve gotta stop flirting with danger.”
“Says the girl living in a house with fire-hazard wiring.” Tom gives me his notebook and begins unfolding a ladder. “I can’t believe Loretta lived in this place. Why didn’t she get me to renovate years ago?” He’s getting mad. “She shouldn’t have lived with these issues.”
I have to laugh.
“She couldn’t be bothered packing. She said, and I quote, You can deal with it.” I flip through the last few pages of his notes. I almost forgot his handwriting: square blocks, flat lines, and intriguing shorthand. Arrows up and down, measurements, estimates of cost. Page after page of bad news. “And she thought the issues were quirks. Which they are.”
“You are so similar to your grandmother that it’s scary.” Tom hooks the ladder on the side of the house. “Please, just promise me you won’t touch any of the outlets. Or tell my fortune.”
“I know how to manage this house. I’ve lived in this house part-time for most of my life, remember? Every single ski season.” My parents are obsessed with sliding down snowy hills in matching padded onesies. I wonder what it’s like.
“Did you used to hate me?” He took my place on those ski trips. I stayed with Loretta, took photos until I lost the light, and read books by the fire, my hand in a candy bowl. Lovely, but it was no black-diamond run.
I shake my head. “No, I was glad you went.”
I’m glad you all got to live a little, unencumbered by my shortcomings.
“Glad for me because I was poor,” Tom says in a wry voice. He looks up the ladder and puts a foot on the bottom rung. “Glad that your parents are incredibly generous and took me everywhere.”
“No, glad for you because staying behind sucked, and I wouldn’t wish it on you.”
I remember Loretta saying to me, Wave goodbye for God’s sake, they might all have a plane crash. You’ll regret it if you don’t. That kind of statement is even more startling when said by a fortune-teller. Smile and let them enjoy themselves.
The only translation I could possibly make from that was: Who could relax around me, the ticking time bomb?
“I’m glad you all got a vacation from stressing out about me.”
“We weren’t vacationing from you,” Tom says, surprised. He begins climbing up the ladder. “Loretta let you believe some things that weren’t true.”
For one sharp moment I feel like he knows that I confided in Loretta and she got me the hell out of town. But there’s no way he could. I’ve never told a soul. His eyes are mild and have no bad memories in them when he looks down at me.
“If you need anything switched on or off inside, ask me. I hid your hair dryer.”
“That just means you put it up somewhere high, out of my eye line? Your hiding skills are terrible.” I watch his butt as he climbs higher. “What are you doing up there, anyway?”
“Just looking at the gutters back here.”
“Me too.” I grin breezily up at him as he glowers back down at me. “What? I’m interested in the state of my house.”
There’s a loose rattling noise. Tom shakes the entire gutter about a foot away from the roofline. Slimy leaves splatter down onto me. Patty and I both yap like seals.
“You asshole.”
“You deserved that, you deviant.” He rattles the gutter again.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Do you want to climb up this ladder while I stand down there looking at your butt? See how it feels?” Busted again. If he registers every time my eyes are on him, I’m doomed.
“I’ve got nothing on you, babe.”
“You sure did hide in the shower a long time. Didn’t know the water heater could handle that.” Tom’s hand goes to his back pocket and he pulls out a screwdriver.
“That water heater is a tin can. It was freezing by the end.” I just let it go cold, numbing me down to the bones, cooling the strange restless energy inside me to manageable levels. I’ve never actually taken a cold shower over a guy before.
He looks across at the neighbor’s roof, and in his profile, I see him swallow. In his mind, he thinks, Ew, gross. Darcy Barrett, a shivering drowned rat, boy hair flattened to her skull.
He hoists himself a little higher onto the edge of the roof. There’s a tile-scraping sound and the ladder trembles. I leap on the base of the ladder and wrap my entire body around it. “Fuck! Be careful.” Another wet leaf plops down on my face.
“It’s fine,” he says, treading down the rungs. He doesn’t turn, but instead spends a lot of time pulling the ladder down, folding and refolding it. I’m glad. I can hide my sudden heart jolt.
“I thought I was going to have to catch you then.” I move to the fishpond, my back to him. My heart has jumped up into my throat. I swallow again and again, but it won’t budge. Blood begins sliding the wrong way in my veins.
My heart says, Oh hey, did you just have a little fright? Cool, I’m going to make a big deal out of it. And now we’re pumpin’. Palpitations, pixelation, it’s all cranking into gear.
Quick, think about something else.
Aside from my heart situation, a worse pattern keeps repeating. I tease him like always, he calls me on it, and I remember Megan. I crush myself down inside like an empty beer can. Then I look at him and that joyful feeling expands, and the cycle happens again.
I know what the solution to this problem is, and it involves a cab to the airport.
“I bet you would catch me. You’d just . . .” He holds his arms up to the sky. “Get squashed flat. Hey.” He’s noticed my stillness. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” I say on a slow exhale. My heart is climbing up out of my body, fluttering and struggling in the base of my neck.
Tom’s hands are on my body. “Your little spool of thread,” he says with deep empathy. “Aw, it’s rattling around in there, isn’t it?”
“Stop it. Don’t fuss.” I tug away but he steps with me. “It will stop if I can just take my mind off it. Your hands are making it worse.”
He drops them like he’s been scalded.
He smells like he always has: a blown-out birthday candle, sharp and smoky. It’s that smell in your nostrils when closing your eyes and making an impossible wish, and your mouth is watering for something sweet.
“Breathe,” he says, encouraging me just like Jamie would. When I give myself one glance up at his beautiful face, the stark look in his eyes reminds me of why I stayed behind at the airport as a child. I am stress. Fear. Uncertainty.
I am a liability.
I make myself fake a big breath out. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing a little time on a beach somewhere can’t fix.”
He eases away and the chilling air fills the space between us. I step completely out of his reach and then put the fishpond between us. I pat my chest like I’m burping a baby. If I do it firmly enough, I can’t feel the individual off-kilter beats.
Tom is a little wretched. “I’m sorry about what I said before. You know that, right? You’re not a liability. This is your house, and you have every right to work on it.” He turns back to his notes, but he’s looking at them without seeing. “But I don’t think you should travel. You’re clearly not okay.”
“I’ve been like this for years. Don’t,” I warn, and he sighs heavily.
“So, my ladder wobbles and you can throw yourself on it like it’s a grenade, but you turn into a wax statue and I’m supposed to, what? Just ignore it?” You know he’s getting close to the end of his tether when his hand is on his hip. “You’ve got a set of rules that I can’t agree to.”
“I’ve had a lifetime of fussing.” I put my hand up to grip my plait and my hand finds nothing but air. It’s a good reminder. I’m a new person now. “Just worry about this house.”
“I’m worried about you,” he says in a cut the shit voice. “Tell me what’s really going on with you. I have never seen so many empty wine bottles in my life.” He jerks a thumb at the recycling bin at the side of the house. “You are not doing well.”
“Don’t start,” I begin, but he silences me.
“You’re drinking when I know you shouldn’t. Your medication’s so old it’s expired, did you realize that? You’re working somewhere where guys grab you. Bruise you. Drive past all night.”
“It’s not like that—”
“Your fridge is empty. You’re not taking real photos,” he says in a tone like it’s a tragedy. “And you’re trying to keep me at arm’s length, as usual, by doing that thing you do.”
“What do I do?”
“You know exactly what you do. You mess around with me.”
“Well, what is it like being messed with by me?” I can’t stop looking at how his short, neat fingernails are pressing into the cotton at his hip. I’m sweating now. I need to press my sleeve to my brow, but he’ll see.
“Being messed with by Darcy Barrett?” He considers the question. “It sounds like she’s joking with me, but it feels like she’s telling the truth. And I never know which is right.”
Whoa. He really has my number. “You’re a smart guy, you’ll work it out.”
He puts a hand into his hair. That bicep. Those lines. He’s art. “See, you’re doing it again. It’s your technique to put me off track, so you won’t have to actually answer me.”
He turns back to the house like he’s looking for its moral support. Patty obliges, running to him and standing up on his shin. He looks down at her. “I’m just a chew toy, Patty. Aunt Darcy likes hearing me squeak.”
“If I were Megan, I’d punch me in the face.” I ball up my fist and give myself a soft uppercut. “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what comes over me. If it’s any consolation, I don’t do it to anyone else. You’re . . . special.”
“Really?” His eyes have a new light in them when he looks back at me. It gives me a bad little flashback to Keith. Tom’s heart is the Rock of Gibraltar, but I shouldn’t risk it.
“You shouldn’t like hearing that,” I remind him. “Face-punching, remember?”
“She wouldn’t care.” It’s the same phrase he used before, when I asked about his tent. He’s trying to tell me something about her, and I don’t know if I want to hear it. She’s clearly as cool as her ice-white diamond. She’s secure in herself, and she has the most trustworthy man alive.
He confirms it. “We’re not like that.”
“No jury on earth would convict her.” I seem to be using my messing-with-you voice. Sounds like joking but I’m serious. “If I bagged and tagged a beauty like you, I’d turn vicious. I bet she’s the same.”
He laughs and it’s not a happy sound. “I guess it’s redundant to point out that you’re already pretty vicious.” A pause, then he says awkwardly, “She’s not like you at all.”
“That much is obvious.” I run a hand up and down my inferior face and body, and he’s confused. “Well, I won’t push my luck with her. Like I said, I’m going to find someone new to torment. You’re off the hook. Pity my doomed future husband.”
I think about Loretta’s ring again and hold up my left hand to study my bare fingers.
He snorts in disbelief. “You’d never get married.”
“I would.” I hide the little paper cut his incredulous tone gives me. “Why the hell wouldn’t I? Am I too much to take on?” I drag both hands through my hair so it’s up and pointy. I hope it’s horns.
“I just never pictured it.” He sighs and the shape of his body droops as he looks up at the house, like a switch has been flipped off inside him. I take a few cautious steps toward him. He’s sad?
I can’t imagine what kind of bad news he’s heard today. “What did the electrician and plumber say?”
“What do you think they said?” He’s desolate. “They would be the most expensive jobs of their careers. It’s a tear-down. Most of the pipes need replacing. New waterproofing. Then new tiles. Then new wiring. New everything. I cannot name one thing so far that doesn’t need replacing.”
“Will Loretta’s budget cover it?”
He stalls. That means, Probably not. “I’m going to put everything into a spreadsheet for you guys.”
“Unspeakably expensive then. So expensive that formulas and cells are involved. And it’ll all be spent on chrome and gray paint. Jamie will get his way. You know he will. You’re his.”
Tom gives me a wry look. “He’s way out of my league.”
“One hundred percent his.” I tap his pinky fingernail. “Jamie would maybe let me have that much of you.”
He shrugs. “He’s not here now. I hereby gift you this.” He holds out his other hand and I realize he means his other pinky fingernail. I now have two. I’m absurdly pleased.
“I’ll treasure them always.” We go inside together, collecting Patty along the way.
“What do I get in return?”
“You know, heart, soul. The usual.”
“Oh, Darce.” He sighs like I’ve learned nothing. “You’re messing with me again.”
