The next morning, I got an e-mail from Jillian. They were coming home in three weeks.
And in those weeks, my entire world turned upside down. I’d been running things for months now, and I’d pretty much gotten the swing of things. But not these last two weeks. No, sir. It was like the design gods all gathered, rubbed their hands together, and said, “Let’s see how we can fuck up Caroline Reynolds.”
And in case you’re wondering, there are in fact design gods. And in case you’re wondering, yes, they’re fabulous.
The new job I’d agreed to take on in Sausalito was initially supposed to be a kitchen remodel. Which turned into a living room remodel. Which turned into “Couldn’t we maybe add French doors out to the patio?” and “I think we could use a new patio, don’t you?” and “I saw something called a pergola on HGTV the other night; could we put one of those over the patio?” This was all very good for the pocketbook, but it was way more work than I had planned on. We revised the timeline, revised the hell out of the budget, and I began work on the almost total renovation that this project now required.
We had a sprinkler malfunction at the office, resulting in the entire third floor being flooded. The sprinkler just went bananas one afternoon and sprayed for fifteen minutes until we could get it shut off. Offices had to be aired out, a team brought in to dry out the carpets, and some of the year-end tax forms now were blurred beyond comprehension. Luckily I had backup copies, but the panic I felt when I saw those forms? Might have caused my first gray hair ever.
The damned art installation was finally installed in the lobby of the Claremont. Max Camden took one look at it, pronounced it all wrong, and demanded we find something else. Which we did. All parties agreed that the new art was better for the space, but now everything else needed to be reconfigured to accommodate it. Which made me question the lighting placement. And the lighting in general. It was like pulling one loose thread on a sweater, and suddenly, poof, no sweater! And you’re standing naked in a new hotel with terrible lighting.
I don’t have time for naked.
Because the next blow to fall was that our building was indeed going condo. After Jillian forwarded an e-mail from her landlord, I learned they’d be going on the market in thirty days. Thirty days—is that even legal? During which the building owner would be coming in to make repairs and updates to all the units.
Simon took it all in stride, saying that it was a sign reaffirming that we were supposed to move to Sausalito. Sign or no sign, I was now faced with a new home that we were going to renovate top to bottom, and we’d lost the apartments we were going to live in while it happened. And with Jillian due home, I was losing my house-sitting gig.
So now on top of everything else, we had to pack up both our apartments in the city and move everything into a storage container until we were ready to move into the new house. Seriously. I hired help, of course, but I still needed to sort through things, purge things, and pack a few things on my own. There are certain things in a woman’s apartment that she wants to pack herself. You know what I’m saying.
Nobody was getting their hands on my KitchenAid.
So, to recap. My already hectic work life was ramping up instead of slowing down. My boss was returning in a few days, and there were box fans all over the third floor of her office space in a historic Russian Hill mansion. And I was stealing a few hours I really didn’t have to pack up my glorious apartment, to move into a nonglorious home going through a gut rehab.
I was going to be living on-site during a gut rehab.
Laugh all you want, design gods. I could handle it.
Right?
Brain laughed. Backbone curled up like it had scoliosis. Heart was still drawing her own image all over the imaginary mirror in her new master bath.
And Simon? Simon was . . . a pickle. A pickle who was packing up his apartment next door as we speak, and making a helluva lot of noise while doing it. I was in my bedroom, purging my sock drawer, when I heard a very distinct thumping coming through the wall. A banging, if you will. I smiled, remembering the first few times I heard that banging.
Clive jumped up on the bed, looking curiously at the wall.
Pretty sure that sometimes he still listened to see if Purina was going to come meowing through that wall again. Fat chance.
I crossed to the shared wall, placing my hand on the spot I imagined was right above his bed, and sure enough, I felt another thumpity thump. What the hell was he doing over there?
I grabbed my phone and sent him a text:
What the hell are you doing over there?
Ah! No wonder. I was having flashbacks.
His response was to bang on his wall again. I banged back.
Bang ba ba bang bang.
Bang bang.
I giggled, then listened. Would he . . . ? Sure enough, a moment later, Glen Miller came through the walls. Smooth.
I went back to packing, and he went back to taking apart his headboard. Clive attacked a roll of bubble wrap and made it his bitch. A few hours later, we met back in my apartment and looked around at the tiny dent I’d made in getting things ready to be moved.
“When is the storage container coming again?”
“Two days.” I looked in my calendar to verify the date. “So you need to make sure anything you don’t want in the container is already moved out before the crew gets here. They’re taking care of everything else.” It was still weird to think about the new house. I almost couldn’t, with everything going on. One step at a time.
“We still staying here tonight?” he asked, peering over my shoulder at the calendar.
“I’d like to, if that’s still cool with you. One more night, where it all began? Besides, I went to the trouble of bringing my pussy,” I joked.
As if on cue, Clive ran through the kitchen and back out again like the hounds of hell were on his tail, towing a large piece of bubble wrap that streamed out behind him like a crinkly-sounding cape.
“You know I can’t resist that,” he murmured in my ear, arms sneaking around my waist. “By the way, you can erase that trip.”
“What trip?” I asked, my voice all gooey. His arms did that to me.
“The one to Belize. I canceled it,” he said, pointing to a date I had circled on my calendar.
“You canceled Belize?” I asked. That was three trips in a row.
“Yep, I wanted to be here to help with the house.” He nuzzled my neck. “I’m pretty handy with a hammer, if you’ll recall.” He bumped his hips into mine.
I bumped them right back. A little harder than was necessary?
Maybe. A little.
“I’m gonna go make sure I got everything in my room,” I said, shrugging him off and heading back to my bedroom. I knew he didn’t like it much when I questioned his schedule. And if he noticed that my voice was no longer gooey, he didn’t say anything.
Pickle.
• • •
Every single one of my worlds collided on the same day. Friday dawned cold and clear. It was a good thing there was no fog, because the fog in my head by noon was enough for the entire Bay Area. Jillian and Benjamin were due in on a six o’clock plane. We wanted them to be able to enjoy their first night back without us hanging around, so when I left for work Friday morning I made sure everything was spick-and-span, with everything exactly how they’d left it.
Simon was closing on the new house at two thirty. He’d be signing the paperwork and picking up the keys, and I told him I’d meet him at our new address as soon as I could get away from work. Utilities were being turned on, we had a truckload of essential boxes being delivered, and Simon was in charge of buying and setting up our blow-up bed. Yep, a blow-up bed. Since we’d be living on the premises while our new home was renovated, we didn’t want any real furniture there. Didn’t want to have to keep moving it as we worked through the rooms, so we were living basic for a while.
Shit was about to get real. Really real.
Poor Clive didn’t know what was going on. After moving from Jillian’s house, back to the apartment, back to Jillian’s, back to the apartment, he barely knew where his litter box was. Luckily, the Stanford sweatshirt was long gone.
Uncle Euan and Uncle Antonio had chosen to move out of our building when it went condo, so my cat sitters were gone. I didn’t want Clive at the new house until I’d had time to kitty proof it, so off he went to kitty day care.
I felt like the shittiest mommy on the planet. And Simon’s feelings on the matter were not helping.
My veterinarian had recommended this great pet hotel. I say hotel, because this was not your average boarding place. He had his own room, with his own flat-screen TV playing hummingbird porn 24/7.
“It’s just temporary. I promise, sweetie.” When we went to tour the place I’d brought Clive along, and he and Simon looked around with the same expression.
Are you kidding me?
“We can’t leave him here, this place is ridiculous!” Simon whispered as we walked down the row of kitty rooms.
“This place is great. Don’t you be ridiculous,” I whispered right back as we followed the owner down the hallway.
“And this will be Clyde’s suite!” she sang out, opening the door onto the cutest little room I’d ever seen.
“It’s Clive. Not Clyde; Clive.” Simon sighed, rolling his eyes at me. My eyes told him to shut up. I took Clive from him, setting him down to get the lay of the land. He looked around, scratched at one of the posts, and looked back at me. “Where’s my window ledge?” he wordlessly asked.
These two. Honestly.
Simon and I argued about it on the way home. Clive sat regally on the console between us in the Range Rover, hind legs tucked into the cup holders. The pet hotel was a little cheesy but it was great. And it was a means to an end. It would only be for a few days while we got a feel for the new space. I’d been with Clive much longer than Simon, and I knew if there was one loose floorboard, one cupboard with a wonky door, he’d go exploring and it’d be impossible to find him later. Simon protested that I was being ridiculous and a control freak.
I simply wanted to kitty proof the joint. That’s it. And in order to do so, my cat had to spend a few nights in an overpriced pet hotel with room service. The way Clive and Simon were acting, you’d think I’d suggested he spend a few nights on Alcatraz.
But here we were, moving day, and Simon had finally agreed it was in Clive’s best interests, as well as his own, to take him to the pet hotel before closing on the house. I’d kissed them both that morning, telling Clive to enjoy his adventure. He arranged his paw in a way that one of his little kitty fingers was sticking straight up. Not an accident, I’m quite sure.
I planned on working through lunch that day, trying to get everything pulled together so that when Jillian came back to work on Monday, it would be like she’d never left. No, better than when she left. I really wanted her to know how seriously I’d taken running her business while she was gone, even bringing in a few new clients while taking care of our existing ones. And mentoring a new intern with the same patience and guidance that she’d given me when I walked through those doors for the first time.
And that while, yes, we’d lost the carpet on the third floor, I’d replaced it with something even better.
I’d put together storyboards showing the progress on the Claremont; very striking. I’d streamlined one of the payroll reports so she could see not only total hours worked for her hourly employees but how many hours had been allocated to each project. And I almost had all the invoices for all active accounts and projects categorized and color coded in different colored folders, which were spread out all over my office.
I was checking my math on a particularly long itemized receipt when Simon unexpectedly sailed in with a pizza box at twelve thirty. He plunked it down square in the middle of my desk with a flourish.
“Whoa, whoa, what’s this?” I exclaimed, looking up from my adding machine and realizing that I’d lost count for the third time.
“It’s called lunch, babe,” he said with a proud smile, pulling sodas out of a bag and looking for a place to put them down. “Damn, woman, I’ve never seen your desk this messy.”
“Simon, wait, don’t—”
He’d picked up three of my folders and stacked them together to make room, mixing up everything I was working on. “There we go—much better.”
I took off my glasses and glared at him. “Do you have any idea how much time that took me to organize this morning?”
He looked guiltily at the stack. “Oops?” he offered.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I took the stack from him and started to separate them all over again.
“It’s House Day, Nightie Girl.” He looked at me like I was crazy. “I thought we could celebrate with a little lunch, and I know what you’re going to say before you say it: You’re too busy. No problem—that’s why I brought lunch to you!”
“Hey, Caroline, did you still want me to work on the cost projections for—oh, hey, Simon!” Monica said, breezing in from the hallway and stopping short when she caught sight of my boyfriend. She had a monster crush. It normally made me chuckle to watch her stammer and stutter around him, but today I didn’t even feel a flash of amusement.
“Monica, how’d you like some pizza?” he offered, picking up the box from my desk. The papers underneath were now stained with grease.
I pulled a colored pencil from my head and started to chew.
“Oh no, I already ate a pizza, I mean I didn’t eat an entire pizza, I mean I went out for an entire pizza, I mean a slice! I had a small slice of pizza, and a salad, mostly salad and—”
I stopped her. It was embarrassing. “Yes, Monica, please work on the cost projections for the Anderson account and let me know if you have questions. Thank you.”
“Okay, sure, no problem, I’ll just be naked in the other room—I mean working! I just—crap. Bye!”
I dropped my head to my desk. Monica was the most talented, most mature young woman I knew. I would have killed for the poise she possessed at such a young age—except when Wallbanger was involved. Then she turned to goo. I could relate. And she didn’t even know he had the power to move an entire bed with the strength of his hips alone.
Speaking of hips, they moved into my field of vision, along with the pizza box.
“So, lunch?”
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I was at that point when you either laugh or cry, and the scales just happened to tip toward laughter. I looked up at him, celebrating House Day in his own sweet and unaware way, and cackled like a loon. “Sure, Simon. Let’s have some pizza.”
I took the box from his hands, and right there on the top, surrounded by an army of dancing pepperoni and wearing a chef’s hat, was a picture of the devil himself.
Cory Weinstein. Pizza chain owner. Discount giver. Self-described man about town.
And the jackrabbit fucker who’d hijacked my O.
My eye began to twitch. The floor, to pitch. My skin he’d seen just once now crawled and creeped and bunched and itched.
The laughter that was ringing out from my lips turned to a shriek that stopped traffic all over town, upset several fruit carts, and may very well have been the slight earthquake tremor that was reported that night on the news. And my knees were kissing my chin as my body turned roly-poly in an effort to protect itself at all costs.
“Oh, will you settle down? There are positively no anchovies on this pizza,” Simon said, rolling his eyes and handing me a napkin.
• • •
I’d had flashbacks all afternoon.
Cory, cheers-ing me with his Natural Light beer when I met him for drinks on our one and only date.
Cory, grinning as he slid behind the wheel of his stupid souped-up yellow Small Dick Mobile with the license plate IEETPIE. Point of order, he in fact does not.
Cory, poised over me grunting and blurry while his hips ran a race he would never win.
To be fair, I’d had every opportunity to stop this particular tragedy. And still chose to proceed with the single worst sexual experience of my life, resulting in the Great Orgasm Hiatus, as it came to be known to all mankind.
I now blinked my eyes hurriedly, trying to get the images to stop coming. I turned onto my new street a little too quickly and the contents of my bag spilled all over the floor of the delivery van.
Delivery van, you ask?
Yes, delivery van. In our haste to make real estate history with the fastest decision ever, we both forgot about my commute into the city. Sure, I could take the ferry, but I hadn’t had a chance to figure out the ferry schedule. And I no longer had access to Jillian’s very sporty Mercedes. So I’d purloined the Jillian Designs delivery van, and was using that to drive over the bridge to my new address. As I pulled up in front of the old Victorian that I now called home, my lipsticks rolled around on the floor. I sighed heavily as I turned the ignition off, looking through the windshield at the house.
From the street, it still looked melancholy and a bit run down. I knew that was temporary. Perhaps I was feeling a bit run down? This day had taken it out of me, and I wanted nothing more than to explore my new home, take a hot shower, and crawl into bed.
A bed on the floor.
Shit, I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted a bed. As I shut the door to the van, it squeaked in a way reminiscent of Cory Weinstein’s bed as he jackrabbited his teeny peeny in a mind-numbingly (and hoohah-numbingly) way, and I flinched once more.
I slammed the door shut and walked up the steps. I could see Simon through the front picture window, moving boxes.
I felt my load begin to lighten. And something else begin to tighten. This was my new home, and I was sharing it with Simon.
Suddenly the crappy day disappeared. I couldn’t wait to get inside and make the sweet sweet love. And the nasty dirty love. And everything in between.
I opened the front door, looking past the mauve wallpaper and the Pepto pink carpet and the dingy baseboards and the fingerprinted doorjambs and all of our boxes, and saw my boyfriend. Tall and handsome, strong and lean. He turned when I came in, and shot me a devilish grin.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey, yourself,” I answered back. I dropped my bags and started to walk across all that pink toward him.
“I waited to order some dinner till you got here. How does Thai sound to you?”
“Sounds great, you big, hot homeowner, you,” I purred, and he looked up from his take-out menus. He grinned as he watched me walk toward him, so I threw an extra bounce into my step.
“What’s got into you?”
“Nothing. Not yet, at least.” I winked. “Now, where’s that blow-up bed? Let’s christen this pile of bricks.”
I pulled him into me and kissed him deeply, winding my hands into his hair. He responded immediately, kissing me back urgently. I kissed along his jaw, along his cheekbones, drawing my tongue along his skin right where his neck met his shoulder. He always tasted amazing there.
He groaned into my ear. “Shit. I forgot to get the blow-up bed.”
“Whuh?” I said, my mouth full of neck and shoulder.
“Yeah, sorry. I was so busy with everything this afternoon, it totally slipped my mind.”
I pulled back and pulled my tongue back into my mouth. “So where are we going to sleep—aghh!” I danced away; something furry had brushed up against my legs. “What the hell was that?”
My mind instantly conjured a task force of mice determined to take the house back from the invading humans.
But it wasn’t mice. It was Clive. Wide eyed and bushy tailed. Now weaving himself in and out of my legs, saying hello to Mommy. I looked at him, then back up to Simon. Who had the decency to look the tiniest bit guilty.
“I couldn’t leave him there; they called him Clyde!”
It took me 120 seconds to fly around the house, closing each and every door to each and every room that had not been kitty proofed. And then another sixty seconds to unclench my fingernails from the inside of my palms.
I returned to the living room. Simon was showing Clive the coat closet.
“I can’t believe you, Simon,” I huffed, pushing past him to grab my bag from where I’d dropped it by the front door.
“Oh, come on, it’s not that big a deal.”
I whirled on him. “It is a big deal when this is something we’d already agreed on. I don’t have time tonight to run around this huge fucking house and make sure there’s nothing he can get into.”
“I think you might be overreacting here a little. He’s probably going to stick pretty close to us tonight. He’ll snuggle up just like he always does and—”
“Snuggle up with us where, Simon? In the blow-up bed we don’t have? Where the hell are we supposed to sleep tonight?”
Clive wisely retreated to the dining room, where he pretended to explore the window seat. He was totally listening to us.
“I forgot! It’s not the end of the world; I’ll run out and get one. No big deal,” he snapped, grabbing his jacket and starting for the door. I stepped into his way to stop him when I heard a rattling of glass. I turned around and saw Clive, halfway out the big window over the window seat.
“Clive!” I shouted, and he froze, half in and half out. I snatched him up and held him close, Simon right behind me. The original casement windows were rusty, covered in years of old putty, and had no screens. Simon jiggled the window, finally got it shut, and turned back to face me.
Tears were running down my face. Clive was like my child. And like any mother who just saw her child go halfway through a window, I was half scared, half furious, and totally relieved. Clive was an indoor cat through and through; he’d never been outside a day in his life. He’d only seen streets from the comfort and safety of a window ledge. With a real window between him and the streets—not this rickety death trap.
“I’m so sorry,” Simon said, and I nodded. I hugged Clive so tightly he squeaked.
“Where’s his carrier?” I asked.
“I’ll get it,” he answered, and left the room.
I looked down at my cat, who turned in my arms to look up at me. “Don’t ever do that again, you hear me?” I warned, stroking his silky fur. He put a paw over my mouth. I kissed it, smiling down at him. When Simon came back with the carrier, my smile faded.
“I’m going to run him over to the pet place, okay?” I said quietly, nudging him into his carrier.
He nodded. “I’ll go buy one of those blow-up beds.”
I started for the door. “Do you have my key? In case I get back before you do?”
“Oh, sure—here it is,” he said, pulling a new key chain from his back pocket and handing me a key. I took it.
This didn’t have quite the ceremony that I thought it might.
I left with my cat.
• • •
I checked Clive in to his hotel, bought at least a dozen I’m-sorry catnip mice, and left after he was passed out on a pillow watching Lion King. As I drove back home, thoughts flew in and out of my head almost faster than I could process. Emotions too many to count. I was pissed, no doubt about it. About the bed? Yes. About Clive almost going out the window? Yes.
But there was more going on than just that; shit that I couldn’t even begin to ponder. Too tired to ponder this pickle, I winced once more as the car door squeaked, then plodded up the walk. I was exhausted, I was starving, and more than that, I felt terrible that this very exciting day had been turned into a crapshow.
I pushed open the door and found the biggest blow-up bed that had ever been created smack dab in the middle of the living room. Made up with sheets and blankets and mounds and mounds of pillows. And next to that? A table made out of a box covered with a furniture pad. And next to that? Two bags full of take-out Thai and a six-pack of beer cooling in a mop bucket full of ice.
And next to that? Simon. Sitting on the end of the bed. Which was very low to the ground. And quite squishy. So when he tried to stand? Not so much.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek as my very good looking and oh-so-athletic boyfriend struggled to stand up straight, and when he did? He was beet red.
“I got the bed,” he said quietly.
“I see that.”
“It’s pretty low.”
“It would seem.”
He came and stood in front of me, his body tense. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“I know.” I smoothed his hair back from his face and looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry too.”
“Can I have that key back?”
“Already?” I asked.
“Gimme it,” he muttered, one corner of his mouth lifting.
I looked at him curiously, but handed it back to him. He looked at it carefully, then back at me.
“I’ve never lived with anyone. You know that, right?”
I nodded.
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes thoughtful. Then he opened my hand and placed the key back in the middle of it. Closing my hand over it, he smiled. “Welcome home, babe.”
I smiled back and let him pull me into a slow and tentative kiss. This was better.
• • •
We ate dinner sitting cross-legged on the inflatable bed, which proved more difficult than I’d thought. First on the list, get some chairs over here pronto.
After dinner we walked from room to room, talking about what might go here, and what might go there. We had a pretty good idea of where we wanted everything, but there was nothing like walking through it together and making plans. When he said he’d never lived with anyone before, he wasn’t the only one. I’d had roommates, but never lived with a boyfriend.
Until now Simon and I had been very much together, but still very much our own entities. That had changed now. I was “living with someone.” If someone asked, “Hey, is that Caroline seeing anyone?” the answer would be, “Oh yeah, she and her boyfriend are living together,” or, “Yep, she and her boyfriend just bought a house together.” We were taking a very big step here, but a step I was glad we were taking.
And as we walked through our new home, room by room, I began to dream a little. I’d always seen myself in a big house like this someday, but never thought it would happen so quickly. I could always see past the things that needed to be changed, but now that I was in here, and the space was really and truly ours, I could feel the house. Feel what it had been, and what would be again for us.
A home. And isn’t that exciting? And a little scary.
When we finally made it to the master bedroom, I asked why we weren’t staying in there tonight.
“No lights; all the bulbs are burned out. I’ll get some tomorrow,” Simon answered, tugging me toward the window. The moonlight came through the glass, illuminating the room with the barest hint of blue. He sat on the window seat, pulling me onto his lap. “Where do you think we should put our bed?” he asked, nuzzling my neck.
“Our blow-up bed?”
“No, our new bed. You’re getting us a new bed, right?”
“New house, new bed. That sounds fair. I was thinking right there.” I pointed to the opposite wall. “Then when we wake up, we can see the bay. The light in the morning will be fantastic.”
“We might even be able to see the city,” he mused, resting his head on my shoulder.
“When it’s not foggy, for sure.” I sighed, finally feeling the weight of the day beginning to fall away.
“Did I tell you I had the cleaning crew pay extra-special attention to the claw-foot tub?” he asked.
The one thing he’d managed to do right that day was get a cleaning crew in to scour the place top to bottom as soon as the key was officially in his hands. We might be tearing half the stuff out of this house, but by God, it’d be clean stuff.
“Shut up.”
“If I did, you wouldn’t hear the best part,” he teased.
“Hit me, Wallbanger.”
“When I went out to get the bed? I also bought you some Mr. Bubble.”
“Shut up.”
“If I did, you’ll never hear the bestest part.”
“Bestest?”
“Yes. The bestest part is that I’m going to take a bubble bath with you. And not because I’m planning on seducing you, which I’ll try. And not because you’ll need help washing your back, which I’ll offer to do. But for a very specific reason,” he said, getting up and pulling me toward the bathroom.
“To see me naked?”
“That’s just a bonus. The real reason is that the lightbulbs are burned out in here too, and I know you’d get totally spooked if you had to stay here by yourself in the dark.” He grinned as we entered the bathroom.
“You do know me well,” I agreed.
From a bag in the corner, he pulled out a package of tea lights and a box of matches. “Practical bathing with a side of romance.”
I laughed out loud. And took a bath with Mr. Bubble and Mr. Parker in that very tub. Heaven. And I thought I was the practical romantic.
An hour later, I was camping on the floor of my new living room on a blow-up bed with my new roomie. I was relaxed; my limbs were limp and noodley. And when Simon slid into me to christen this first of many rooms, I allowed myself to be swept away.
Except I wasn’t. He tried everything he could to sweep me away, but there was no sweeping.
But it was still wonderful and warm and delicious, and the perfect way to end such an up-and-down day.
“No?” Simon asked as he panted into my ear, his body slick on top of me.
I stroked his back as I shook my head, feeling him finally relax into me. “I love you, Simon,” I whispered. “So much.”
He rolled us so I could lie in his nook, where the rise and fall of his chest lulled me. “Love you too, babe,” he whispered back, holding me close.
And as I slipped toward sleep, listening to all the unfamiliar sounds of our new home, I took a quick inventory. O was still in there, just a little skittish tonight.
All was good in the new neighborhood.
