The Designated +1

by Ellie Cahill

  “Well…I guess I’ll talk to you later,” Will said.

  “Wait—can you…would you mind coming in with me for a minute?”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I just…you know, me alone in the house and whatever…”

  “The boogie man?” he asked.

  “More like serial killers.”

  “You need to lay off the True Crime,” he said, but he started walking toward the house with me.

  As soon as the door was open, Bella leapt out at us. She looked at happy as ever, but that didn’t preclude there being a psycho killer inside. As long as he brought a treat, Bella would let anyone in the house. Golden retrievers were the worst watch dogs on earth.

  It took Will a couple minutes to get Bella to stop loving him and go into the backyard to do her business, but once she was off, he went into the house to do a quick check with me. I knew I should be brave enough to do this myself. I knew I would have had to come home alone any other night, but having the option of a huge dude to clear the house with me was too good to pass up.

  Like always, the house was clear. The doors and windows were as locked as they’d been before. I was tempted to ask Will to do a sweep of the basement and the closets, but that seemed a step too far.

  “You okay, then?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Bella barked at the back door and I hurried to let her back in.

  “Okay. Then I guess I’m on my way.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you staying at your parents’ house? Where do you park your RV?”

  “I’ll probably just head over to the house I’m renovating,” he said. “There’s no electrical hook up for the RV, but it’s got running water inside.” He shrugged.

  “Your life is weird,” I told him.

  “Some people would stay the same about yours.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I said. “I mean, why move it if you’re already here?”

  “You want me to sleep in the driveway?” he asked, like that was the weird idea. Like that was any less normal than parking at a vacant house for the night.

  “No, dummy,” I said. “You can stay here.” I pointed to the Quincys’ kitchen floor. “In a house. Like a normal person.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d feel weird about staying in someone’s house when they don’t even know I’m here.”

  “They don’t care,” I said. “Clients tell me all the time, ‘You can have your boyfriend stay with you if you want.’”

  Will held up one hand. “I’m not your boyfriend.”

  “Really?” I snarked.

  “Okay, but there’s a big difference between ‘You can have your boyfriend stay with you,’ and ‘You can turn our house into a bed and breakfast,’ Hadley.”

  “I know, but I feel weird about sending you across town in the middle of the night to sleep at a vacant lot.”

  “It’s a house.”

  “Whatever.” I waved my hand dismissively.

  Bella was by this time sitting obediently at Will’s feet, looking up in completely adoration.

  “Bella thinks you should stay.”

  “Bella is an idiot.”

  “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?” I asked.

  “I’m fine to drive.”

  “But why take the chance?”

  “You drove us here and I saw you drink at least two rum and cokes.”

  “See? We’ve already tempted fate enough for tonight. You should just stay.”

  “Hadley…” He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m not…we said before there wasn’t going to be any…” His hand waved vaguely between us.

  I straightened up and stared into his eyes. “Let’s get something straight. I do not now, nor do I ever want to sleep with you.”

  Will held my eyes for a long, quiet moment, then he nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  He was gone in the morning, but I found another note on the kitchen counter.

  HB -

  Thanks for being my +1.

  - W

  12

  Red Flags and How to Ignore Them

  It’s weird how quickly you can get accustomed to something. I’d gone for years without seeing Will Brady. He’d popped back into my life at random just a few weeks ago, but by the time the following Saturday rolled around, I felt strange not going to a wedding with him.

  With seven weddings on my calendar for the summer, this was one of the few free weekends I had—well, almost free. I did have a bachelorette party to go to that night. Because I’d hate to go a whole weekend without having to do something wedding-related.

  The bachelorette in question was my cousin Claire, and the party was in downtown Austin. We were staying in a hotel downtown to make sure no one had to drive, so once again, I wasn’t going to be sleeping at my parents’ house. Nothing unusual in that. I was basically a professional at the overnight stay.

  Without dogs to walk all day, I felt restless at home. I did laundry, I changed my sheets, I ordered a new stack of Hadley’s Hounds report cards. I twiddled my thumbs.

  So when my phone buzzed with a new message I jumped on it like it would escape if I didn’t catch it quick enough. It was a map point from Will. Nothing more. Just the address and the little link it generated to the mapping program.

  I sent three question marks back to him.

  Will: My house.

  Me: You moved?

  Will: The one I’m renovating.

  Um, okay, Captain Random. Me: Oh.

  Will: You said you wanted to see it someday.

  Me: Right. I do.

  Will: I’m here now if you’re not busy.

  That was good enough for me. I was too stir crazy to stay home. I grabbed my keys and headed for the back door.

  My mom was in the kitchen as I passed through. “Dog stuff?” she asked.

  I could never decide if my mom was on board with my job or not. She seemed happy that I was doing something, but also vaguely disappointed that it wasn’t something more important.

  “Yep,” I said. “Be back soon.” I don’t know why I lied, other than not wanting to explain why I’d be meeting Will Brady. Living at home, I felt like I had to guard what little privacy I had. It wasn’t that my mom was particularly nosy. It was just that she had a hard time letting me come and go without comment. I guessed I couldn’t really blame she. She spent eighteen years being in charge of me, and now I was back in the same house, sleeping in the same bed, but I expected her to treat me differently. Plus, since the divorce when I was twelve, and my brother leaving home when I was fourteen, it had just been me and her most of the time. My dad lived in Houston now, and his job as a pilot kept him very busy. I never questioned that he cared, but I’d also never lived with him.

  I really wanted to move out on my own, but I was trying to build up a decent savings cushion first. The dog business was steady right now, but it wasn’t exactly overburdened with job security. Or benefits.

  Will’s map point took me to an area kind of near the airport, and a neighborhood full of small to medium-sized houses. I was surprised to find it full of people and well-cared for houses. In my mind, I’d automatically imagined some abandoned house in a vacant lot in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere that teenagers would break in to spray paint the walls and drink cheap beer.

  This was the place, though. I recognized the RV as soon as I pulled up. Only there was no sign of Will. The doors to the house were closed and I couldn’t hear anything once the engine was off.

  I sent him a quick text message: I’m here

  Come in

  This all still felt like the set-up to a horror movie. If I were watching someone else on screen doing what I was about to do, I would be screaming at them to get the hell out of there. But what did I do? I got out of the car and walked straight up to the front door.

  What the hell was wrong wi
th me?

  The front door was open and I stepped cautiously through, unsure if I should call out a greeting. It seemed like the normal thing to do if you’re supposed to meet a friend—were Will and I becoming friends? I’d have to consider that later. But it also seemed like the next step in playing my idiotic horror movie part.

  From the foyer, I could hear the sound of someone doing work. So either Will was actually in here doing manly construction things, or he’d gone to seriously elaborate lengths to make it seem like he was. Still, I couldn’t completely abandon everything I’d learned as an avid student of True Crime.

  With no other options immediately available, I settled on fitting my keys between my fingers like a half-assed X-Man and I crept deeper into the house. Following the sound took me through a dirty hallway, a torn-up room that probably used to be a kitchen based on the plumbing in the walls, and through another plain, dark hallway to what felt like it was probably the master bedroom. It was hard to tell with everything empty and under construction, but there was just a certain master bedroom feeling about it. Take it from someone who spends a lot of time trying to locate stuff in semi-strange houses.

  There was a door in the back of the room that had to be the en suite bathroom. That was where the noises were coming from, and the only room so far that had any lights on.

  “Hello?” I called tentatively, while I was still near the bedroom door. I’d have a slight head start if I had to run, right?

  “Hadley?” Will’s voice. Okay, so I was in the right house. That was a start. There was a bit of noise before his wide-shouldered frame appeared in the door, backlit and imposing. “Hey. You found it.”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “So, this is it, huh?”

  “This is it.” He swiped his forearm across his forehead. “You want the grand tour?”

  “Sure.”

  Will came out of the bathroom and led me back through some of the territory I’d already covered so he could start from the beginning. As we walked, he told me about the house, and the plans he had for it. He’d bought it at auction after the last owner had defaulted on the loan. The house was in rough shape and needed a lot of work. He was more than up to the challenge, except for the amount of time he had to dedicate to the project.

  “And now with all these weddings, I’m losing most of my Saturdays, too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “Not your fault. It’s just…my timeline gets a little longer. Which makes the viability of this plan seem…”

  “Less viable?” I suggested, immediately regretting it.

  But Will just smiled. “Exactly.” Then his smile faded and he sighed. “Especially to my dad.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t seem to want to make eye contact either, so I pretended to get a notification on my phone. There wasn’t one, but I saw that I still had four hours to kill before I had to be at Claire’s bachelorette party.

  “You want some help?” I offered.

  Will laughed. “With what?”

  I shrugged. “Anything.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I’m making you go to even more weddings that you were supposed to go to. It’s the least I can do.”

  He looked skeptical. “Have you ever done any kind of construction work?”

  I straightened up as tall as I could. “No. But I can walk seven dogs at once.”

  “I hope you don’t mind getting a little dirty.”

  “I can handle it.”

  Famous last words.

  13

  DIY: Destroy It Yourself

  Working with Will on the master bathroom was nothing like the fun, chaotic demo days I’d seen on HGTV. No sledgehammering mirrors or kicking through walls. He gave me a pair of work gloves and safety glasses and told me that I should do exactly what he said when he said it. He already had all the plumbing disconnected, and he’d been working on removing the counter tops when I arrived, so my first task ended up being working a putty knife behind the backsplashes to remove the adhesive. It wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t easy.

  We wrestled the counter off the old vanity and carried it out to the dumpster while I tried to pretend that it wasn’t too heavy for me. Now I was expecting the sledgehammer for the cabinets, but Will unscrewed them all from the wall and neatly removed them to the garage with my help to donate to Habitat for Humanity. Sure the karma was great, but I was still a little disappointed in the lack of carnage.

  That’s how went with task after task. Will was meticulous and careful, and got everything he wanted saved out of the room without damaging it. It was efficient, and responsible, and totally unsatisfying. I wanted to break something.

  “Don’t we get to wreck anything?” I asked.

  He laughed. “The toilet’s going in the trash. You want to break that?”

  “Yes!” I said, enthusiastically picking up a hammer.

  “Not so fast!” he cautioned. “We break it after it’s out of here.”

  “Oh fine.”

  Will looked down at my canvas Toms. “How attached to those shoes are you?”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”

  “They might get wet.” My uncertainty must have been written all over my face, because he grinned. “I mean, you’ll probably be all right, but just in case.” This did not improve my expression, and he added, “If you’re scared, you don’t have to help.”

  “I’m not scared,” I protested.

  “Good.” Will hunkered down to loosen the bolts on the old toilet, while I stood by pretending I was not totally grossed out by the idea of carrying it out of here. It was an innocent enough looking toilet, as old dusty toilets in abandoned houses go, but I still didn’t really want to get up close and personal with it.

  But Will had triggered every little sister instinct I had. I wasn’t going to let him know that every fiber of my being wanted to back out of this. When he had the toilet rocked free—small but ominous sloshing sounds coming from inside the tank, he called me over.

  “It’s heavy,” he warned.

  “I can do it.” My jaw set tight, I followed Will’s instructions about where to put my hands and on his count of three, hoisted with all my might. The toilet lifted easier than I expected, but water rushed out of the pipes, splashing on the floor and spattering my shoes. I yelped, almost dropping my side of the toilet.

  “Told ya.”

  I gritted my teeth and refused to make a sound as I took my first squishing step in my wet shoe. Why did I wear Toms to a construction site? But there was no help for it now. And the last thing I wanted to do was go all wussy and drop a toilet on my foot. We carried the stupid thing through the house and out the front door with Will giving me directions as I shuffled backwards.

  Finally we reached the dumpster and Will gave us another three-count as we swung the toilet back and forth. On three, we heaved it on to the debris already collected in the dumpster. It landed, hard, but only cracked into two large pieces instead of the explosion I’d hoped for.

  “Aww, man. That was weak.”

  “You want to take a sledge hammer to it?”

  “Kind of.”

  He laughed. “All right.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sure. Why the hell not?” He disappeared into the house for a minute while I stood, panting in my wet shoes. It was embarrassing how exhausted I was, especially knowing that Will had taken more of the weight. He probably could have carried the toilet by himself, based on the size of his biceps.

  When he emerged from the house, he had a huge hammer slung over his shoulder, giving him a very lumberjack appearance. His skin glistened with sweat, and in his t-shirt with the sleeves cut off he looked like a complete cliche of the hottie construction worker. This might be Will Brady, but there is something about a man in a tool belt that just…works.

  Once he reached me, he held out the sledge. “Fire away, HB.”

  I opted to ignore the new nickna
me, and wrapped my hands around the handle of the heavy tool. The weight was incredible. Hard to lift over my shoulder.

  “Just do me a favor and don’t hurt yourself, okay?” Will said.

  “I’ve got this,” I said and heaved the sledgehammer into a determined arc. I hit the toilet dead-on. The porcelain exploded in exactly the satisfying way I’d hoped it would, sending chunks of white material scattering through the dumpster.

  There was a sharp sting above my right eye and something warm ran into my eyebrow.

  “Shit.” I let the head of the hammer thump to the floor while I tried to explore the spot with the inside of my left wrist. The heavy canvas gloves on my hands made it impossible to feel anything. My wrist came away streaked with blood. “Shit,” I repeated.

  “What happened?” Will turned me by the shoulders to look and winced. “Oh crap. Come on.” The rough texture of his glove scratched my arm as he guided me toward his RV. The blood was now running freely down my face, making me close my eye and swipe wrists and forearms alternately at my cheeks. I was making a huge mess of myself.

  Will dug out his keys and let us into his house on wheels, half-dragging me toward the tiny bathroom. It wasn’t much bigger than an airplane toilet, and I had to stand with my back pressed to the wall while he opened a medicine cabinet and searched for first aid supplies. When he closed the cabinet again, I caught my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t pretty.

  There was a gouge in my forehead and the entire right side of my face looked like I was an extra in a horror movie. The bright crimson of my blood contrasted sharply with my pale skin and the hundreds of freckles on my face. And despite my best efforts to wipe my cheek, the red river continued down my neck, staining the strap of my tank top and disappearing into the top of my bra.