I let my eyes drift closed and attempted to feel something again. The air seemed lighter, but that was probably just my imagination. I believed in what Sasha could do, but didn’t fool myself into thinking I had any more psychic ability than a rock.
The sound of Sasha shifting made my eyes pop open. His face was red now and a line of sweat dripped from his temple down his neck. His body trembled, and I almost reached for him.
“You okay, Sash?” I whispered.
He gave one quick nod and opened his eyes; they were bloodshot and distant. Without a word, he scrambled to his feet and lurched toward the back door. I followed him out, clenching my fists to keep from grabbing his shoulders. Sasha fell to his hands and knees on the overgrown grass and heaved out his lunch. I rushed back into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and then carried it and a paper towel to where he kneeled, drooling on the lawn.
I squatted beside him, set the glass on the ground, and rubbed his back in slow circles until he stilled.
“You all right?”
He spat again and then sat back on his heels. “Yeah.”
I handed him the paper towel to wipe his mouth and followed with the water so he could rinse. Exhaustion was written all over his face. As he caught his breath, I brushed the curls off his sweaty brow and examined him for signs that he might be sick again.
"Don’t stare at me like that. I’m okay.”
“All right.” I held my hand out to help him up, and as he got to his feet, I noticed something strange. The four areas of grass that had been directly under his hands and knees were brown and crispy as if all the moisture had been sucked out of those points in the otherwise lush yard. I shifted my focus, expanding my view of the property. Dotted around in similar groups of four were dozens of other burnt-brown spots. The tree in the back of the yard held nothing but dead leaves, not unusual for October, but this was coming up on June.
I turned to meet Sasha’s eyes, where I was met with guilt and shame mixed with determination.
“Sasha, honey, what did you do?”
I dreamed I was being smothered by a bear. When I awoke, Nick was sprawled across my chest and his beefy leg was slung over my thighs. I groaned and pushed at him, which made him curl his arm and leg around me tighter.
“You’re hot,” I complained without conviction.
“Um, not so bad yourself.” He kissed my shoulder, and snuggled into my neck.
Setting aside the invasion of my space, I relaxed in his embrace and listened to the morning rain trickling on the roof above. We were curled up on my floor pallet because when he’d brought me home last night, Nick had refused to leave me alone. I guess my demonstration had messed with his head. I’d known it would. On a normal night, I would have performed the clearing act two or three times, but Nick had refused to let me continue. Instead, he’d insisted on driving me to Denny’s to get something to eat, and then home to rest. Not gonna lie. It was nice to be taken care of.
“This floor is killing me,” Nick groaned. “How can you stand it?”
I stroked the hair on his arm. “It works better when you sleep flat on your back.”
Nick sat up, massaging his shoulder. “But then I can’t hold you.”
I grinned at his pouty morning face, his short hair sticking up in funny tufts. The words came out before I had a chance to think about them. “I don’t care where I sleep as long as I get to wake up with you.”
Nick’s expression melted into a smile. He rolled over and landed on top of me, sending my breath out with an “Oof!”
“You mean it? You like waking up together? ’Cause I was thinking, maybe you should move into my place. With me. Like for real.”
The blood rushed to my face and the atmosphere in the room thickened. I pushed Nick off and sat up, rubbing my forehead. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with Nick. Of course, I wanted to be with him. I knew which direction my feelings were heading in. But would he even ask if I wasn’t homeless? The imbalance in our situations weighed on me, and for the millionth time, I wished I brought more to this relationship. If I ever did decide to shack up with someone, I’d need to be one hundred perfect certain it was because we wanted to be together, and not out of our financial need.
Not to mention, this was all moving crazy fast. The guy had only recently discovered he liked dick. What if some woman came around and caught his interest? Or another guy for that matter. What if I got all comfortable in his life and he changed his mind about me?
“Well?”
I shrugged, my mouth suddenly dry. The house filled with a weird energy, as if it were also waiting for my answer.
Nick scooted up next to me and slung his arm around my shoulders. “Look, I know this is quick, but Christ, it’s never been like this for me before. This needing to touch someone all the time. Needing to understand someone and wanting them to understand me.”
I felt the sincerity of his words, even felt them back, but I wasn’t sure I could take a chance on them yet. “Can I think about it?”
“You have to think about whether to sleep on the floor alone or in a comfortable bed with me?” He said it jokingly, but couldn’t disguise the hurt in his tone.
“It’s more than that and you know it.” I ducked out of his hold and turned to face him. “I might be in a desperate situation, but this is a big step for me. For us.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Why do you want me to live with you, Nick? Tell me.”
“A million reasons. You want me to list them all?”
“Top three.”
He swore under his breath, and then reached for my hands. Looking in my eyes, he counted off. “One. I like sleeping with you. It feels right. Two. I care about you. I don’t care if that freaks you out or what. It’s the truth. Three. I think we make a good team. We’re friends and partners and lovers. And I want to continue that way for a good long time. There. Satisfied?”
I searched his face, finding no deception, only naked emotion, as if he’d laid his heart out on the ground and was praying I wouldn’t stomp on it.
“So it’s not because you feel guilty for kicking me out of here in a few weeks? Or because I’m gonna end up back on the streets again soon?”
“Of course not! If easing my guilt was all it was, I’d ask Damien to house you until you got on your feet. I’m not asking you to be my roommate, Sasha. I’m asking you to share my life.”
I hated to bring it up so early in the morning, but it had to be said. “And how can we do that with Frank Diamond hanging over your head? You might think I’m overly cautious, but what would we do if you defaulted on your loan? Are you even going to have a place to go home to?”
Nick scrubbed his hands down his stubbly face in frustration. “I don’t know, okay? I can’t think about that right now. I need to stay focused on getting the project finished so I can pay him off and give my business a jump start.”
I rested my hand on his forearm, trying to say this as gently as I could. “It would be worse for both of us to start something together only to have it blow up in our faces. I have my own plan. When you sell this place, I’m going back to the shelter for a while until a room opens up at the Michigan Inn. I’m already on the waiting list.”
“No way! I’m not going to just sit back and let you live in a shelter.”
“You may not have a choice. Do you really think a guy like Diamond is going to renegotiate a payment plan based on a sliding scale of your income? Fuck no. He’s not running a charity. He’s gonna come after you with all he’s got. Especially knowing you have a nice, middle-class family who loves you and would mortgage themselves to the teeth in order to bail you out of trouble.”
Nick’s face blanched and his eyes moistened.
“Jesus, Sasha. He’s gonna go after my family, isn’t he? He knows Steven and Damien are my brothers, and that they both own businesses. My parents have their retirement savings, but they need that to live on. I can’t let him go after them. I won’t.”
> I cupped his trembling fingers in my hands and gave him what I hoped would be a reassuring smile. “I’m gonna help you as much as I can so that doesn’t happen. But we need to be realistic here.”
I let that hang in the air a moment, giving him time to absorb. Then, I reached up to rub slow circles over his back, the tension in his body slowly eased.
“You believe I can do it, right?”
I answered honestly. “If I had any money, I’d bet it all on you.”
“I don’t know why you have so much faith in me, but I’m grateful for it.”
“Well, I think I care about you too.”
His eyes lit up and he failed to keep the smirk off his face. “You think?”
“Yeah. I think. But I still need a little time to ponder on the whole moving-in-together thing. I’ve never been in a serious relationship before, and I don’t want to screw it up just because you’re too impulsive for your own good.”
He pulled me in for a deep kiss, and before I knew it, I was pinned under him. “We could start out at my place, but once this house sells, we can look for something bigger.”
“I didn’t agree to anything—”
There was a lurch in the atmosphere. Loneliness and a deep sense of loss filled me. I pushed Nick away and sat up, opening myself up to the house. Its emotions began to swirl and roll.
“I know, I know,” Nick continued, not realizing what was happening. “You didn’t agree yet. But I can still plan for when you do. How about a place in my parents’ neighborhood? Not next door. Christ, that would be a nightmare. I’m just thinking that part of town. Bet we could rent a little bungalow for cheap.”
My body went hot and cold at the same time, making me break into a cold sweat.
“Stop,” I said, placing a damp palm on Nick’s arm. “Stop talking a minute.”
He sat up, studied my face, and pressed a hand to my forehead. “Do you have a fever? You’re all flushed.”
“Not me. The house.”
“The house has a fever?”
“No. The house is upset with us talking of moving out. It doesn’t want to be alone again.”
Silently, I attempted to soothe the house. I pictured a family eating dinner in the new kitchen in the hopes it would see the potential. It didn’t. Instead, a vision of phantom furniture rose around me from some point in the past. I tried not to be disconcerted with the fact there was now a desktop cutting through my neck, decapitating me, and I examined the vision to see what the house was trying to tell me.
The room was a mess. The bed was unmade and heaps of clothes piled around an overflowing hamper in the corner. A gigantic tower of beer cans stood stacked against one wall, and a blue bong sat on the floor next to the bed. The Dave Matthews Band and Cake CDs stacked on the desk next to me gave me a rough time period for the vision. This must have been the room of one of the college guys who’d trashed the house when they left it.
“Nick’s not going to sell you to someone who will use you as student housing. Why would he put all this work into you if he was going to just let you get trashed again? Right, Nick?”
Nick looked startled, but then he cleared his throat and said, “Uh, yeah. I’ll make sure you go to a good family.”
You.
I groaned. “House, I can’t stay here. Even if Nick gave me a deal, I can’t afford you.”
The air around me vibrated angrily. You.
“No, House. You know I gotta move on soon. You knew when I came here that it was temporary.”
Suddenly, the energy of the house rolled, and a groan and a crack sounded above us.
“That wasn’t thunder,” Nick said, hopping up to look out the window at the falling rain.
“Oh shit,” I muttered. I hopped to my feet and went for the attic steps. Careful not to step on anything stabby with my bare feet, I walked back to the general area over my room. There were several steady drips of water leaking in from the roof.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Nick yelled. “The roof was fine. Why’s it leaking?”
Because the house made it leak.
“What happened?” He leveled his narrowed eyes on me. “Why did the roof suddenly spring a leak? It was that talk about you moving out, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, embarrassed that it was my fault. “I’m sorry, Nick. I knew the house was attached to me, but I didn’t think it would do this.”
His face went pale. “I don’t believe it. I totally buy into what you can do with the whole psychic-communication thing, but I never thought the house could do something so . . . real.”
“You mean affect the physical world? Unfortunately, it can. Ever heard of poltergeists?”
“Like pissed off ghosts who throw shit? Yeah, I saw the movie.”
“Same concept.”
“The house did this?”
“Yes, but it takes a hell of a lot of energy. It’s completely closed itself off to me right now. It should be quiet for a while. Look, I’ll get a couple of those five-gallon buckets from downstairs to catch the drips.” I turned back toward the attic steps.
“Fuck! I’ll have to run to the hardware store for a tarp.”
We went back down to the bedroom to pull on some clothes.
“The rain is supposed to let up this morning sometime,” Nick said. “Maybe once the sun comes out, I can climb up there and patch in a few shingles.”
I hoped a few shingles was all it would take. Considering my admittedly meager cash reserves, I might be able to pay for a patch. It was the least I could do.
We walked down to the kitchen so I could grab things to catch the leak.
“Wait, Nick,” I said, stopping him before he walked out the door. “I’m really sorry. If I’d known this was gonna happen, I would’ve done something to stop it.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault.” He pulled me close, and I felt his heart racing. “I’m the stupid one who kept pushing the issue. I’m in shock. It scares the shit out of me that the house has this kind of power. But I’m glad you’re safe. And I can deal with a few shingles.”
He gave me a peck on the mouth, and left out the back door.
I expected to hear Nick’s truck start, but instead he called me outside. I poked my head out the back door to see Nick standing in the drizzle, glaring up.
“Come ’ere.”
I walked out and looked up where he pointed, expecting to see a shingle or two loosened or sluffed off. But no. Every shingle on the entire rear slope of the house was shrunken up and curled like crispy bacon left in the pan too long.
“Fuck, Nick. That’s not just a patch job, is it?”
Unable to look at the damage anymore, I began to pace like a caged animal. How many times had I said that it was a good thing I didn’t have to replace the roof? It hadn’t been perfect, but good enough to get me through the sale. Now, the shingles had lifted and curled like the ruffled scales on the back of a pissed-off dragon. What the hell was I going to do? A new roof on a house this size would be over ten grand, and that was with me doing the labor. And my timeline? Blown to shit!
“Do you have insurance?” Sasha asked, his face gone gray. “Maybe they could pay for it.”
“An adjuster would take one look at that roof on a house this old, and say it’s wear and tear. Fuck, I gotta run to the store. Get those buckets up there.”
I stomped off toward my truck, clutching my keys so hard they could’ve left a permanent imprint in my hand. I didn’t glance back at Sasha. I knew he was beating himself up over this, but I didn’t have it in me to reassure him right now. If I’d just backed off when he said he needed time to think about moving in together, this never would’ve happened.
I got in my truck and drove to Home Depot. I grabbed a few tarps and ordered the materials for a new roof using the store credit on my contractor’s account. It took all my available credit, which meant I couldn’t order the new bathroom fixtures this week like I had planned. Basically, all other work at the house would have to come to a scre
eching halt until the roof was dealt with and I somehow came up with more cash. The store clerk arranged to deliver the new shingles tomorrow.
Shit. I needed to call my subcontractors to rearrange schedules.
Back in my truck, I noticed the clouds parting. Good. I took out my phone to check the weather for the week. If I got started right away, I should be able to get the new roof on before the next storm was due. I’d need to hire more help, though. Neither Sasha nor Damien had ever installed a roof before. They might be able to strip off shingles, but that was about it.
I called the local Manpower office to see if they had anyone available over the next few days with roofing experience. They agreed to make some calls and get back to me.
Materials and labor taken care of. That just left how to pay for it. I still had money from what I’d borrowed, but it was all earmarked for other things. I’d kept such a tight hold on the budget so far that there was no room to cut any more corners. That left only one option.
A half hour later, I sat in front of Frank Diamond with my proverbial tail between my legs.
“Do I look like an ATM to you?” His face was purple from shouting. “You think I have money lying around and nothing better to do with it? This is a business. I have cash flow to be concerned about, and right now, your little project is sitting on my balance sheet like a massive black hole. Honestly, Nicky, I’m losing faith in your ability to pull this off.”
The muscle standing behind me shifted from one foot to the other, making my spine tingle. There were three of them this time. Mountains of men shifting their weight from foot to foot in anticipation of the signal to rip into me.
“Can I just show you something? Let me pull the comps so you can see again what a good investment this is.” I opened the browser on my phone and logged into the file with my comp research. “See this house here? It sold two months ago on the same street as my house for two hundred ninety grand. The square footage is slightly higher than I have, but it only has a one-car garage and no yard.”
Surreal Estate Page 16