Eugene and the Box of Nails

by Jaime Samms

  “I am impressed. That’s a lot to remember.”

  “Well, I admit, I have a secret.”

  Silence scudded in over their mostly finished meals. He’d already divulged so much and shown how easily Steve had bilked him out of everything. Was it wise to show one more weakness?

  “Going to share?” Cullen asked.

  “What the hell. In for a penny, right?” He wiped his fingers on his napkin and tossed it onto his empty plate, then sat back and picked up his glass with the few mouthfuls of beer left in the bottom. “I didn’t learn to read until I was in high school,” he gulped back the remaining beer, focusing on the bottom of his glass while he fortified himself for the next bit. “I managed to hide it by memorizing everything out of the teachers’ mouths, but when it was time to do independent studies, it was kind of hard to fake it. Ironically, English was easiest, because audiobooks, right? And I could dictate my essays, and Paul would fix them.”

  “He knew?”

  “He did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Mostly ego. It was embarrassing. But then I got so scared I’d never be able to learn I just… gave up, really. Then Deana came along, and she was so awesome.”

  “Paul’s wife.”

  “My tutor first, but yeah, they hit it off.” He grinned. “I think they bonded over my dumbass shenanigans. I was not the easiest kid to work with.”

  “And now you can read?”

  Eugene’s face heated. But there was no point pretending. He’d learned a long time ago he did better with all his chips on the table. “If I have to. But it’s not easy.”

  “Why?”

  “Huh.” He slugged back more of his beer and thunked the glass down. “No beating around the bush with you, is there?”

  “Just a question. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” No judgement. Cullen’s face remained open and interested.

  “I don’t have a learning issue,” Eugene finally admitted. “At least, not that I’ve ever been diagnosed. But Paul is convinced there’s some kind of print-to-brain disconnection going on.” He shrugged and popped the last few communal fries into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Since I went to work for Steve right out of high school and Paul helped me fill in all the insurance paperwork, it never really came up. Got past the need to worry about it, really. I do okay.”

  “There’s a lot of paperwork involved in running your own business.”

  It wasn’t like Eugene hadn’t known that. He nodded. “Deana’s a bookkeeper. She does all that for their farm, and she’ll do it for me too. I got it covered. If it ever happens.”

  A broad smile spread over Cullen’s face. “It’s like nothing fazes you. You just go on and do the next thing on the list. No hesitation.” There was an odd, slightly breathy note in his voice, and his eyes glittered.

  “Sure,” Eugene said, and it wasn’t a reflex response this time. “Because what else would you do? The things don’t get done if you don’t do them. I’m always behind, but—” He shrugged. “That’s just life.”

  “I like you.” Cullen touched Eugene’s fingers where they rested on his beer glass. “I like that you just…” He narrowed his eyes. “…don’t let little things like tight finances dictate what’s possible.” He belted back the last of his beer. “Drink up. Let’s go window shop.”

  Eugene reluctantly pulled his glass, and thus his fingers, away from Cullen’s light touch so he could down the rest of his beer. He wasn’t normally one for craft fairs or window shopping, but he was definitely okay with seeing where Cullen’s obvious interest might lead.

  WITH CULLEN’S constant observations, the craft fair proved way more inspiring than Eugene expected. He had been so focused on the outer walls of his house, getting the framing up and hoping he found enough material for the cladding and insulation, that he hadn’t even thought about the interior, much less imagined how he might decorate.

  “These wool roving rugs are the warmest things I have ever encountered,” Cullen told him as he ran a hand over a black-and-grey circular rug of about a five-foot diameter and almost an inch thickness. Eugene couldn’t resist the temptation to smooth a palm over the fluffy material.

  “Soft.” The firm weave of the roving, which was normally so loose and prone to unraveling, was surprisingly plush under his fingertips.

  “And cushiony,” Cullen whispered, mouth close to Eugene’s ear. “No rug burn here.”

  A shiver travelled down Eugene’s spine right to his groin. Heat roiled through him at the images that flashed through his head. He didn’t dare look at Cullen. Searching for distraction, he turned over the price tag on the finished rug. That cooled him off in a hurry. It was disappointingly high, but not a surprise. Still, he filed the idea away for a future rainy day. Paul might recently have purchased llamas, but he’d been raising sheep for their wool for a long time, and Eugene already knew how to clean and card the stuff like a pro.

  He could replicate this. And just imagine what one of these puppies might be like spread on the floor in front of the wood stove, the house lit only by coloured lights and a golden tree-topper…. Cullen there with him…. The possibilities suddenly turned infinite.

  “Good to know.” He peeked at Cullen, who grinned back, then took Eugene’s hand as they filed past the next stall. Eugene didn’t even notice what was on offer in the next few stations they passed. He was too preoccupied with the weight and inherent strength in the fingers Cullen closed around his.

  “I want to show you another vendor,” Cullen told him, leading him around a corner and behind the really Christmassy aisles. The booths in this back row were a little less flashy and more practical, even if they did sport window dressing that suited the season. Cullen led him along the row to a booth near the very end.

  A woman with wrinkled skin but hands steady as a rock sat in a folding chair, head bent over a small, delicate array of coloured glass. She was holding a soldering iron, touching the tip carefully to the juncture of the ribbing between precisely cut shards of blue and green glass.

  As the two men approached, she held up one finger, eased the hot instrument away from the metal, then straightened. “Boys,” she said. “Out Christmas shopping?”

  Eugene stared at the many-coloured displays hanging on the walls of her booth. Fairy lights had been strategically placed to light the glass masterpieces from behind. He didn’t realize his mouth hung open until Cullen gently placed a finger under his chin and pushed upwards.

  “See something you like?” the artist asked. Her wizened voice held no small hint of pride.

  “More like what’s not to like.” Eugene traced a finger ever-so-lightly over the lines of a pane depicting cattails and pond grasses in a frosty landscape. Somehow, she had managed to depict the tiny filigrees of ice ringing the reeds where they emerged from the water. The rich browns of the cattails’ bloom spikes meant the image was depicting a late-spring flash frost. The greens of the grass spires and the horizontal washes of blue and white in the water lent an almost fairy lightness to the composition.

  He was in love.

  “You like that one?” Cullen asked, voice a low rumble close to his ear.

  Eugene let out a breath and stepped away. “You’re a genius,” he told the lady.

  She smiled softly and tipped her chin. “Well. I don’t know about that, but I do enjoy my work.” She turned back to her current project. “Feel free to look around.”

  She must have sensed the shallowness of Eugene’s pockets, because she didn’t pay them any more heed as they slowly made their way around the booth, examining every single frame of glass.

  It was all Eugene wanted to see. He was walked out, and knew nothing was going to top the beauty he’d just indulged in. “Thank you,” he told Cullen after they said goodbye to the stall owner and headed for the exit. “You were right. This was a huge inspiration.”

  Cullen chuckled. “You going to learn how to make stained glass now?”


  “It would be about the only way I could afford to have it in my house.” Eugene smiled, trying not to regret the indulgence of drinking in so much of the woman’s display. “But no. Even if I managed to learn the basic mechanics of it, there’s no way I could create that kind of art. She really is talented.”

  “That she is.” Cullen took his hand again. “Come on. One more coffee for the road, and then I sadly have to head home. Beth is dropping off the two youngest so she and Marty can bring the others to the movies.”

  Hand-in-hand, they strolled back across the street to the Old Rock and ordered another coffee each, this time both opting for good old-fashioned dark roasts.

  “I’d really like to exchange numbers,” Cullen said as they snapped lids onto their cups. “If you want. It might be nice to—”

  “Yes,” Eugene said. “Yes. Let’s do that. Exchange numbers, go on another date. Yes.” There was no point pretending he wasn’t interested. Cullen certainly wasn’t messing around, and Eugene was drawn to the older man’s confidence, like it was rubbing off on him a bit.

  “Perfect.” Cullen held out a hand, and Eugene opened his phone to the contacts app, then handed it over. It took Cullen no time to input his information, then hand the phone back. Eugene sent him a smiley-face text so Cullen had his number as well.

  “Perfect,” Cullen said again, motioning with his phone. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Eugene grinned. “Awesome.”

  At least he hadn’t said “sure” again.

  ENERGIZED BY the displays of art and talent, Eugene found he wasn’t willing to waste the last few hours of sunshine he had left when he reached home. It was cold, sure, but he had one wall left to raise, and then he could start on the roof. His unexpected date with Cullen, and the anticipation of another, meant there was no way he was going to be able to sit around his little freezing trailer anyway.

  As soon as he stepped out of his pickup, it was obvious someone had been by his site. Strings of colourful LED lights had been strung around his trailer and flew from the corners of it to nearby tree branches. The entire site was lit up in red, green, and blue. A full box of roofing nails sat on his stump by the fire pit, a shiny red bow stuck to the top, and a slab of very pretty beige marble leaned against the trailer under the canopy. Immediately after that, he noted the wall he had left lying on the dirt, ready to be hauled up. Only now, it was in place.

  Eugene did a slow pan of the site. Nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. The slate tiles he had purchased from the ReStore were still stacked under a tarp on pallets next to the house. The recycled plywood forms he’d salvaged leaned against the stud wall awaiting installation. His meagre stack of two-by-fours, though, was larger by half than it had been when he’d left. The new material wasn’t, in fact, new, but it was nail-free and straight, devoid of cracks, though he could tell the boards had been used for something.

  “The hell?” He wandered through the framed-out doorway where he would now be able to install his oversize front door, and found a stack of plywood truss braces waiting to be nailed to two-by-fours to form the roof’s trusses. Someone had taken all his plywood scraps and cut out the braces for him.

  “I should screw the pooch more often,” he muttered. Then he grinned. Whoever had erected the wall and cut the braces had saved him more than a day of tedious work, as well as a lot of hard, dangerous labour with his pulley-and-brace system to get the wall upright.

  “Thank you!” he called. His words bounced across the lake below and came back, unanswered.

  MONDAY DAWNED with a dusting of snow over the yard and fire pit, and an angry crow still hoping for scraps from his supper. “Too bad, you little scamp,” he told it. The bird flapped up to the wire and chucked at him. “Whatever.” He whistled as he set his fire, prepared the big pot of coffee, and sipped his own. He’d spent the last daylight hours of Sunday cutting the pieces for his roof trusses and nailing the first one together. He was raring to go on getting the rest put together. He’d work out later how he’d get them on top of the walls.

  The workers from next door arrived, waving and smiling as they grabbed their brew and headed down to the site. If they seemed more friendly than normal, Eugene put it down to his improved mood and holiday spirit. He was beginning to think he might actually have a marginally livable space before Christmas at this rate. And it was all thanks to his mysterious construction elves.

  His mood ground down some as he worked and his arm began to ache from the repetitive motion of nailing things together. His back, never the same after the fall from the scaffolding, had a major hate-on for him, but he soldiered on. The house wasn’t going to build itself. Long hours of hammering and cursing later, he had the trusses assembled and stacked against the wall. He could leave them for a day or two while he called around to find a crane or more hands to get them up to the roof, but he couldn’t leave it too long lest they start to warp.

  “Hi.” Cullen’s warm voice snapped Eugene out of his contemplation, and he turned to find the man sauntering across the yard from the head of the path. He’d barely noticed the others getting into their vehicles to go home.

  “Hi.”

  “Good amount of work you have done,” Cullen observed, “considering it’s not even two.”

  “Had another visit from my construction elves yesterday, it seems.” He cocked his head, expecting some kind of reaction from Cullen, but the man’s face remained neutral.

  “That so?” Cullen lifted an eyebrow. “Construction elves? That’s a thing?”

  “Unless you know something about how my wall got raised?” Eugene watched him carefully, but Cullen only shrugged, then grinned. “I was with you yesterday, remember?” He stepped closer and brushed fingers through the curls on Eugene’s forehead. “Ashes in your hair,” he muttered.

  “Ashes.” Eugene swallowed, distracted suddenly by the depth of Cullen’s studious brown eyes. “Sure.”

  “Sure,” Cullen repeated, moving a fraction closer. There was no mocking in his tone, and before Eugene could come up with anything more intelligent to say, he was being kissed.

  Cullen’s lips planted firmly over his own, and he barely had time to register, then respond with a breathy whimper, before Cullen moved back. “I had to get that out of the way,” Cullen said. “It was bugging me.”

  “I’m sorry?” Eugene stumbled back. “Bugging you?”

  “I didn’t get a chance for a kiss goodbye yesterday.”

  “You—” Eugene clacked his teeth, set his hands on his hips, and harrumphed. “You didn’t ask.”

  Cullen’s crooked grin got Eugene’s heart skipping. “My bad.”

  “What.” Flushing, Eugene had to clear his throat before he could continue. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’ve been working your ass off. I thought you might like an early supper. The guys took off early for a company Christmas thing with another crew.” He cocked that sideways grin Eugene was beginning to love. “So I’m free the rest of the day. What do you say to someplace warm?”

  “I don’t need you to keep buying me foo—”

  “I was going to cook for you, actually.” For the first time, a ghost of a frown crossed Cullen’s face. “Is that a problem? Did I read things wrong?”

  “What? No.” Eugene closed the distance and patted Cullen’s arm. “No. I—you can kiss me again if you want.” Shit. Can you be a bigger dork?

  Cullen’s half grin returned. “Oh, I can?” He gripped Eugene’s coat front and hauled him in, planting a heavy kiss on him, stealing his breath and scrambling his brain. The sounds that came out of him this time were not breathy in the least. Needy? Yes. And maybe demanding, but he had no more control over them than he had over the weather. Heat flushed into his cheeks at the sounds he was making, but they didn’t seem to deter Cullen.

  In fact the kiss grew heavy and hot, making Eugene’s knees weak before they finally parted. Eugene blinked up at Cullen.

  “Okay.”

  Cullen
widened his grin. “Okay? That was an okay kiss? Maybe I didn’t try hard enough.”

  Eugene braced himself, but that was no match for the next kiss, accompanied by a lot of tongue and Cullen’s strong arms wrapping around him. He swayed into the bigger man, clutching at his coat, shivering from the clash of cold on his skin and heat in his belly. Cullen snuck a hand up the back of his neck and into his hair. Eugene had no chance. He moaned, closed his eyes, and sank everything into the connection.

  When he was finally allowed to breathe again, Eugene had a hard time getting his brain back online. He’d agreed to supper with Cullen—at Cullen’s place—before he remembered he had a date with Paul and the insulation one of Paul’s hands had volunteered to make for him.

  The kid needed volunteer hours for school credit, and Eugene had arranged the task for him through Habitat for Humanity. If the experiment worked, the organization would be able to add the endeavour to their long list of volunteer projects in the future.

  “Shit.” He slumped and took a step back, passing light fingers over his mouth.

  “Problem?” To Eugene’s surprise, Cullen didn’t sound annoyed so much as concerned.

  “No. I mean. Nothing huge. I’m supposed to go out to the farm to check on some things. I forgot.” He grinned. “Or you blew everything else out of my head, more like.”

  “Mission accomplished, then.” Cullen looked supremely proud of himself for an instant, but then he sobered. “But whatever you need. Do you want to go there first?”

  “Might take some time.”

  “I have time.” Cullen straightened Eugene’s coat and patted his chest. “Your ride or mine?”

  “Um.” Eugene flushed, ashamed that the first thing he thought of was that not having to drive his own truck out to the farm and back would save him a good twenty bucks in gas. He glanced at his boots, but Cullen patted his chest again.

  “Mine, then,” he offered. “Let’s go. You want fast food on the way, or can you wait?”