by Meg Collett
“What are you doing out here?”
Nothing.
“I’m assuming it isn’t to be on the show. You don’t really seem like the hammer and nail type of girl. Then again, neither am I, but I’m here.”
The breeze was talking louder than this chick right now. Stevie knew she should shut up and walk away. Clearly, Violet didn’t want company, which wasn’t all that surprising since Stevie had never seen her talk to anyone in Canaan. Whenever she saw Violet, it was either near the cemetery, where she took care of the flowers, or biking up the steep lane toward her rundown house on the bluffs. An old manor-style house and one of the first buildings on the island, it looked one stiff breeze away from blowing into the ocean.
“Probably not a camera guy either,” Stevie mused, unable to stop herself. “You don’t have the muscles for it. Or the stench.”
The girl blew out a soft sigh. Shocking Stevie completely, she lifted a finger and pointed at a van parked along the street that read Maggie’s Sweets. Beneath the cursive name was written, Canaan Island, Georgia.
“Oh! You’re with the caterer. Well, now, that makes more sense.”
Violet’s hand fell back into her lap. From a small clutch purse with frayed corners, she pulled out a pair of tortoise-shell sunglasses and slipped them onto her face. Stevie pretended like she wasn’t studying Violet, but the closer she looked, the more she noticed little details, like the extremely faded print on her dress, which Stevie had thought was solid yellow at first. The hem had bright white stitching, suggesting it had recently been repaired. The soles of her shoes were uneven, the heels worn out. But even in her state of general disrepair, there was an air about her, like she’d been plopped down from another time and couldn’t quite fall into step with the world around her.
Stevie kind of dug it.
“So you probably have to use, like, SPF 500 or something, right? With your pale skin?”
Behind the sunglasses, perfectly kept eyebrows rose. Stevie thought Violet was giving her a little side eye. It was almost like a real answer.
“Probably have to special order that shit,” she mused, mostly talking to herself, but she was enjoying the company nonetheless. “I have to put it on every morning too, or else I’ll find a hundred more freckles that evening. I hate my freckles.”
Stevie scrunched up her nose as she pictured her speckled face.
“I think your freckles are very flattering.”
Stevie almost fell over. “Hot damn, you do speak.” She sat up straight and angled toward Violet since this had turned into an actual conversation. “And thanks, I appreciate that. My mom used to cover them with makeup all the time. Kind of gave me a complex about them, you know?”
Violet inclined her head.
“Yeah.” Stevie nodded. “Moms are the worst.”
“My mother died when I was young, but she was a good woman.” The words were almost quieter than the breeze picking up around them.
“Oh,” Stevie murmured. “Sorry.”
“This was her dress.” Violet fanned out the corners of her dress and ran her fingers along the material, tracing the patterns Stevie could barely make out.
“I bet she looked hot in it.”
Violet’s attention fluttered to Stevie’s face for a split second before she looked away. Ever so slightly, Stevie saw her chin dip in acknowledgment.
“Vintage is so—”
“Stevie!”
Violet jerked next to her at the shout. Before Stevie could even look up at the sound of Cade’s voice, Violet seemed to shrink into herself, tucking her chin to her chest and wrapping her arms around her middle. She shifted and pulled her legs up beneath her dress as if she needed to make every inch of her pale, almost translucent skin disappear. A wall of silver hair fell forward, covering her face.
The Ghost was back.
Cade and Arie jogged over, smiles on their faces.
“Hey,” Cade said, still smiling. He shot a questioning glance at Violet, but he recognized her, same as Stevie had. “You missed the meeting.”
Stevie lifted a shoulder. “Heard it all before.”
“Arie is going to follow us back to the island so we can talk to Hale tonight. We got our packets, which means we can start the design process. Arie said he might even look for a place to rent there. Isn’t that right, Arie?” Cade spoke fast and effortlessly, his face flushed with excitement. Stevie could practically see the ideas pouring out of his head.
“Uh, yeah,” Arie said. His eyes kept shifting back to Violet, and he had that sort of smile guys got when they were considering how hot someone was, like maybe they had a chance and were calculating their plan of attack.
Stevie considered herself a good person. She wasn’t Mother Freakin’ Teresa, but she was known to stop in the middle of the street to help a tortoise across the road. Normally, she reserved her scant kindness for animals, not people, but seeing as how Arie kept glancing at Violet and could barely put two words together, she thought she’d do her good deed for the year.
“Arie,” she said, sweeping her hand grandly toward Violet, “this is Violet Relend. She lives on Canaan too. Violet, this is Arie Mendoza. He lives . . . Actually, I don’t know, but isn’t he just so handsome?”
6
“There are a total of eight teams,” Cade was explaining later that evening at Stevie’s house, “and we all get our own side of a duplex.”
“Anyone we know?” Hale asked from where he sat between Arie and Cade, all of them bent over a snowfall of paper containing plans and lists and hasty drawings.
“Helena and Marsha Evans,” Cade said.
Hale cursed then coughed to cover up the word so Kyra wouldn’t hear. She’d been trying to get them all to cut down on how much they cursed. It wasn’t working.
“How do you know the Evans?” Stevie asked, recalling Barbie Number One mentally screwing Cade right there during the production meeting. But then Cade blushed and she grew worried, because the blushing suggested there might have been actual screwing involved.
“Cade here dated Helena Evans for a while back in college. They went to College of Charleston together. Isn’t that right, little brother?” Hale’s eyes gleamed with mischief.
From Stevie’s position on top of the dining room table, where she sat cross-legged, she thought Cade might have tried kicking Hale under the table, if Hale’s hiss and Cade’s answering glare was any indication.
“We weren’t actually a couple,” he said hurriedly to her and Arie. “So it isn’t a conflict of interest or anything. She’s a bit . . . unhinged.”
“Fantastic,” Stevie grumbled. Helena sounded perfect for reality television, and if Emilie found out she and Cade had a romantic past, the producers would most certainly use it to add extra drama and tension. To Stevie, that would mean war.
“So tell me how this works,” Hale said, pen in hand, ready to scribble out his ideas.
Cade and Arie both looked to her to explain, since she’d been the one to answer their questions and walk them through the finer details of filming ten thirty-minute episodes in a multi-day format with eight teams, four houses, and the occasional crew strike in three weeks.
“There will be five phases. Each phase is a different competition complete with a room demolition, renovation, and judging. Filming will happen in a three-day format for each phase, though that could be cut down or spread out due to a number of factors, like overtime or storyline importance. But if things go according to plan, day one is demo, day two is building, and day three is reserved for final touches, judges’ walk-throughs, and eliminations.”
“Son of a bitch, you can’t do shit in three days.” Hale sounded just as freaked out as Cade and Arie had.
“That three-day format is what it’ll look like on television, but we won’t be the ones finishing the demo or even doing most of the construction. Additional crews will come in for every duplex to complete the work. If we had to do the entire demo ourselves, the cameras would have to roll f
or hours. On lower-budget shows like this, they outsource most of the work,” she said calmly. The chaos of filming a reality show was second nature to her, and it all made perfect sense.
“So what will you guys be doing exactly?” Hale asked, eyebrows high.
“Just enough for ten thirty-minute episodes.”
“Is she serious?” Hale’s eyes went to Cade, who’d been just as confused over the concept that the contestants of home renovation shows didn’t actually do the work.
“Deadly,” Stevie said, using the same voice she’d used to convince Cade it was just how these things happened. “There won’t be enough time for us to do all the work.”
“Then how do they decide who wins and who loses if teams aren’t doing their own work?”
“Most likely, production will film multiple winners and losers each week. Once storylines and interesting characters develop, postproduction will decide who actually wins and loses each week.”
“It’s all fake basically,” Cade offered.
“They just want a good story.” Stevie shrugged. “The renovation and all that comes in second to interesting drama.”
When talk of filming finished, the guys hunched over the paperwork on the table before them, their heads almost touching as they scoped out a basic plan for the duplex they’d been assigned to at the production meeting. From her spot on the table, Stevie had to practically sit on top of them to get a word in edgewise. Eventually, she just rested her chin on her hand and stared down at the hasty drawings Hale sketched almost as fast as he spoke.
She huffed out a breath and glanced at Kyra. Blonde locks pulled up in a topknot, she practically floated around Stevie’s kitchen and feigned surprise when she discovered Stevie used her stove for shoe storage. Boots, wedges, and sneakers were scattered across the floor as Kyra cooked and hummed along to the island’s local radio station based out of a renovated barn on the outskirts of town. It played whatever the nutty DJ named Tooty wanted to hear that evening. The Beatles and Tooty’s manic rants between sets punctuated the air as the flurry of conversation continued in front of her and the sound of waves washed in through the open windows.
Stevie turned away before Kyra noticed her attention, but her friend seemed okay. Happy even. The stress of last-minute planning didn’t seem to be affecting her. She’d actually looked excited about having nightly meetings so that Hale could prepare them for everything.
Literally everything.
“But if we put the toilet over here, we won’t have to reroute this drain,” Arie was pointing out, his hair neatly tucked under a Yankees ball cap sitting backward on his head and his heavy, dark eyebrows low over his eyes. He hadn’t spoken to her since she’d introduced him to Violet. Judging by Violet’s hasty exit that could only have been made faster by an actual jet swooping in to pick her up, maybe he had a point. But Stevie had caught him totally checking out the view as Violet rushed away.
Go figure.
“What do you think, Stevie?” Cade asked, pulling her out of her thoughts.
Hale smirked. “Sure, let’s ask the designer.”
“Go duck yourself, you shrimp-hole.”
“Points for creativity,” Kyra cheered from the kitchen.
Hale mouthed some very bad words at Stevie that earned him a smack on the back of the head from Cade.
“Really,” Cade said, turning his attention back to her. “What do you think? We don’t want to get voted out after the first phase.”
His dimpled grin disarmed her. He’d unbuttoned the top three buttons on his shirt in the evening’s humidity, and Stevie could just see the line where his tan turned pale and the soft hairs of his chest peeked out. She jerked her eyes back up in time to sense Hale’s attention sharpening on her. He’d totally caught her checking out his brother.
“I think it’s great,” Stevie said hurriedly. She spun on the table and kicked her legs over the side. “You guys have it under control. I’ll go pretend I’m helping Kyra.”
* * *
Dinner stretched out to one and then two hours. Leftovers had been packaged away, and Kyra was asleep on the couch. The guys yawned wide and finally called it a night. Stevie had sat at the table, trying to listen in while they planned, but her thoughts had kept drifting, her mind spinning uselessly. She’d found herself glancing at the cabinets where she’d kept her tumblers and wine glasses, or shooting looks at Cade, whose five o’clock shadow and rumpled hair fascinated her. She’d never seen him like this—planning and hashing things out with Hale. His brother knew the practical things—the building and application of plans—but Cade could run the numbers in his head faster than they could reach for a calculator, and he had an eye for logistics. If Hale was the ship, then Cade was the captain keeping them on course.
He was effortless and graceful in his corrections, and artful in his recommendations. Knowing Arie might feel like an outsider working with two brothers, Cade had pulled him in in a way that was so seamless, even Stevie wondered if Arie hadn’t been part of their group all along. By the end of the night, she couldn’t tell where one guy began and the other ended; their shoulders had been so close together and their heads bent so near.
It was masterful. How had she never known this side of Cade? Why was she so stupid to have never seen it?
“Night, Stevie,” Cade said through a yawn. He pulled her against his side in a one-armed hug. She breathed his scent in deep, her gaze on the pale patch of skin under that third button. “Thanks for today.”
“Nice to meet you, Hale.” Arie shook Hale’s hand. “Tell Kyra I said bye and thanks for the meal.”
Hale clapped his shoulder as they shook on it. “You too. I’ll see you Monday evening. Keep an eye on Cade. He isn’t the best with a nail gun.”
Arie chuckled. “Sure thing. I’m ready when you are,” he said to Cade.
“Then let’s head out before Hale convinces you I can’t even hold a hammer,” Cade said, palming his keys. “See you later, Stevie. Don’t forget to lock your door behind us.”
She mumbled something like an agreement as they left with a wave. Once Cade’s truck had disappeared down the street, she switched off the porch light. When she turned around, she almost ran into Hale’s chest.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She stepped back. “What are you talking about?”
Hale crossed his arms, suddenly looking very awake. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Why were you staring at my brother like that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stevie mumbled as she moved around him.
He followed her into the kitchen, their steps quiet as they passed Kyra snoring softly on the couch.
“Come on. Don’t give me that bullshit.”
She whirled around to face him. “You’re imagining things. I don’t look at Cade in any certain way. We’re friends.”
Even to her ears the words sounded weak, like an excuse.
“Look,” Hale said, casting a glance back at Kyra. He lowered his voice. “I’m not trying to be mean or anything. I really like you, Stevie. You’re a great girl and you’re an amazing friend to Kyra. But Cade? What are you thinking?”
Stevie wrapped her arms around her middle. Her gaze skittered sideways to where her back doors stood open to the ocean. Her patio lights dripped warm splotches of light across her backyard, the moonlight sheltered behind a low bank of clouds.
“I don’t know,” she said, almost too quietly to hear.
Hale looked like he might be considering hugging her or at least patting her arm, but they weren’t those types of people, and they both knew it. They were more alike than they’d ever want to admit.
He rocked back on his heels and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Do you think this is just a going-sober thing? Maybe you’re mistaking his friendship as something more? Have you talked to your therapist about it?”
She dug her fingernails into her waist. “It’s fine. It’s no big deal.”
&nb
sp; “You were practically drooling all over him.”
“Hardly! Besides, why do you care all of a sudden? You and Kyra already caught us hooking up. What’s the big deal?”
“You know exactly what the big deal is!” Hale’s voice rose by a fraction.
Kyra murmured something in her sleep and turned onto her side.
“After you two hooked up,” he continued, lowering his voice again, “he thought he had a shot with you, but then you ignored him and moved on. He’s always had a crush on you, and when he catches on to your looks . . .” He raked a hand through his hair. “I guess what I’m saying is it would hurt him all over again if this was just a phase for you. Look, Stevie, we all understand you’ve been through hell, but just leave him out of this.”
Stevie gritted her teeth. She’d known Cade liked her and used it to lure him in the night they hooked up. She’d been drunk and needing someone to touch her, to make her feel less alone, even for just a few minutes. In the weeks after, he’d sent her a few hopeful text messages and phone calls, but she’d been in rehab and in no place for a relationship. He’d understood, and eventually the texts and calls had turned purely friendly. They’d never mentioned it again.
“I get it,” she said. Hale was just being a good brother, trying to keep Cade from the carnage she caused. “I’m handling it. It’s just a thing I’m going through.”
“I won’t bullshit with you, Stevie. I’ll just give it to you straight, okay? You can handle it?”
“What do you think?” She snapped off the words with more bite than she’d meant to, but it didn’t bother Hale.
“You’re a great girl, and you’ll make some guy really happy someday. I know it. And my brother . . .” He took a deep breath. “He deserves to be happy, really happy, with a girl he can rely on to never hurt him. He’s been through so much. And you—”
“I’m an alcoholic,” Stevie finished. “A wildcard. Crazy. Thoughtless.”
Hale cringed, but he didn’t disagree. This was who they were. They didn’t bullshit. “He just deserves more than this life has given him in the past.”