by Neve Wilder
“Rob?”
First I was just relieved he didn’t call me Mr. Macomb, then came a strange mashup of anxiety and awareness that I was still hovering in his space. It was too damn tempting to stay in that pocket of air scented with his soap, his hair, his deodorant, the Cracker Jack-tinged sweetness of his breath.
“Yeah?” I forced myself back onto my own patch of carpet that smelled of dogs and age.
“Thanks for giving me this job. Seriously.”
I cut a dismissive wave at the liquid green-gold sincerity of his eyes. “Break my heart, why don’t ya.”
His sober expression gave way to another grin, this one mischievous. He was good at layering his expressions with nuance and, as with the paint chips, I was becoming more adept at discerning the undertones.
His brows bounced. “Give me a chance to.”
I tossed the empty box of Cracker Jack at him and stood. I needed him out of the house before I decided I needed him to stay.
“Go home,” I said, not unkindly.
Winslow grunted and huffed, stretching out long against Alex’s leg and nuzzling his head against Alex’s thigh.
“And take this damn traitor dog with you.”
“Seriously?” he said, his hand sweeping over Winslow’s belly before he stood.
“No. He hasn’t made me miserable enough. Yet.”
I managed a run before it got too dark, then let Winslow lead me around the block as he sniffed grass and asserted his dominion over various yards, trash cans, and lamp posts. My reward was the rest of a bottle of wine, which I drank from a juice glass while listening to the crickets and waves through the open kitchen window. If there was a natural harmony for tranquility, waves and crickets were it for me, and I slipped into a kind of soporific daze as I drank until the buzz of my phone brought me back down to earth.
I checked my watch before getting up to look at the screen. It was too early for Sean to be drunk enough to try me again.
“Good morning,” I said to Summer.
“Very funny. I’ll have you know I was up before nine a.m.”
“Must be a momentous occasion.” I took a swallow from my glass.
“Deadline. Almost the same thing. How’s the cleaning going?”
“It’s gone. I’ve got receipts for all of the donations we can write off, a few boxes of stuff I’ll hang onto until you get back here next. Now it’s just paint and cosmetics.”
“God, you’re efficient.”
“That’s a very nice way to put it,” I teased. We both knew that a project like this would have taken her months. She would have painted a wall, then changed her mind and repainted it. And then repainted it a third time.
Summer laughed. “Love you, brother. So you’re just going to repaint the living room and kitchen and call it done?”
“Nooo,” I drew the word out. “I was, but I got one of the guys from the moving company to help me out and he had a lot of other suggestions. So, now we’re going to paint the entire house.”
“One of the Buffs?” Summer sounded intrigued.
“Yes.” It came out begrudgingly.
“And is he?”
I held another swallow of wine in my mouth, letting it unfold and bloom, slide velvety and rich over my taste buds. I thought of Alex and what he’d taste like. And just as quickly, I crushed the thought. “He’s attractive,” I said when I’d swallowed. “Also young. College age.”
“My, my, do tell me more.”
“Oh leave me alone, you started all of this in the first place.” I had no intention of telling her that I’d encountered Alex before.
She snickered. Then I shifted topics to something else that had been on my mind.
“You think selling the house is the right thing, don’t you? I mean, over keeping it and renting it out?”
Summer hummed a little noise that I knew meant she was thinking, then said, “I don’t know. You know I’ve never been attached to that house, and money is always good. Are you asking me if you can keep it?”
“If I did, I’d buy you out. But no, not yet. Probably not ever. It was just a thought.”
“You like it there.” It was almost a question, and I could tell she was surprised. Though Savannah was less than an hour away, I’d not spent an excessive amount of time on Nook Island with my folks before Mom had gotten sick. A weekend day and night every month or so when they’d both been alive. Twice a month once Mom was gone. Before that, work had always been my priority.
“I do.”
Summer was quiet for another handful of seconds. In the background I heard the drone of cars and other street traffic. She always had a window open, hated feeling confined. I missed her, then. Suddenly and sharply. Before Dad’s funeral, the last time I’d seen her was at Mom’s.
“You sound—” she started, then another pause. “You sound all right.”
“I am.” My reply was immediate even if it wasn’t entirely true. I was better. Better with a chance of good. Maybe. The further I got along in getting the house ready to go to market, the lighter my mental load felt.
“It’s just after all of this Sean business hitting you so hard, and Dad, and…I just worry and I’m far away and so damn rooted to this place. It’s hard to get away.”
“I’m fine, Sum, really. The Sean thing is done.” Mostly.
“Find a pool boy to fuck. God knows there are plenty of those around there.”
“I don’t need any fucking right now. The last thing I need is fucking.”
Summer made a scoffing sound that I childishly mimicked back to her.
“What about work? That still on target and everything?”
“Mm.” I nodded into my glass. “I’m still working it out.”
Henrik and Associates had been generous with my request for two weeks off, but then I’d expected no less, having taken no sick days and rarely a vacation day over the last ten years. I busted my ass for them days, nights, and weekends. During tax season, I lived in the office. It was easy to foist taking time off on handling my parents’ estate, especially since I’d more or less left everything just sitting there right after Dad’s funeral so I could help the firm through tax season. But I couldn’t deny that it was difficult to see Sean, especially in the mornings. His office was down the hall from mine and every time I walked past it, I couldn’t help but remember lying in bed next to him, the sleep-hazy way his eyes opened when he woke, that somnolent smile he pressed to my cheek, my stomach, the inside of my thigh. I was his senior and we worked together on several accounts. Over the weeks after we’d broken up, I’d managed to shift myself from some of them to focus on others, but not all of them. And I didn’t want to draw any attention when the whole business was my fault. I was an idiot to have ever gotten involved with someone in the workplace. So I took my dose of punishment every morning when I walked down the hall.
I still had a half glass of wine left when I got off the phone with Summer. I took it with me, letting Winslow out into the small backyard while I walked room to room. Though I’d not grown up here, there were memories enough vying for space with the cobwebs in the corners. Most of them from college breaks or family holidays. Mom piling every piece of her china on the kitchen table to prep for Thanksgiving. Dad bent over his desk, tiny paintbrush in hand, his glasses low on his nose. Or the way he’d fall asleep in the wingback in the living room, his head tipped back, lips parted, book open on his lap. He’d always say he hadn’t been sleeping, “Just putting my dust covers on for a bit.”
Summer was into auras and energy, not in an obnoxious way, just more of an awareness, and walking around the dim rooms, I understood what she meant. When Mom and Dad had both gotten sick, the energy of the house itself seemed to slow and wrap around them. The frenetic hum of Thanksgiving became a muted, syrupy march of time. And now there was just a vague emptiness, this strange transitory state between one family’s memories and what was yet to be. The house seemed stripped somehow, and when I stood in the living room, wine warmi
ng in my hand, looking at the bare walls and the two-foot square swatch of paint Alex had tested near the window, I expected to feel more nostalgic than I did.
Instead, something like anticipation rose within me, a nervous, vagabond energy that was waiting for the right place to uncoil. I just couldn’t make sense of it yet.
I turned off the lights one by one as I moved through the rest of the rooms, the house falling quiet and dark behind me, the moon spilling in like a thief of shadows.
I opened the back door and let Winslow in, listening to the drone of cicadas and the steady beat of waves. And then I felt peace. Not whole, not complete, but a kind of patchwork of it interspersed with the sadness I was used to.
In my old bedroom, with the ceiling fan on high and a table fan trained on the bed, I slid beneath the covers and Winslow surprised me by jumping up next to me, giving me a begrudging glare before he snuffled and flopped along my calves.
Just before I set my phone to silent to ward off any late night Sean interruptions, it chimed with a text from Alex saying he could come at noon the day after tomorrow.
I texted him back that that was fine. Because it was.
Everything was fine.
6
Alex
I decided to admit to myself that I was pursuing another hookup with Rob. Subtly, though, because he was skittish. But I wanted him. Because he was attractive. Because he was difficult. Because I wanted to resolve all of the discrepancies between the man I’d hooked up with in the club and the man I worked with. But there was more to it than that. Something I couldn’t name but acknowledged as a little unhealthy. Not obsession or anything like that, but this compulsion to leave an impression on him. I didn’t know. I wasn’t imagining a future with him. But a night? Yeah. It had become a challenge, and probably it was my own kind of fucked-up way of diverting myself from the other shit in my life, but was it a terrible one? If I could pull it off, at least we both got laid, and what was so bad about that?
We’d finished the walls in the living room and hallway and had moved on to the kitchen, for which I’d chosen an airy, gray-tinged blue that pulled out the deeper hues in the pale granite countertops.
“People themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them forever.” I recited it to Rob’s back.
We’d been working quietly, involved in our respective walls across the room from each other. He was curled over the counter, painting the wall between the countertop and cabinets, angled in a way that made his shoulder blades sharp and showed the round knobs of his spine where his T-shirt stuck to it. His feet were bare, one balanced kickstand-like on the floor as he leaned. There was a very fine dusting of hair over the top of his big toe and two well-defined shadows at his ankle where the tendons strained to keep him in position. I liked to watch the way his body moved within light, the shadows painted over him by motion. It was kind of like an intimate show, this private correspondence of body and light I’d noticed and become fascinated by in my first figure drawing class. I’d been naturally tuned into it ever since.
He nearly bumped his head on the cabinet as he glanced over his shoulder at me, ducking just at the last moment, so that the cabinet raked back a little bit of his hair instead.
“What’s that?”
I repeated the line. “It’s from Pride and Prejudice. I liked it.”
Rob gave me a lingering odd look and I gave him one in return. “Did you not actually read it?”
“I’ve read it, but it was years ago.”
“So it’s not your favorite book?”
The flat line of Rob’s mouth took on a humored curve. “Probably not, no.”
I’d scrounged around one of my boxes in the garage to find my old copy from high school the night before, wondering what it was about the book that had made an impression on Rob. Apparently nothing.
“So what is your favorite book, then?”
“Back to those kinds of questions, huh?” he muttered, turning his attention back to the stretch of wall beneath the cabinet. But he answered, after dabbing a spot of paint from the counter with his thumb. “I can’t think of a favorite. I don’t read a lot these days. Unless it’s tax code or something work related.”
So that was a dead end. I hated dead ends with Rob, and they always seemed to come when I asked direct questions. I felt like a blind man trying to put together a puzzle. Shit, a blind man would have done it better than me, and Rob’s puzzle had no corner pieces. I hadn’t ever put much effort into learning more about a person in order to get in their pants before. It either happened or it didn’t.
“So what’s the story with the piercings? Is there one?” Rob turned the tables, though unlike him, I didn’t mind all the questions. Even if he was just asking to be polite or pass the time. I wanted him to know me. Or, at least, I wasn’t scared of it.
“You mean like is it some form of rebellion against my parents or the Man?”
“I suppose.”
I couldn’t see his face because he was still tucked under the cabinets. I watched him lay down another line of paint. He had really well-shaped calves. The arms weren’t bad, either. Not ripped with muscle, but nicely-toned.
“Nope. No grand scheme. I was hooking up with a guy who did piercings and tattoos. Had his own shop, so…it just kind of happened.”
Rob came out from under the counter, dipping his brush into the paint pan while he studied me.
“I actually took a lot of them out.” I pointed to my eyebrows, then my nose.
He snorted. “Why’d you take them out?”
“Outgrew them, I guess.”
“Seems sort of arbitrary.”
“It wasn’t really a conscious decision, I just did it.” I started to feel like he was critiquing me somehow, but I wasn’t sure why and found myself saying, “Not everything has to have a thesis statement and dissertation behind it, you know, sometimes you just do things because…because it feels good at the time or…for fuck knows why. And it felt good to get pierced by Slade. It was intimate and hot being stretched out on a chair, having my skin in his hands, the anticipation and the pain—which sounds kinky, but it wasn’t, not really. It was intimate in a way, and the sex afterward was amazing.” I’d unintentionally lapsed into a passionate ode to piercings while my paint brush dripped audibly into the tray at my feet.
“And his name was Slade.”
The guy was impossible. My jaw dropped and then he laughed that laugh I’d heard before, the one that wrapped me in warmth, ran up my back, and drizzled like syrup into my stomach. And then I was laughing, too. “Well, he was a tattoo artist, what do you expect: Bob? William Henry the 4th?” I hoped somewhere out there was a tattoo artist named Bob who was winning at life.
“You done being a dick yet, or should we go through the rest of my life choices for your amusement?”
He arched a brow at me, gave me that smug smile, then turned back to his painting. But a handful of minutes later, he said, “I have a tattoo.”
“An ex’s name?” My turn to be amused, though I couldn’t say I was surprised because the deal with Rob was that he was surprising in these small, interstitial ways that didn’t quite add up. Like the random cursing. “Where?”
“Right above my hip. And no, nobody’s name. I’m not that stupid or romantic.”
“So what is it?”
Rob’s features broke in a crooked slant, like he was preparing for my reaction.
“A slice of pizza.”
“A fucking slice of pizza?”
There came the grin.
“A very ornate, very detailed slice of pizza. We were hammered and had this grand idea that we were making some kind of social commentary. Also, I was twenty.”
“So you basically got ‘pretentious idiot’ tattooed on your hip?” I was loving this. “With a boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“What was his name?”
Rob was quiet for a second and then he reluctantly said, “Wayne Weidermeyer.”
I laughed, and his smile broke into another crest of laughter.
“So what I’m hearing is that you’ve got no room to be talking shit.”
The crowd was sizeable for a Wednesday night, but Tom had gotten there early enough to snag us one of the hightops squeezed onto the decking of The Tap House. Tiki torches sent up little puffs of oily smoke and light that bled into the surrounding heat and flickered when the fans oscillated by. The fans were barely moving the air, but I’d long since gotten used to the wet-blanket feel of humid air around my shoulders. That was Georgia in the summer: a giant, fifty-nine-thousand square mile wet blanket.
Rob and I had finished the kitchen and powder room, and I’d run home long enough to sit down to dinner before meeting up with Tom. I hadn’t had time for a shower, so I was still in my cut-offs and paint-spattered T-shirt, my neck and back slicked with a mix of salt air and sweat. It was so packed probably no one would’ve noticed or cared anyway.
Tom had a bucket of beers on the table and was sizing up the potential as usual, checking out the length of skirts, making over-unders on a crew of what appeared to be freshmen. He wasn’t a douchebag by any means, but the guy was always looking. I looked too, because I could appreciate a nice set of legs on either a man or a woman. But if I was going to pick one to go home with, I’d pick the guy every time.
“You bag Mr. Macomb yet?” Tom asked, eyeing me across the table. This was a classic topic between us—the people we’d slept with, the ones we wanted to sleep with. On a hot summer night, it was easier territory than Tom’s stunted career path, my collegiate insecurity, and really my…everything.
“Nope, and it might not happen. I keep throwing out little hooks and he tosses them aside.”