by Bryn Donovan
“I don’t feel bad for them,” Andi admitted.
David held onto his coffee cup without taking a drink. “You don’t mind still doing the job?”
“No. I told you, as long as you get rid of them.”
“No, I mean after last night.”
“Oh,” Andi said. “So, we’re going to talk about that?”
He looked down at the Formica table. “I’m feeling weird about things.”
Oh, great. Here we go. So much for promising to be nice. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Look, Andi. The women I’ve been with…it’s always been clear from the start that it’s not going to turn into a long-term thing. They’ve always known exactly what the deal is.” He met Andi’s eyes again and sighed. “I know I sound like a total asshole.”
Andi managed a small shrug. “At least you’re honest.” She’d thought he really liked her, the way she definitely liked him. She could feel herself getting a little teary-eyed. How embarrassing. She fought back her feelings. Like any self-respecting grown woman, she could wait until later, in private, to cry…and then she would get over it.
“Well, I think you understand what I’m trying to say.”
Andi took a deep breath. “Yeah. Sure.” She wrapped her hands around the warm coffee cup.
“I want to be with you again. And I’m scared I’m going to fuck it up.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“I think I’m going to ruin it.”
Andi blinked and shook her head. “Okay, that’s…not what I thought you were trying to say.”
“Here we go!” The server plonked their plates down in front of them.
When she left, Andi thought David would say something else, but instead he put a forkful of egg in his mouth and chewed it more than eggs needed chewing. She picked at her muffin, trying to figure him out.
“Why are you saying this?” she asked him. “That you’re going to ruin things?”
“I’m not cut out for…you know. A relationship.”
Now Andi felt exasperated. “You want to see me again, and you’re not cut out for relationships.”
“I’m just trying to explain—”
“What is this?” she demanded. “Is this your way of, like, getting rid of a one-night stand—trying to get me to walk away from you? Because that is pathetic.”
She realized she had raised her voice by several decibels. And that the couple at the nearest table to them, with a little boy and a baby in a high chair, glared at her. Even the little boy glared. Hi there, she thought. How’s it going?
“No,” he said, leaning forward, his voice low and raw. “I just told you I want to see you again. Obviously I’m going to see you either way, since you’re working on my house. But you know what I mean.”
She didn’t trust him. “If you don’t usually like to see people again, why me?”
“You tell me.”
“What?”
His gaze bored into her. “There’s something different between us. Something…”
“How is everything?” the server demanded.
Andi jumped.
“More coffee?”
“No, thanks,” she answered weakly.
“Sir?” The girl brandished her coffee pot at him. He shook his head, once, and she went away.
Andi took a deep breath and let it out. “So, we’ll see each other again.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
She was dying to ask him about something, but she didn’t dare. The day before, David had gotten angry, and she knew she probably needed to give him some space. Especially if he had issues about getting close in the first place.
“What?” David asked.
He could read her so well. Hardly fair, since he’d only just met her a week ago. But since he asked, she plunged in.
“You being weird about relationships…does that have something to do with your dad? I mean, it sounds like he was kind of a dick.”
David gave a harsh sigh and leaned away from the table. “Andi, my dad was more than just a dick, okay?”
Whoa. So he was going to talk, after all. Maybe. “How so?”
“He…” David looked out the café window. “He was horrible to women.”
“He had girlfriends?” She drew a little closer to him.
“One after another.”
“Did he bring them to the house?”
“Sure. I saw him make more than one woman’s life a living hell.”
Andi couldn’t help pushing on this point. “What did he do?”
“That would take a long time to tell.”
Andi waited.
David’s shoulders sagged. “I’ll give you one example.” He looked around them, but the nearby tables were empty. The little family of glarers had apparently paid the bill and taken their disapproval elsewhere.
“When I was about, maybe six, he and his girlfriend at the time were fighting. Cheryl. The blonde one. They were in their bedroom down the hall. I could hear her screaming, him yelling…he was hitting her.”
“You didn’t know that for sure.”
“I knew.” His grim tone made Andi’s heart go out to him. What a horrible thing for a child to hear.
“You must have been scared half to death.”
He shook his head. “I went out into the hallway. I wanted to help, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t help her at all.”
“Because you were six years old,” she said. Did he feel responsible? “You couldn’t do anything.”
“I saw her run out of the room and down the hall. She was only wearing this little…sheer thing.”
“Like, lingerie?”
“Yeah.” He nodded absently. “He ran after her, but she made it down the stairs and outside. But once she’d gone out the front door, my dad locked it behind her. It was January. Windy. It must have been, I don’t know, twenty degrees.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I guess she didn’t think about how cold it was. After just a few moments, she started banging on the door. My dad looked through the window and watched her, and he was laughing. And I screamed at him to let her in…” He stopped.
“Yeah?” Andi said. “Then what happened?”
David shook his head. “I don’t remember everything.”
She didn’t believe him.
“What happened to her? She didn’t freeze to death, did she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe some neighbors helped her?” He gave her a level look. “She came back. And he hit her around for another year.”
Andi shook her head. “Why do women do things like that?”
“Why do men do things like that?” He fiddled with his butter knife. “Anyway, that was just the first time that I remember. With his girlfriends it was always like that. At first he’d be so nice…but it always ended up the same.”
“God,” Andi said. No wonder he was scared to be with anyone for long. “You know you’re nothing like him. Obviously.”
“He’s my father.”
“You’re not like that.”
The server came up. “Did you want anything else?” She had the bill in her hand.
“No. Here.” David dug out a credit card and handed it to her. When she left, he asked Andi, “You want to ride over to the house with me?”
“Yeah. Wait, no. I have to go let out Scruffy. And I want to take a shower.”
His eyes glinted. “You feel dirty?”
She was glad to turn to a lighter subject. “No.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, maybe. In a good way.”
He laughed. She needed to make more jokes, she thought. She loved to hear him laugh.
“I’ll meet you over there,” he said. “Carlos is probably already there, wondering why you’re so late.”
“Hey, you know what…if you don’t mind, don’t let him know about us.”
“Okay,” David agreed. “How come?”
“I just think he’ll look down on me. You know, as a contractor.”
When she got to the mansion, with clean clothes and freshly washed hair, both Carlos and David were there, drinking coffee out of paper cups in the back parlor. Her pulse quickened at the sight of David, in his jeans and bomber jacket, leaning up against the wall, as if she hadn’t just seen him a couple of hours before. Would she ever get used to how handsome he was?
“Hey, how’s it going?” she asked, attempting nonchalance.
“Morning,” Carlos greeted her. “David tells me the exterminator’s coming today.”
“That’s good.”
David asked, “What’s that for?”
“Huh?”
He was staring at the orange electrical cord looped in her hand.
“Oh. I need it to finish the staircase today.” The cord on her heat gun wouldn’t reach that far.
“Right.” David cleared his throat. “The entryway looks great. You didn’t scratch the wood up at all.”
“I told you.” She smiled at him.
“We were just talking about what to do about the ceiling,” Carlos said. “Where it sags over there.”
“Oh, yeah.” Andi walked over to take another close look. “You know I keep thinking maybe someone cut through the joist to put in some plumbing or something. I still think you’d better tear part of the ceiling out and see what’s going on.”
“That’s what Carlos is thinking,” David said. “Guess I should’ve listened to you in the first place.”
“It’s a hassle. I don’t blame you for hoping you wouldn’t have to.” She shrugged. “Well, I’m going to get to work.”
“Hey, I forgot. I picked up a latte for you. You like them, right? You had one the other day.” David went over to the mantel and picked it up.
“Yeah, I do. Thanks.” She took it from him.
“But maybe you already had enough coffee.”
“Oh, I’ll drink it. I’m kind of tired today.” She couldn’t help the smile that played at her lips. He knew exactly why she was feeling a little worn out.
Carlos looked from one of them to the other. “You guys want to be alone?”
Andi saw David’s eyes widen, even as she said, “What?”
The older contractor snickered. “I’m going to get started on that kitchen.”
When he was gone, Andi said, “We suck at keeping things secret.” She found that she didn’t really care, after all.
* * *
“Oh my God, Andi. I can’t believe you,” Lissa exclaimed, meeting her at the door. “It’s not like you to just hook up with some random guy. That is what happened, right? You stayed over?”
“It wasn’t that random.”
“But you did sleep together?”
“Yes. Not that it’s your business. Could you let me get to the bathroom?”
“It is my business,” Lissa called after her. And when Andi came back into the living room, Lissa muted the TV. “You know it’s not exactly safe, sleeping with people you barely know.”
“He had a condom,” Andi said through gritted teeth.
“All right, all right,” Lissa conceded. “So…”
“What?”
Lissa looked sheepish. “What’s he like? Besides responsible.”
Andi sat down on the couch. “I don’t know. He’s nice.” That seemed like a profoundly inadequate word. “He’s kind of hard to understand sometimes.” Her face heated. “And I had the most amazing night ever.”
“Oh, Andi.” Lissa shook her head. “You’d better be careful.”
“It’s not just the sex. I like him. I really like him.”
“That’s why I think you better be careful.” Lissa took a deep breath then blew out her cheeks. “So, are you guys, like, dating?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I think we both want to take it slow.”
“A little late for that, dontcha think?” She leaned forward. “Andi, he told you he was a total player. Not to mention he’s practically your boss.” Lissa smirked. “You get paid any extra for this?”
“All right. Shut up,” Andi said, but it made her laugh.
“I really deserve the chance to check him out. Why don’t you invite him over?”
“With your attitude? I’m not siccing you on him.”
“I promise I’ll be nice,” she protested, holding up her hands.
“You just want to threaten him in person.”
Lissa pouted. “You’re not going to let me, are you?”
“No.”
“Okay, fine. Just give him a message for me. Tell him if he doesn’t treat you right I’ll kick his ass.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell him that.”
* * *
The next day, Andi worked alone on the stairway banister. Carlos was busy tearing out the worn kitchen cabinets, providing a steady soundtrack of pounding and banging.
Squatting halfway down the stairs, she stopped her work when she felt that feeling hit her. That familiar heaviness. That dread.
No, no, no. It’s not real. It’s never real. You can control it if you want to. Slowly, staying in her crouching position, she put down the heat gun and scraper. She wanted to cover her head. She wanted to cry.
Don’t look. It’s down there. It’s right below you.
Now came the bone-freezing cold. She felt like the poor woman in David’s story, locked outside in the dead of winter. Her whole body shook.
Just don’t look.
She looked down the stairs.
The man wore an odd black suit. His moustache curled up at the ends. In one hand, he held a hat to his chest. Blood covered half his face. At the flattened side of his head, hair matted into clotted flesh and mush.
His green eyes met hers. He wanted something.
“Please go away,” she whispered. She covered her eyes.
The air lightened and warmed around her. When she opened her eyes again, she looked down into an empty, ordinary stairwell.
I’m losing it. Her panic dissolved into sadness. I try and try and I’m still a crazy person.
No. She wasn’t going to give in to the crazy.
Things were going well. She had a new…boyfriend? Whatever he was, he was amazing. She wasn’t going to ruin everything by freaking out. Not this time.
Chapter Six
Andi decided to work in the dining room for a while, brushing clear varnish over the freshly stained wooden paneling. In the kitchen, Carlos had removed the cabinets from one wall the day before. Now he peeled the dated yellow wallpaper from the same side. Andi would have taken out all of the cupboards before starting on that, but she supposed it didn’t really matter.
The truth was, she coveted the kitchen job. Ever since she’d started contracting, she only had one kitchen remodel, even though she mentioned it in all of her ads. It was hard to compete with the people who’d been around forever, doing kitchens and nothing else. In this case, she knew David had already hired Carlos for that job before he’d even met her.
“Hey, Andi,” Carlos called to her. “I’m going to use your heat gun for a second, okay?”
“Sure.”
He came out to the dining room and picked up Andi’s heat gun, where it lay in the corner. “I just want to see if the heat will loosen up the wallpaper glue.”
“Oh, wait! Don’t plug that in!” Andi called as he took it back to the kitchen.
“What?”
“I forgot! It has a short. When I turned it on yesterday, sparks came out.”
Carlos banged the tool down on one of the remaining countertops. “Why didn’t you just throw it away?” he growled.
Sheesh. She knew David liked the guy, and maybe he did good work, but Carlos could really be grouchy sometimes. “I’m thinking my dad might be able to fix it. He can fix just about anything.”
“Well it’s a hazard to leave it around where someone might use it,” the man persisted. “You know that sealer you’re using is flammable, right?”
Andi looked down at the brush in her hand, even though she did, in fact, know that.
&
nbsp; He went on to say, “Even the vapors are flammable. One spark, and the whole place could go up in flames.”
Andi decided she would gain nothing by pointing out that a spark from the kitchen was unlikely to make its way into the dining room. Or that no one should use her tools without asking in the first place, which was actually a huge pet peeve of hers.
“Look,” she said, coming over and grabbing the gun. “I’ll go put it in my truck right now.”
The autumn air cooled her head. When she came back in, Carlos was humming to himself. Good. Maybe his little temper tantrum was over. She supposed she should cut him some slack. It could be that, in one way or another, his morning’s work hadn’t gone as smoothly as he had expected.
They worked without talking and after a while, Carlos’s humming turned to singing. Andi recognized the song.
Irene, good night.
Irene, good night.
Good night, Irene,
Good night, Irene,
I’ll see you in my dreams.
Ten minutes later, he was still singing this same chorus. Just the chorus. Over and over.
Oh, come on. Are you kidding me? She didn’t want to piss him off again. But on the other hand, she didn’t want to be driven nuts.
“Hey, Carlos,” she said in a deliberately casual, joshing tone. “You know any other songs?”
He peered around the corner of the doorframe to glower at her. “What?”
Andi kept smiling. “You’ve been singing that one for a while now.”
“Sorry to bother you,” he snapped.
“No big deal.”
Andi felt a little depressed as they both kept working, now in silence. She hated not getting along with the other people on the job, and she definitely didn’t want David to hear from Carlos that she was the difficult one.