by Carol Rose
“You need a boyfriend.”
Molly’s head snapped around and she glared at him. “What do you mean?”
“That way,” he explained, “you’d have labor on hand to do this kind of work. Convenient.”
“There’s more to that than being a boyfriend.”
“Don’t I know it.” He dropped to the floor, preparing to await her next direction. “My last two girlfriends wanted me to do all sorts of things. And I’m not talking fun things, if you know what I mean.”
Drake waggled his eyebrows at her, earning a deep chuckle in response. He smiled. He liked making Molly laugh and he especially liked the throaty sound of her amusement.
“You’re nuts. Are you taking notes on what we’re doing?”
He spread his hands. “What? We’ve moved furniture.”
“That’s the kind of detail you’ll need to mention. Just say something at the first of the piece about needing to clear the room before you get started.” She handed him the pad she’d insisted he keep at hand. “Write it down so you will remember to include it in the segment.”
“Yes, ma’am. Really, really need a boyfriend,” he finished under his breath, but loud enough that he knew she could hear.
“If you don’t stop giving me grief, I’ll kick your sorry tail out of here and you can do this television segment thing on your own.”
Laughing, Drake made a note on the pad. “You know you wouldn’t do that. Remember, you still owe me for dumping me when we were high school kids.”
In the middle of unrolling a sheet of plastic, Molly turned. “Get over it finally, would you? I just dated Luke Braddock for three weeks. You and I have been friends for years. Of the two of you, I think you won.”
“Yes, we have been friends for years.” He’d been angry and hurt when sixteen year-old Molly had broken up with him for the flashier Luke Braddock, but when she’d taken her time a few weeks later to show him how to do a quadratic equation, they’d started becoming friends.
Drake watched as she measured off the plastic. Molly had really been his first serious girlfriend. They’d only dated three or four months, but she’d been his first serious kiss and the first girl who’d let him get to second base. For a moment, he sat looking at her, a flash of remembrance holding him to the spot. Molly’s breast had felt good in his hand. Round and full and soft with a sweet little kernel of nipple. He’d relived that touch for months to come, feeling like he had a rocket in his pants.
Getting over her had been difficult, but having her as a friend turned out to be a close second.
“Next we’re going to tape plastic over the door,” she said. “A piece over the hall side and another piece over the bedroom side. Double taping helps keep the dust from the sanding dust from escaping into the house. We wouldn’t want that because sanding can leave a gritty coat over everything in the place.”
He made a note on his pad.
Molly handed him a roll of masking tape and she stepped into the hall to put up that side.
Reflecting that he hadn’t thought for years about fondling Molly, Drake started taping. It was part of growing up to learn to segment sexual thoughts away from friends…and parents. He’d learned that quickly.
“Make a note on your pad,” Molly’s voice was muffled by the plastic sheeting, “to tell your listeners not to skimp on the tape. They need to do a really good job at sealing off the room.”
“Yes, Miss Molly.” He tore off another piece of tape to secure his side, trying to dismiss his thoughts about her breasts.
“Smart ass.”
“Just exactly how are you going to get back in here? Cause I sure as hell don’t know what to do with this sander thing.”
“It’s a drum sander, you idiot, and I’m coming back in through the window, which you will open for me.”
“You have no idea how relieved I am to hear that. Good thing it’s warm today.” He added a note on his pad. Seal room tight. Drum sander.
“You should mention that viewers—or your blog readers, if you use this as a project there—need to make sure they have a way to get into and out of whatever room they’re working on. It could be an upstairs bedroom and the window wouldn’t work.”
“Right.” He made another note on the pad.
In a few minutes, he’d finished his side of the seal and opened the bedroom window for her, the warm Austin spring air having cleared up from the other day. Molly hoisted her leg over, reaching up for him to pull her in.
“Thanks. Now, put on one of the masks over there.” She pointed to the shelf in the closet where she’d placed several items. “And we’ll get started.”
For the next few hours, Drake learned more than he ever wanted to know about sanding a wood floor. He took copious notes and worked harder than a man ought to. Of course, Molly seemed unflagging. She’d insisted he run the drum sander, using a contraption called an edging sander to get close to the wall. As he fumbled his way along, Molly had yelled directions at him over the noise of the machines.
Learning how to sand the floors without leaving gouge marks was a tricky thing, he’d realized.
After Molly had showed him how to sand the floor at the corners of the room by hand, he reflected that he’d seen more sandpaper than he ever wanted to see in his life.
He stood, brushing his gritty hands against his old battered khakis.
“Okay,” Molly lifted her mask, “now we vacuum really good.”
“I have a question.”
“Okay.” She looked at him patiently.
“How is this going to work for a five-minute television spot? This is a big-assed project.”
“If you ever watched the show, you’d see that projects like this are filmed at various stages and then edited to fit the time.”
“Oh.” He made another note on the pad, saying out loud to himself, “Man, I’m learning all kinds of things.”
“Yes, you are…I hope.”
Between the various stages of the project, Drake went to the closet to make notes on the pad. After vacuuming, they wiped the entire bedroom floor with what Molly called a “tacky” cloth.
“I don’t know,” Drake said, holding the sticky cloth in his hand, “this doesn’t seem any tackier than those jeans you’re wearing.”
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, he got a rag in the face. Oomph. He laughed, straightening from wiping his corner to lob it back at her. “I have to say that you should always do this kind of work with your best friend. It makes the job more bearable.”
“You’re welcome. Just call me whenever you need someone to throw a rag in your face. Okay, now you stain.” She popped open a paint can. “Here you go. It’s all yours.”
Drake looked down at the murky liquid without enthusiasm. “All mine?”
“Yep. Use this clean mop to spread it all over the floor. The smaller rags are to use on the corners. Then, we’ll let it dry and tomorrow we’ll put on a couple of coats of urethane to seal it.”
“Yes, master. Tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow. You are to be here first thing in the morning.”
He bent and touched a hand to his brow. “Yes, my liege.”
“Jerk.” Molly rolled up a barely-used rag and made as if to pop him with it. “Get going.”
Moving from one corner to the next—and getting stain all over himself in the process—Drake darkened the floor to Molly’s satisfaction.
When he showed up at her house the next morning, Drake ambled into her kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter as he drank it.
Molly, who’d finished her breakfast just as he got there, came back into the kitchen, carrying a gallon can.
“Okay,” she sat the can on the counter top, prying off the top so he could see it was filled with a golden, translucent liquid. “Now that we’ve let the stain dry, we can apply the poly. I’ll hand this up to you once you’re inside the bedroom. Dip this clean, dry mop into the urethane, gently wring it out—here
are some gloves—and mop it on the stained floor. I’ll be in there in a minute. I need to make a follow-up call regarding the Easter picnic. I’ve narrowed the bunny thing down to one guy. The others just didn’t pan out. No experience or no references. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” Drake followed her out of the house and climbed up the ladder and into the bedroom. The floor looked nice and dry. Reaching back, he took the can from Molly. “Just spread it around, right?”
“Right. Here’s the clean mop.”
After setting the can down, Drake dipped the mop in the open can and started mopping the urethane on the floor.
Doing mindless work, gave his brain time to reflect on this thing with he and Molly.
Molly had been his best friend through thick and thin. They’d been there for one another through college dramas and through the break-up of her parents’ marriage.
They’d each dated others, of course. At one point, he’d seen a girl seriously and when that had ended badly, Molly was there for him. She’d even gone to his parents for a chilly Thanksgiving celebration after that. Sadly, all occasions with his parents were chilly. As far as he could remember, they’d never seemed happy with one another.
Most of the gatherings of his family were awkward. He was one of the rare kids who’d wished his parents would divorce.
Lost in thought, he mopped, dipping into the can and wringing the mop out carefully before swishing the urethane over the dark floor. When he’d done the main section, he walked around the edges to kneel and mop the sticky substance into the corners, the way Molly had showed him to put on the stain.
He hadn’t dated anyone in particular in a while—hence the bed buddy he and Aaron had seen at the bar—and he didn’t think Molly was dating anyone either. He usually heard about her dates, but she seemed so caught up in work, especially since the Easter Picnic situation, that she hadn’t had time for anything else—other than helping him with his toilet and now teaching him how to do a floor.
Sitting down in the last un-urethaned corner with one knee up and the other under him, he used the rag to coat the floor near the wall, becoming absorbed in his thoughts again.
He had good guy buddies, but Molly had seemed the most constant of his friends. Particularly after he’d started the blog. He’d chased a number of journalism jobs up to that point, starting to get a little desperate, which wasn’t like him. Normally, he felt pretty confident that he could work things out, but he’d lost his newspaper job at the lowest point in the economy and he hadn’t been able to find anything else. No one was hiring back then and he knew better than most that journalism was a field in transition. He’d applied to all the big news magazines and every newspaper in a five-state radius.
Glancing at the window—about two feet away from where he worked on the last corner—Drake wondered how Molly’s phone call was coming. He knew this Easter picnic was huge for her. Since her ideas were fresh and fun, she had a growing reputation for bar mitzvahs and corporate events, not to mention birthday parties, amongst the wealthy of the area. This Easter Picnic would put her into a whole other category though.
Having heard more about her work since she’d switched from interior decorating, he’d learned enough about party planning to see that.
Slopping the golden liquid over the floor in the last corner, Drake straightened up, intending to kneel on one knee as he covered the wood in the spot where her nightstand would go. But when he tried to get up, his leg wouldn’t respond.
Drake glanced down, trying to ascertain the problem when it hit him. Throwing his head back in frustration, he bellowed at the ceiling. Damn, damn, damn!
Not having realized it when he sat down, he’d allowed the outside of one pants leg to rest against the area of floor he’d already mopped…and the liquid had apparently soaked into the material.
He’d urethaned his pants leg to the floor.
* * *
Getting the bunny thing all lined up was a real relief, Molly reflected, hoisting her leg over the bedroom window sill again. This Easter picnic would put her on the Austin party planning map, if it came out all right. Every prominent family would be there, not to mention the big foster kid organizations.
She stopped, seeing Drake just inside the window, on the freshly urethaned floor, not moving.
“How’s it going?”
“Ummm. Pretty good…to a point.”’
Molly looked around at the room. “It looks good. Why are you just sitting there?”
“It seems I neglected to attend to one, small detail.”
She looked back at him, noticing he was still in the same position. “What? Why aren’t you moving?”
“Well, Molly. I can’t move.”
“Why not?”
He sat with his one leg against the floor as he leaned on the other knee propped up next to it. “I’ve—um—attached my pants leg to the floor.”
“What?” She started laughing. “Seriously? You let your leg fall against the urethane? Oh, Drake.”
His smile was entirely phony and he said, “Ha ha. Yes, hysterical.”
She threw her other leg over the window sill. “You can’t just sit there. Maybe you’d better take the pants off.”
Looking down at himself, Drake grimaced. “You don’t know of any way to get these loose?”
Still laughing, Molly tried to answer and took a minute to get herself under control. “Not with you still in them.”
“Even though the urethane won’t be completely dry for twelve hours, it sets to some level pretty quickly. You’re going to have to take them off,” she recommended, still chuckling.
“Maybe you should just go away.” He seemed disgusted by her amusement, reaching down to unlace his battered athletic shoes.
“I could do that, but I wouldn’t think you’d want to deal with this alone.”
He gave her a deadpan look. “I’ve been taking off my pants—for the most part—by myself for years.”
“Not with them glued to the floor, unless your fraternity was more into hazing than I heard.”
Looking down at the problem, Drake took a moment. “So, I should just unzip these and—“
“And take them off. Yes, I think that’s the best plan.” Molly balanced on the windowsill, careful not to step on the newly-urethaned floor, although his being stuck so firmly indicated it had set some.
“Would it help if I hummed some stripper music? Da da dah! Ta da, da dah!”
“That’s not necessary, but I do appreciate your enthusiasm.” A smile cracked his expression as he lobbed first one of his shoes and then the other, at her.
Catching his shoes, Molly dropped them out the window, glad he’d begun to see the funny side of this.
“I’d offer to help, you know, unzip you and ease you out of your pants, but I probably shouldn’t get on the floor. There may be damp spots.”
“So kind of you to think of offering help.” He grinned in response to her silliness. “You’re probably eager to return the help that men have offered you over the years.”
“Absolutely. And I’m looking forward to watching.”
“Then we should get on with the show. Cue the music.” Drake loosed the button at the waist of his pants and unzipped as she began humming the stripper song again. Of course, that was the easy part. Holding the waist band as open as he could, he began scooting backwards out of his pants an inch at a time.
Taking off a pair of pants secured to the floor wasn’t easy, she could see. Drake stopped every few minutes to jerk the fabric down his legs little by little as he backed out of them.
Soon a strip of his flesh was seen, followed by his shorts.
To her own surprise, Molly began feeling heat inch up her chest. This was so un-sexy a moment, but she was lusting after the man.
When they dated in high school, both were somewhat conservative, never having gotten to stripping. At least, not down to their skivvies.
It was suddenly very hot. She took a breath, trying no
t to hyperventilate and fall out of the window.
As Drake slowly backed out of his pants, the briefs or boxers question was answered. He clearly was a man who liked to cover all his bases, but not be hemmed in. Other than their furtive make-out sessions—which suddenly came back to her in vivid detail—she’d always tried to think of him no more intimately than any other friend.
At least, most of the time.
And here he was taking off his pants in front of her. Molly told herself to act naturally, but she didn’t know what was natural in a situation like this.
Finally, he’d painfully scooted back against the wall—not a far distance—extricating himself with difficulty from the pants, now seen to be glued to the floor next to where her bed would go. The thought streaked through Molly’s brain that she could leave them there and always have a piece of Drake nearby when she slept.
“A little breezy?” She asked, trying to sound perky, despite the urge to clear her throat as he leaned against the wall to pull his foot out of the pants.
“Yes.” Wearing just a t-shirt and dark blue boxer briefs, he cat-walked along the edge of the floor to the window. “This is why my doing a television segment is a bad idea. I suck at this kind of thing.”
* * *
A week later, Molly dodged a little boy who came charging around the edge of the brick and white stone house where she was doing a birthday party in the backyard. “Whoa, there!”
In a big, big backyard behind a beautiful Austin mansion. Some kids had all the luck.
She heard shrieks coming from the bounce house at the back of the garden and made her way into the screened porch where most of the party guests sat amid big hanging paper poufs and balloons, nibbling on Molly’s rainbow Jello squares.
One of the guests came up. “These are beautiful. How did you make them?”
Smiling at the woman, she continued shifting things on the table to make room for the birthday cake, saying automatically, “They’re simple to make. Pour cherry, orange, lime, blue coconut and blueberry Jello with milk-flavored plain gelatin between the colors. You’ll need to refrigerate the Jello between layers, so they don’t mix. Then, you have a rainbow!”