Page 13 of Rhodes

"Tallulah,” Rhodes says to me with a smile, not unlike the one he gave me at The Boot last week. He's the only person in my life who calls me by my given name, not my nickname. He always has, and I've never asked him why. "Second door on the right is yours. Bathroom's across the hall. It’s all yours. I use the one off my room. There's plenty of closet space in that room, too. I cleared it out myself.”

"You cleared out closet space,” I say sarcastically. It comes out flat and mean, and I don't soften it.

"Just for you." He says it very matter-of-factly and kindly, which is somehow worse than if he'd matched my tone.

I push past both of them into the house.

It's better inside than I want it to be. There are high ceilings and tall windows, wood floors gone soft and honey-colored with age. A couch that's actually decent faces the fireplace and TV, and a low table buried in dirt bike parts and a half-empty mug sits in front of it.

It smells like coffee and cut grass, not a dirty guys’ house. There’s something else, too, that I recognize, something I have smelled on a hundred summer afternoons in New Orleans with the Stones. My stomach turns over on itself, and I keep walking.

I head to the second door on the right, leaving them to talk about something I'm paying no attention to.

It's small and clean and completely empty except for a bed, a dresser, and a desk under the window that looks out over the side yard and the neighbor's satsuma tree. There's a folded stack of sheets on the white down comforter. They're navy and still creased from the package. He bought sheets.

"I didn't know what you had," Rhodes says from behind me. He's leaning in the hall doorway, arms crossed, watching me look at the room. "Figured you'd rather have your own than use whatever I have on there from God knows when."

"I don't need you buying me things."

"Well, technically, I bought them for the house. You just get to use them first."

"Cute, Rhodes. Thanks."

"Okay." That easy Stone nothing, that yeah-okay-whatever that slides off his tongue makes me want to karate chop him in the throat. I want to get under his skin like he's under mine, because I'm standing in his spare room against my will, less than a month after my mother died, and he's being nice to me and I can't stand it. I would so much rather he be a jerk, a jerk I could push against.

"I'm going to get your boxes out of the car," Coop yells from the front door right before it closes behind him.

"Let's get one thing straight," I say. "I'm not your job."

Rhodes doesn't move. "Good thing, because I have an aversion to work."

"I mean it. Coop asked you to do his bidding, and you're a good little soldier, so you said yes. I get it. That's between the two of you. But I am not a thing. I'm a person who is living here for four months because it makes my brother able to get on a plane, and that's the whole reason."

"While we're getting things straight, Tallulah," he pauses for effect. The way he says my full name makes heat rise along the back of my neck. "Your brother didn't ask me to do anything. I offered for you to crash at my place until you get your own. That's it."

"So generous of you. Back to what I was saying. You don't watch me, you don't count anything, and you don't report back to Spain about how I'm doing. And don't you ever do the thing you did at the bar again, where you look at what's in my hand and start making assumptions. As my mom said, use your words. If you want to know something, you ask. Are we clear?"

He slow-blinks at me, his arms still crossed, leaning against the door frame.

"I wasn't making assumptions because I think you're weak, by the way," he says. "I was caught off guard when I saw you there. That's on me, not you. But don't stand there and tell me you're nobody's business, because you're Coop's whole heart and he's about to be four thousand miles away, and that makes you at least a little bit my business whether either of us likes it."

I open my mouth, and nothing comes out, because that is not the answer I was set up to knock down. He watches me not have a comeback with something that is almost a smile.

"But no," he says, pushing off the doorframe. "I won't count your drinks. You've got my word. You want to burn this whole place down at three in the morning, that's your business. I'll just make sure the extinguisher's charged." He nods at the mattress. "Sheets are yours if you want them. I'll help Coop with the boxes."

And he's gone down the hall. I hear him and my brother out front laughing about something, the two of them easy in a way I don't get to be easy with anybody anymore.

I stand alone in the little clean room he made for me and look at the desk sitting exactly where the light is and the navy sheets still creased in their folds. I have the sinking, unwelcome realization that this is going to be so much harder than living with somebody I could hate.

FIVE

Rhodes

The Scope of Work: Every restoration opens with a written scope listing exactly what will be touched and what will be left alone. The work that ruins a house is almost always work that never appeared on the page.

Yesterday there were boxes in my spare room. Today there is a person in it. A stack of cardboard doesn't change a house, but yesterday afternoon Tallulah came through my front door behind her brother with a backpack over one shoulder and a milk crate of books balanced on her hip, and she kicked her shoes off by the door like she'd been doing it her whole life.

Now her shoes are tangled next to mine on the mat, and a second bag slumps in the hall. I haven't had a roommate since freshman year, so this is going to take some getting used to.