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“What’s the price?”
She pulls her head out of the light, cranes her neck to look directly at me, and makes big puppy-dog eyes.
I brace for the blow.
“Two thousand.”
“Two thousand times twelve floors is twenty-four thousand. On elevator lobby lights.”
I’m skeptical, and she can tell. She doesn’t hesitate to start rationalizing. Something, I’ve learned, she’s really good at when she wants to get her way.
“Yeah, but they set the tone. The rest of the floors have boring old recessed lights and sconces. This is your main expense on lighting. You know, except for the main reception chandelier, but let’s not even focus on that now.”
“How far outside of budget does it put us?”
“It doesn’t,” she shouts with glee, climbing down from the ladder slowly. I pay particularly close attention to her thighs as her skirt rides up a little. “It’s outside of the lighting budget, specifically, but we came in under budget on the bathroom tiling. So, really, it’s like it’s all even Steven.”
“How much under budget were we on the tiling?” I muse.
She frowns, caught. “Okay, so it was only twelve dollars under budget, but I bet we can come under on the furniture budget too. I have some really great contacts who will give us excellent discount pricing.”
“What are the chances of you leaving this store without these lights?” I ask, cutting to the chase.
“None. You should give in now.”
I sigh and look back to the light she’s picked out. It’s timeless and classy and needs to be in the Vanderturn New Orleans.
“Fine,” I say, wagging a finger to put on a big show about giving in. “But don’t say I never gave you anything.”
She jumps up and down twice, and then, finally, when the excitement is too much, bounds forward to wrap her arms around me in a hug. I inhale directly from her hair.
It smells like lavender and citrus.
When she ends the hug and steps back, putting her professional face back on and moving on to the next line item, I use a little knowledge to balm the sting of the loss.
Knowledge, you see, that I told her the budget was half of what it was, meaning we really did come in below budget and I got a hug from the woman I now fantasize about endlessly.
It might make me a spineless prick, but these are desperate times. When I’m trying to play this many roles all at once, I have to be creative.
“So, what else do we need to look at?” I ask as she wanders the store, her eyes little sparkling saucers of wonder.
It’s more than apparent that she’s chosen the right career. It takes a special kind of person to find this much joy in fucking lighting.
“Bathroom faucets, bar faucet, showerheads, and bathroom lighting. I found everything else already, but these few things have been eluding me like a parolee with crack in his pocket.”
I shake my head and grin. She is one of the funniest women—no, one of the funniest people, man or woman—I’ve ever met in my life.
She always has some kind of joke in her back pocket, and it’s always effortless.
I swear, I could sell tickets for following her around for the day to people.
Once word of mouth spread, she’d be sold out well beyond her lifespan.
“Interesting analogy,” I say, but what I really want to do is kiss her.
If I’ve replayed that kiss—our amazing fucking kiss outside my apartment door—in my head ten times, I’ve replayed it a thousand.
Fuck, two months ago, I never would’ve believed not kissing Greer would feel like a near impossible task, but here I am. Constantly wanting to kiss her.
“I don’t go to sleep with a dictionary and thesaurus under my pillow for nothing, Junior,” she teases, and it takes me a minute to even remember what in the fuck we were talking about. “You gotta be quick-witted and prolific if you want to make it in this world.”
“Oh yeah?” I question with a smirk. “How am I doing?”
“Eh,” she squints. “Your projected length of survival tapers off around a decade.”
“Wow,” I bark through a laugh. “That short, huh?”
“Short?” She shakes her head. “A decade is pretty good. Most people I know aren’t likely to make it through the week.”
“Well, then. I guess I’ll take it as a compliment.”
I follow her around the store for another three hours, watching and waiting as she picks through fixture after fixture and rejects ninety percent of them.
It’s mindless and monotonous and loaded with stupid minutia and detail.
But it’s also one of the best afternoons of my life.
I don’t know what I’ll come up with next, but I start plotting immediately. Secret dates with Greer are definitely going to become a regular thing.
Greer
“I feel weird coming with you and Quince. Don’t you guys want to go alone instead of having a rickety—though, otherwise fabulous—third wheel?”
