AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sixteen
DELILAH
I hit the STOP button on the boombox’s ancient cassette player, which was belting out the heaviest of heavy metal tunes. The music stopped instantly. My ears rang in the sudden silence.
“Why don’t you take a break for a minute?”
Duncan was a good ten feet up on an extension ladder, spackling drill holes in the sheetrock. He glanced down at me, drenched in sweat.
“I brought iced tea.”
His frown at the sudden musical intrusion turned into a smile. He climbed down, still shirtless. His tan, muscled body was covered in splatters of white joint compound, in varying degrees of drying on his flawless skin.
“Sweetened or unsweetened?” he asked.
“Roll the dice and find out.”
He took one of the glasses from the tray I held, and I took the other. Duncan toasted me with a tired grin, then tilted his head back and drank. His Adam’s apple bobbed sexily as the cool liquid flowed down his perfect throat.
Wow.
I tried to avert my eyes before I was caught gawking, but there was really nowhere else to look. His broad chest was shirtless and sculpted, his arms ripped from God-only-knew how many missions or exercises or whatever it was Army Rangers did. I was learning a little bit about their military service and their civilian lives, but I was also busy with the twins. Except for right now during their nap-time, when I had a daily break.
“This is good,” he declared, setting the empty glass back down. The ice-cubes rattled noisily before settling. “Got another?”
“Here,” I laughed. “Take mine. I’m not thirsty anyway.”
He shot me a sideways glance, perhaps at the last thing I’d just said, then drained half of the next glass too. While he drank, I picked up the cassette’s case and turned it over in my palm. The date on the Dokken album was 1984. Absently, I wondered how many times it had been played between then and now.
“Haven’t seen one of these except in my parent’s attic,” I smiled, remembering. “So you’re a vintage guy, huh?”
“I used to have an older cousin,” he explained. “He willed me about a million cassettes and that old boombox when he died.”
“Oh,” I said awkwardly.
“Overdose. Fentanyl.”
I lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry Duncan.”
“Don’t be,” he countered. “He was a lot older than me and I barely knew him. I’m pretty sure he willed me this thing as a joke,” he nodded toward the oversized cassette player, “but it turns out I love it. Some of the old metal albums from the 80’s are pretty amazing. Who would’ve thought, right?”
I smiled, admiring his positive spin on what for most people could’ve been a sad situation. He looked happy, if a little exhausted. He’d come straight back from the city this morning and went right to work on the house.
“If you don’t mind,” he pointed upward, “I’d like to finish this coat of spackle before—”
“I kissed Liam last night,” I blurted out abruptly. “Julius too.”
As far as I was concerned it was like ripping off a Band-aid: it hurt less if you did it quickly. And I really needed to do it.
“I know,” said Duncan, without missing a beat.
I couldn’t hide my look of incredulity if I’d wanted to. “Youknow?” I gasped. “How?”
“They told me,” Duncan said simply. Reaching into the spackle bucket, he began slathering more of the white pasty compound into his mud pan.
My jaw was halfway to the floor. I picked it up.
“W—Why would they… I mean, how would—”
