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CHAPTER SIX
Maggie
We’d unloaded all thepaint stuff from the hover-cart and were dumping all the junk into it when I began to notice a weird and rather hilarious dynamic.
Every time X grabbed a big chunk of something to pile into the cart, Archie made sure to grab an evenbiggerchunk, punctuating his actions with comments like, “Don’t worry, X, I’ve got this heavy one!”
Unflappable X didn’t quite seem to register what the hell Archie was doing, or if he did, he didn’t rise to any bait. He just met Archie’s actions and comments with a flat look, a shrug, and his habitual grunt.
I also couldn’t help but notice the way Archie’s gaze often flicked to me as he hauled any particularly large and impressive hunks of junk onto his muscled shoulders. Almost as if he wanted to see if I were watching him.
Which, to be fair, I was.
I pretended it was under the guise of supervising my work site, but in reality, I had a hard time pulling my eyes from Archie’s form. The tight black clothing was practically sinful in the way it stretched over the tensing and bulging of his strong frame. And, my prayers from last night at the pub were now answered: I got to see, several times, in fact, Archie bend over in those tight as fuck leather pants as he squatted to retrieve items from the floor.
It was a goddamn miracle I managed to get anything done with him around, distracting me all over the place.
It didn’t take too long to get almost all the junk loaded up to take away to the dispersal dumping cube a few levels down from us. There was still one very long, heavy stretch of the old countertop that wouldn’t fit in the hover-cart. X reached for it, but Archie got there first, swinging it up onto his shoulders like it weighed nothing at all.
“You steer the cart, friend,” Archie said, beaming at X. “I’ll take this one.”
“You could just do two trips,” I pointed out.
Archie shook his head.
“No need. This is nothing.”
I laughed.Yeah, he’s definitely showing off. It wasn’t obnoxious, though, because there was a sense of laughing self-consciousness to his actions. He wasn’t strutting about thinking he was all that. I mean, hewas, but heknewhe was doing it and was laughing about it in the process. I could tell he didn’t take himself too seriously. And with that charming, tusk-studded smile, I couldn’t help but shake my head and chuckle at him. While admiring the strain of his muscles under his tight black T-shirt. Just a little.
“Alright, fine. Just make sure you don’t take out any shoppers with that thing,” I said, gesturing towards the giant board on his shoulders, sticking out on both sides like some kind of huge wingspan.
“I won’t take anybody out with my thing,” he said, moss-green eyes gleaming. I gasped as the double meaning of his words hit me, but he’d already turned and sauntered from the space, followed by X with the cart. As they headed into the crowd, I could hear Archie speaking animatedly to X, his voice booming. If X bothered to answer, I didn’t hear his reply as they headed for the hover-vators.
While they were gone, I got the paint stuff ready. Luckily, the guy at the supplies shop had told me that I could tap into my shop’s forcefield tech to protect the floor from the paint, so I didn’t have to bother with any tarps. After some finagling with the security screen and my data tablet, I got the settings sorted out. A translucent blue field shimmered into place all across the floor. After opening the cans and dumping paint into trays that I placed on a shelf at the back of the shop, I tested the field, letting a drop of clementine-coloured paint fall from a brush onto the floor. It never hit the floor, instead balling into a shiny orange marble before rolling into the corner I’d programmed as the “paint mess” corner.Perfect, I thought, watching the little sphere of paint float a few centimetres off the floor in the corner. At the end of the day, I’d put a tray under any paint that had gathered over there and de-activate the force field, letting the paint drop into the pan.
I looked up from the hovering dab of paint to see the crowds outside my shop parting for two tall figures. X and Archie strode towards me, the cart behind them. They made an impressive pair, those two, taller than almost everyone else around them. But my eye was only truly drawn to one of them. Archie’s face lit up when he saw me, his eyes crinkling as he raised a large green hand in greeting. They were still a little ways away, but I couldn’t help but get all warm and gooey at that wave. It was a gesture that said,Hey, I see you. I’ll be there soon.
Lordy, it’s probably a bad sign that my chest feels like it’s full of warm sticky toffee pudding just because a guy freaking waved at me.
I cleared my throat, trying to get myself back into business mode as the two of them re-entered my shop.
“I’ve got the paint all poured out,” I said, pointing back at the shelves with the trays.
“Jolly good colour choices!” Archie said, his voice booming. “Like the morning sun warming the sky.”
I smiled at the image he’d conjured. He wasn’t far off. Back in the yard at my Gran’s house in New Toronto, during the brief spring season, her angel fruit tree would bloom with fantastic orange blossoms, their petals like saturated strips of citrine velvet under the cool blue sky. So much of the year in New Toronto was cold and grey, so I’d always held fast to those moments of warmth. Sitting with my Gran below that tree was one of those sorts of moments. She’d died almost a year ago, now, but this was just one more way to include her in my bakery. She’d always supported my dream of opening this business, and the money she’d left me in her small estate had been the final piece to unlocking this opportunity. It was one of the reasons I was so keen on saving money – I didn’t want to waste any of what she’d saved for me.
The three of us looked down at the pans of paint – two a pale, crisp blue; one a cheery orange.
Since the whole front area of my shop was open (there was no door to speak of) there were only three walls to paint.
“Blue for those two,” I said, pointing to the two opposing walls on either side of us. “Orange for the back wall.”
X grabbed the tray of orange paint, along with the brush I’d already dipped into it.
“Guess that leaves blue for us. Blue buddies!” I said, turning to Archie. I jumped a little when I realized he had somehow stepped up right beside me without me noticing.
