AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Caleb
Thefrontdoorjudders on its hinges as we muscle into the hallway, arms loaded and steps heavy.
“You sure you bought enough stuff?” Lizzie asks, shuffling sideways around me and finding her own space to dump a large toolbox and three bags of supplies from the hardware store.
“You said you wanted this place up and running as soon as possible,” I remind her. The tins of varnish clunk on the floorboards and I cuss and scramble when my sander nearly takes a swan dive out of my arms.
“I did, didn’t I?” Lizzie sticks out her lower lip and exhales. Locks of hair about her face are blown in all directions. There’s a soft sheen of sweat on her temples and I spy a few hairs on the nape of her neck that are damp and curling.
And still, she’s stunning.
Stunning and just a little hot and wet. Like after a day spent in bed.
I cough, and use one of the tins to pin the front door open, then hurry back down the front porch to the truck. I can hear Lizzie stepping out onto the steps to call after me.
“When do we get to the fun stuff?”
I grab the last two bags from the flat of the truck and look back at her over my shoulder.
“Didn’t we already do that?” I ask.
My self-satisfaction only grows when Lizzie’s face floods with color. It’s good to know that memories of this morning aren’t only lingering with me.
“Ha. Ha,” she says, leaning against one of the porch posts. “I mean, when can I start picking out colors?”
“Colors?” I cart the bags up the steps.
“For painting.”
The effort not to roll my eyes nearly gives me a hemorrhage.
“You are such a woman,” I accuse, shoving the bag of drop sheets into her arms. I place a hand on top of her head, twist her around, and send her into the house ahead of me.
“Well, I am a woman,” she argues back.
“I noticed.” Boy, had I noticed.
And I notice again as Lizzie deliberately wiggles her butt at me down the hallway.
I clear my throat.
“Hey, you should consider yourself lucky when we get to that stage,” Lizzie calls back over her shoulder. “At least I’m a direct woman. I see a color, I like it, I paint it. Done and dusted. If you were working for my friend Jess you’d be at the swatches stand for days.”
“Days?” Even the idea has me feeling a little faint.
“Professional artist. I swear she sees a whole other spectrum of color to the rest of us. One that needs translating. At length.”
“Well, before we can get onto painting we need to give you a blank canvas. The tiles in the bathroom are too old and cracked. The kitchen too. They’ll need replacing. Most of the walls need to be stripped of their paper and a few will have to be taken back to the board where the damp has gotten into the plaster.”
Shoving the supplies under the wide staircase out of the way, Lizzie places her hands on her hips and looks around her new home. The papers had come through just a few days ago and she wasn’t wasting any time making her mark on the place.
Standing here now, I’m not sure how to take that. Is it a good thing? A sign of her deepening commitment to East River? Or is it just another symptom of her running away? A desperate drive to stick her head further into the sand and escape her life in New York?
I remind myself that I shouldn’t care. Right now, all I should be worried about is helping her get the house fixed up, taking the wages that follow, and securing Ma’s spot at Kenwood Homes.
“We should start at the top.” Arming myself with a scraper, hammer, and anything else I might need for tile removal, I head up the stairs. “If we work from the upper floors down, we’ll push the dust through the house.
“Where are we putting the debris?” Lizzie asks, following me up. She’s dressed in cargo pants and her heavy work boots, but she still makes less noise than me on the stairs. The woman has weightless grace built into her DNA.
