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A little bit. I was in aPet Sematarytank top, the armholes cut wide enough that you could see the sides of my bra underneath,and jean shorts. I had not expected anyone else to come by, much lessSam, so I hadn’t cared how I looked. Now the outfit felt skimpy. I checked which bra I was wearing under the guise of wiping my arm across my forehead. At least it was one of my good ones—neon purple and trimmed with lace.
Sam poured the paint into a tray for me, and a Solo cup, for him, and immediately got to work. It didn’t take me long to realize why Sam had taken off the tape. He wasgood. Like, perfectly straight line, no drips, every movement methodical,good.
I should’ve started painting myself, but I couldn’t look away. It was mesmerizing, watching him work. He had one knee propped up, his arm holding the cup of paint draped across it, while he angled himself to paint a stripe of Linen White at the bottom of the wall.
“You’re a ringer,” I said.
“Sorry?”
I gestured toward the job he was doing, even though he was looking at the wall and not at me. “You’re really good at that. Is this something else you do on the side?”
Finally, he seemed to make a mistake, a single drip of paint sliding down onto the baseboard. He wiped it away with his thumb, then wiped his thumb on the leg of his coveralls. “I used to,” he said. “A-Plus Painters, the summer after high school and then on weekends and breaks my first two years of college.”
“And they let you keep your coveralls?” There were a few smears of color here and there on the navy fabric, I noticed, but not as much as I might’ve expected from a professional painter. Or maybe that was all the paint-splattered pandas on Lisa Frank stationery giving me the wrong idea.
“I actually bought these for myself,” he said. “For when I...”
He trailed off, frowning down at the corner he’d been wedging the paintbrush into. From my angle, the paint looked fine, so I couldn’t figure out why he’d stopped.
Or maybe he was waiting for me to actually do some work on my own house. I grabbed a roller and loaded it up with paint, starting to press streaks of Linen White onto the wall.
“If you don’t finish that sentence,” I said, “you know I’ll do it in my head with something likefor when I’m dropping a human body into the acid bath.”
He gave a soft laugh. “I don’t think this fabric is manufactured to withstand acid baths,” he said. “No, I had this idea a year or so ago that I’d start making my own guitars. So I bought these for that project, because I thought it’d be cool, having this dedicated uniform I could work in, and that I wouldn’t worry about getting paint or varnish or glue on.”
“You make your own guitars?”
“Not really,” he said. “It didn’t work out.”
I thought back to his garage, those parts that had been left, as if in the middle of being put back together.
“You’re a giant nerd,” I said, like it was a revelation. It kind of was. Anyone who’d even attempted tomakehis own instrument, even going so far as to buy his own work uniform to do so, definitely qualified as a nerd in my book.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’ve been told that.”
Something about the way he said it, something about the resigned set of his shoulders, told me maybe he hadn’t taken that comment as the joke I’d meant it. “That’s not a bad thing,” Iclarified. “I have a whole spreadsheet dedicated to episodes ofDisappeared, where I Google the cases every few months to see if they solved what happened to the people yet. Music sounds like a much healthier obsession.”
“Speaking of,” he said, “we could put on some music while we worked. If you wanted.”
Never let it be said I couldn’t take a hint to shut up. I only had my phone, and I tried to put that in an empty Solo cup to amplify the sound, but only two songs into my playlist he said he couldn’t take it and ran to his house to get a Bluetooth speaker. While he was gone, I checked my phone, and saw that Conner had texted a few times.
I can head over to help if you need me,the first one read, and then,Happy to hold a ladder for moral support.
Then, several minutes later,That probably doesn’t sound very secure, huh?
Half an hour ago, I totally would’ve taken Conner up on his offer. If for no other reason than I had an older sister’s distaste for seeing him get out of doing something that I still had to do. But then Sam was back, his hair already sticking to his forehead slightly with sweat, his smile genuine as he set the speaker up on my desk. And so I texted,Nah it’s fine. I’ve got this. You can bring me lunch tomorrow if you’re feeling really guilty. And best believe I’ll expect you to help repaint my room.Then I added a line of skull emojis. That black was going to take a lot to cover.
Sam and I got into a rhythm with our painting, working on opposite walls so we wouldn’t run into each other. I felt bad for him—while I was rolling on the paint willy-nilly, overlappinglines and hoping it would all dry as one cohesive color, he had to be down on the ground hunched over the trim, keeping his hand steady and neat.
He must’ve felt the opposite, though, because he looked up, giving me a sympathetic grimace. “Want me to roll some on for a bit? You’re doing all the muscle.”
Which made my gaze go to his arms, naturally. Even with the occasional smear of Linen White, they still looked delicious. I could sink my teeth into the wiry tendon above his wrist, not to draw blood but just to exert a soft pressure...
Jesus. I was scaring even myself. My own self-judgment made my voice sharper than intended when I said, “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Sam stopped painting, his brush suspended in midair. “What?”
“You don’thaveto be here,” I said. “Painting sucks. If I could get out of doing this, believe me, I would.”
