“Eating chocolate,” I say around my full mouth.
He stares at my face. “Why are you eating chocolate?”
“Do you really want to talk about my period, Aaron?”
He pushes the nail polish into my hand, closes my fist around it, and shoves my hand back through the slit in the door. Then he solidly closes the door.
“I hate you, Bess,” he says through the crack.
I grin.
I shake the bottle of nail polish. “So, how do you feel about pink toenails?”
We paint one another’s toenails as we finish our chocolate bars, and then she looks toward the door. “I think I’m ready to go out now.” She wraps her new period panties in a dirty towel and tosses them into the hamper.
“Oh, okay.” I push up from the floor and stand up. “Thanks for painting my toenails.” I wiggle my toes against the linoleum.
“It’s not easy being a woman,” she says stoically. And I force myself to look sympathetic and nod, rather than laugh.
We go out and find Aaron and Eli sitting on the porch. “So, what’s for dinner?” I ask. I just ate a chocolate bar the size of my head, so I doubt I’ll even want dinner.
Aaron shoves my shoulder. But he freezes when Sam walks out of the house, sits down next to him, and leans against his arm. “Thanks for the chocolate, Dad,” she whispers.
He lifts his arm around her shoulders and mouths the words “thank you” at me.
I smile at him, stand up, wipe my butt off, and follow Eli home. We’ll be back together for dinner, but right now Aaron needs some time with his family. No one can be sure how much time he has left, so every minute counts.
Eli looks at my head as we go inside, and I grin. I still have on the crown he made for me, and I plan to wear it for the rest of the night.
“Hey, I found something of yours,” I say. I walk in the kitchen and retrieve his small red ball from the kitchen junk drawer. “Here.” I throw it toward the floor so it bounces toward him. He catches it and grins.
“Thanks, Bess.” He stares at it in his palm as if I just gave him a diamond ring. And the rest of the evening I hear that stupid ball strike the floor and the wall over and over, and I’ve never enjoyed such an annoying sound so much.
38
Eli
The next morning, I wake up to the sound of someone banging, fireman style, on my front door. I sit up quickly, and Bess rolls to get up. “I’ll get it,” I say. I walk to the front door wearing my boxers and t-shirt, and I adjust my junk before I open the door. A minute before, I’d been sound asleep with Bess’s butt pressed against my crotch, not to mention that it’s morning.
I find Mr. Jacobson standing on the porch. He glances down toward my morning wood and says, “Put your junk away. It’s time to get to work.” Then he walks down the steps and goes to do the same thing at Aaron’s house. He has Gabby with him, and she waits patiently as he knocks, waits for Aaron to open the door, sleep-addled and groggy-eyed, and then she goes inside. Aaron comes out a minute later wearing shorts and a t-shirt and his baseball cap.
“You know I have cancer, right?” I hear him say to Mr. Jacobson.
Mr. Jacobson glares at him. “You know I don’t care, right?”
And that is why you have to love Mr. Jacobson. He always delivers the right words at the right time. Because there’s a little piece of me that believes that Aaron needs to hear that his cancer isn’t going to affect him today.
I walk back inside to get dressed. “What’s going on?” Bess asks. She rolls over and the covers slip down, exposing her panties, which is all she has on aside from one of my t-shirts. I walk over to the bed, lean over her, and nuzzle the back of her neck.
“Mr. Jacobson just told me to put my junk away,” I say with a laugh.
“I know a place you can put it,” she replies. She rolls onto her back and her shirt lifts so I can see several inches of her stomach.
“Don’t tempt me.” I reluctantly push away from the bed and watch her as I get a pair of shorts and put them on. She’s so beautiful, even with her hair mussed and some of last night’s mascara staining her cheeks.
Bess sits up and kicks the covers down, exposing what seems like miles of kissable skin. “I kind of like tempting you,” she says quietly, her voice as soft as silk.
Last night, when we went to bed, she’d let my hands wander around until we’d both gotten frustrated. But I’d put the brakes on it, and I was now regretting the fact that I did. I want nothing more than to make love to my wife and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
A knock sounds on the door again, and I can tell by the heavy-handed thunks that it’s Mr. Jacobson. “Got to go,” I whisper as I kiss her. She turns her head at the last minute and mutters something about morning breath. “I’ll be back later.”
“Thanks for the warning,” she says with a grin, and she reaches down, pulls the covers back up to her chin, and snuggles into the blankets. Her eyes fall closed before I’m even out of the bedroom.
I glance at my watch as I close the front door behind me. “Why are we starting so early?” I ask of no one in particular.
“Because Pop doesn’t like for anyone to have morning sex when there’s work to be done,” Jake says, and he sounds like he’s not in a very good mood.
“You can fuck off, later,” Mr. Jacobson says. “Right now, there’s work needs doing.” He heads toward where I saw a pile of lumber stacked yesterday. But it’s not just lumber. It’s lumber and windows and shingles and plywood and tools. He makes an impatient motion toward the pile and says, “Y’all can get started as soon as the mood strikes you.” He looks toward my lap. “Glad to see you’re in good shape now.”
“I wouldn’t call it good shape,” I mutter to myself. Jake instructs me to set up the sawhorses and a saw, so I go and do that as he looks at Mr. Jacobson’s plans.
“You know this is more like a garage than a shed, right?” He glares at Mr. Jacobson.
“One man’s garage is another man’s shed, Jake.” He hitches his pants up, opens a folding chair, and sits down in it.
“Oh, no, old man. You are not going to sit there while we do all the work.”
“I’m old, Jake.” He lifts a cup of coffee to his lips and takes a sip. I would kill for a cup of coffee right now.
I lean around Jake’s shoulder so Mr. Jacobson can see me and I repeat the words I’d heard him say to Aaron: “You know we don’t care, right?”
Jake chuckles as Mr. Jacobson grumbles and gets out of the chair. “There’s coffee,” he says, and he points to a big insulated pot and some paper cups.
“Thank God,” Aaron says as he pours a cup for each of us.
We work together well into the afternoon, until my muscles are screaming and I feel like I could choke Mr. Jacobson with my bare hands if he even looks in my direction. Bess shows up with some sandwiches, and we all sit down and quietly eat.
We get back to work, and we work hard until the sun starts to go down. And that is when Mr. Jacobson brings out the cooler. He drags it out of the back of the golf cart, opens it, and pulls a fresh, ice cold beer from the depths. He cracks the top on the can, and I watch as it spurts refreshment out the hole. He lifts it to his lips and takes a sip, burps, and sets it down. “If any of you get shit-faced, I will do something to embarrass you tomorrow,” he warns.