“Great,” I said, and as I followed her down the path next to the garage and back toward the back door of the big house, I felt an unfamiliar glimmer of hope, or maybe excitement at the prospect of a new opportunity, spring to life inside me.
10
Lack of Air
Addison
Something about the way Michael was leading me into the house—our house—was rubbing me wrong. The fact he had moved in first, had been here all afternoon doing whatever it was he’d been doing . . . it made it feel like this was his house, his project, and I was just a guest. One who had to sleep on the floor in a room inhabited by mice. Ew. But Lottie had needed a lot of convincing, and she’d demanded help with her famous pumpkin spice muffins before she’d let me go. Technically, she reminded me, I was still working at the Tin part time.
At least at the Tin there were no mice.
Living in New York City had made me pretty immune to—or at least used to—things like rodents and cockroaches. But it sure didn’t mean I enjoyed sharing space with them. Still, I’d never been the squealing type unless confronted by enormous kangaroos, and I wasn’t giving Michael the satisfaction of seeing me afraid.
We were partners in this insanity, and I needed it. I needed to get out of Mom’s house for a bit, get some space to think, and to figure out what to do about my past life, which felt like it was standing just around the corner, waiting for me. The problem was that it was tarnished and ruined. And expensive. Very expensive. But I didn’t know if I wanted it back. Everything about my life in New York had hinged on a fantasy—my belief in the love Luke and I shared. And it turned out, we’d shared that in the same way we always shared fries—I’d take one and savor it, and when I went for more, they were gone. That wasn’t sharing at all.
“I guess I’ll leave you to get settled?” Michael stood in the doorway of the biggest bedroom, the one with the window seat in the turret, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He had on a long-sleeved navy-blue T-shirt and dark jeans, and his ginger hair was pushed back from his face in an annoyingly perfect kind of way. He looked uncertain, though, like now that this was officially my bedroom, he’d be intruding to cross the threshold. That was fine with me.
“Yeah, I guess.” I looked around. Michael had handed me the air mattress and sleeping bag, and I dropped them next to the window that overlooked the yard. “Not really that much to do. Are there projects we can start on today?” The sooner we got everything done, the sooner we could both get on with our lives. As long as it had been six months, that was.
“There are. Meet me in the dining room in a few minutes, and I’ll show you the project plan I’ve been working on?”
He made a project plan? I wasn’t sure why that bothered me, except if this was our project, if we were equal partners, then the idea that he was somehow leading the charge was annoying.
“Okay,” I said, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.
He left me then, and I stood in the center of the dusty old room and looked around. The space was nice, and it was flooded with late-afternoon light, giving it a golden glow. But it felt stale and stagnant, and smelled like ancient ammonia and old clothes. Not dirty, but not clean. Just . . . old. And not quite empty, either.
Maybe it was the old sleigh bed pushed against the wall, its rolling headboard standing strong in contrast to the wallpaper tattering around it, but it felt like someone else’s space. Like I was an intruder. It made me shiver slightly, so I busied myself rolling out the air mattress and putting the sleeping bag on top of it.
“This is the flattest air mattress I’ve ever seen,” I grumbled. The thing was anemic, flattened and thin. I looked for a spout to blow into, but didn’t find one. There was some kind of doodad on the corner, a plastic protrusion, but its use was not obvious. I tried blowing into it, but it did nothing. “Great. This one’s broken.” I glanced back toward the door, not especially wanting to look helpless or needy in front of Michael Tucker.
I sighed, and smoothed the sleeping bag on top of it. It was going to be a long night. Glancing back at the bed, I wondered how horrible it would really be to sleep on mouse-eaten foam rubber or cotton. Maybe I could just sneak back to Mom’s for the night. But I didn’t want to explain that to her or to Michael. And not sleeping in the house wasn’t really living in it, and probably wouldn’t fulfill the terms of the trust. Anders had promised he’d be by now and then per the terms to check on us.
One night wouldn’t kill me. I’d figure something out for tomorrow. brushed my hands on the legs of my jeans and headed downstairs to meet Michael.
He was sitting at the dining room table, a laptop open in front of him, and an empty chair pulled to his side.
“Hey,” he said, looking uncertain as I stepped into the room. “Will you come take a look at the plan I put together?”
I bit my tongue, feeling a tiny bit snippy and irritable, and instead moved the chair just slightly away from him and sat in it, peering at the screen. It was a spreadsheet, filled with projects, costs, calculations and estimates. It reminded me of my job—I’d been in finance my whole life. My fingers itched to take the mouse and keyboard, to analyze his work, to make it better, more precise. But I sat still, my hands in my lap. “What’s this?”
“I was just trying to get us organized, figure out how best to apply the renovation funds to all the things that need doing in the house.”
“I see.” That was smart. That was exactly what needed doing. I sighed. I felt useless once again, and it reminded me of everything else in my life—living in limbo here in Singletree, Luke, who had clearly moved on to something or someone better, and my job, which I really needed to check on. I was used to being the person who did the things that needed doing. Now somehow I’d been relegated to incapable of blowing up camping mattresses and watching other people build spreadsheets. Maybe I was somehow overreacting, but it felt warranted. I was tired of having to depend on everyone else.
“This is the list of projects here, and they’re broken into sub-projects, with estimates where I got them from inspectors who came in to look or who I spoke to on the phone over the last couple days. And then here are some of the estimates I made myself”—he pointed to another column—“and this stuff here is pure guesswork.”
“You did all this yourself?” My voice was flat, emotionless. Useless. I did not want to be so useless.
Michael turned to look at me, those dark blue eyes open and friendly—until they met mine. “Are you angry about something?”
“You know this is basically what I do for work, right?” Of course he didn’t. Why would he know that?
“Renovate ancient houses?” A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth, but even his charm couldn’t charm me out of the bad mood I’d worked myself into.
“No, analyze and valuate companies. Organize budgets and estimates. Calculate risk based on numbers.” My voice was cold, partly because the indignant and overconfident career woman inside me wished she had done this work, or been asked to, but partly because having that part of me rear up, angry and possessive, was confusing.