7. Jack
7
JACK
MIND YOUR MATTRESS
“Y ou stupid fucking mattress!”
I could hear my neighbor’s cursing from down the beach. Sweat soaked my skin, dripping off my torso in thick rivers as I jogged down the packed sand. My lungs burned as I sucked in lungfuls of the warm morning air. My feet sunk into the soft sand as I climbed up the grass-dotted dunes that separated our houses from the beach.
While I had been on duty the previous day, Aurora had tackled the front lawn, pulling weeds and manhandling an ancient push mower to knock the grass down to a manageable level. When I drove by this morning on my way home, it looked like someone had given the small yard a buzz cut, but kept changing the clipper guard setting between each pass.
It was . . . shorter.
Honestly, she needed to take it down to the dirt and either reseed the damn thing or landscape it with low-maintenance shrubs and mulch. But I wasn’t about to tell her that.
A large dumpster had been rented and placed on the property, straddling the yard and the curb. She had been filling it all morning with furniture that was too damaged and dilapidated to salvage or donate.
I slipped around the corner of the old Whitlock place just in time for a guttural battle cry to rip through the serene morning air.
Aurora was standing on the deck with a mattress perched on the railing. It was a good thing I had replaced the broken steps and shored up the posts. The mattress would have collapsed the old one.
With one heaving shove, she catapulted the mattress off the deck, sending it flying one story down into the dumpster. It sounded like a bomb exploded as it hit the metal siding and sunk into the cavern. A flock of seagulls dispersed at the crash.
I looked up and caught a glimpse of her face as she stood with her hands braced against the railing. Her cheeks were flushed red and her hair was piled in a knot on the top of her head. She was in a tight spandex bra, denim shorts, and work boots.
At least it wasn’t flip-flops today.
“I see you’re getting an early start on scaring the birds away this morning,” I joked as I leaned on the staircase railing.
Aurora scowled. “ There are six mattresses in this stupid house. None of them are usable and the donation place won’t take them. Six !”
I glanced at the dumpster where the lone mattress sat and quickly understood. She had five more to go, a few of which probably had to come down a second set of stairs from the third floor.
Sweat burned my eyes as it dripped off my forehead. “ Hang tight. I’ll give you a hand,” I said as I pulled off my sneakers and dumped out the sand before stomping back into them.
“Not necessary,” she snapped.
Ah. So it was a cranky Aurora day. She had softened toward me after we found the floorboard letter. Honestly , I thought we had a missed connection. I had wanted to kiss her, but she never gave me an inclination of whether she was into it or not.
Now, we were back to square one.
“I don’t need any help. Thank you for the stairs. You saved me from karate chopping the boards in half with my bare hands. But I’m perfectly capable of?—”
Her words faded as I stripped off the old t-shirt that was missing the arms and sides, and used it to wipe off my face and chest. I balled it up and chucked it over the hedgerow separating my house from hers.
“What was that?” I said as I jogged up the stairs.
Aurora blinked as her eyes raked up and down my chest. “ I . . .”
That was the reaction I was looking for.
“Point me to the next mattress and I’ll help you get ‘em out.”
She just blinked and pointed to the door, her gaze never leaving my chest.
I grinned, shaking my head as I dipped into the house. I poked my head into the room where I had found her sleeping on the floor, but the bed frame was empty. She must have just tossed that one.
Her sleeping bag was still right where it had been. A laptop sat beside it, open with the screen illuminated. A document was pulled up, but it was blank. The cursor blinked, waiting for words to be typed, but there were none.
I swung back through the kitchen and headed up the stairs to the top floor, taking stock of the bedroom situation. There were four more bedrooms. Two had queen-sized beds. The third bedroom had a full bed, and the fourth had two twin beds.
A widow’s watch split the communal landing between the sides, giving Aurora an unobstructed view of the Atlantic .
I started with the first queen mattress, holding my breath as I hauled it down the stairs to keep from breathing in the dust, mold, and whatever else hid inside it.
I was half-tempted to tell Aurora to take a break while I ran to the station to get my breathing apparatus, but she had an angry look in her eye today that told me this wasn’t simply clearing out the house. It was ripping out the cobwebs that cluttered her soul.
The full-sized and twin mattresses weren’t bad. I slid them down the stairs, one by one, then climbed over them and hauled them out to Aurora to throw off the deck into the dumpster.
Each mattress toss was met with a warrior's scream from the deepest part of her chest.
The last queen mattress was a bitch, giving me hell as I tried to work it around the bedroom corner, doorframe, and staircase.
“You alright up there?” Aurora called from the kitchen.
“Yup,” I grunted as I tried to get it around the corners again.
“What happens if you get stuck?” she called. “ Do I have to call the fire department? I mean, I don’t mind, but it’ll be pretty awkward for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said as I backed the mattress back into the room to try and get it out from a different angle.
Aurora fell quiet as I slowly coaxed that goddamn mattress out of the room and heaved it down the stairs.
When I finally made it down to the landing, she was swearing and looked like she was going to chuck her laptop into the dumpster.
“Throwing old mattresses is less financially damaging than throwing a laptop,” I quipped as I slid it across the floor.
Aurora glared at me. “ Mind your mattress.”
“What’s the matter, peaches?”
Her lip curled in disdain. “ Peaches ?”
I shrugged. “ You don’t like Aurora or Roar . I gotta figure something out.”
“I told you to call me Wander . It’s what everyone does.”
“Yeah, but you said you were retired. If it’s your retired pen name, it seems a little strange to use.”
Aurora quickly averted her gaze as I paused beside her, then put two and two together. “ Unless you’re not actually retired.”
“If you want to keep bothering me by making wild assumptions about me and my life, the least you can do is get that mattress out of my house.”
“Would you like to do the final honors?” I said as I pushed it out the door and lined it up against the deck railing.
Aurora didn’t need to be told twice. She grabbed the back end of the mattress, tattooed muscles flexing as she took a deep breath, then gave it a hard shove.
“Now,” I said when all six mattresses were piled in the massive dumpster. “ Is there a little white lie you want to clear up?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Aurora rolled her eyes. “ Go put a shirt on.”
“Why?” I asked. I knew why.
“Because I can’t think straight when you’re”—she waved her hand in the general direction of my chest—“like that.”
“Like what, Roar ?” I teased.
She muttered something that sounded like a curse under her breath as she turned her back to me and studied the to-do list. The first quarter or so of the list had been scratched out.
Since she seemed to be perfectly fine pretending that I didn’t exist, I decided to snoop.
I had already poked in the bedroom, where she had been sleeping on the floor. I made a mental note to pester her until she fessed up about her plans for obtaining a real bed. There was no way a grown woman could survive sleeping on the floor for months.
Since I was relatively familiar with the living room, the kitchen was next.
I yanked open the vintage fridge to find . . . almost nothing. There were a dozen eggs with a few missing from the carton, grape jelly, hotdogs, ketchup, and some carrot sticks and dip. On the countertop sat a loaf of sandwich bread, a jar of peanut butter, hotdog buns, bananas, and chips.
Granted, she was just one person, but who could survive on sandwiches and hotdogs?
“Whatever you’re thinking, just keep it in your head. I don’t want to hear it,” she muttered as I pawed around. It seemed like most of what she had brought with her were cleaning supplies and a small tool kit.
No personal items. Nothing comfortable. Nothing from her home or past life. Nothing that told me who she was.
The floorboard letter sat on the kitchen island where she had discarded her laptop instead of hurling it across the room. That was something. It was unfolded, like she had been reading it over and over again.
I glanced at her laptop screen, where the blank document from earlier now sported a page number. A single ‘1’ at the top, and nothing else.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shrieked as she tossed the to-do list down and snatched the laptop away. “ That’s private.”
Was she serious? It was blank.
“There was nothing on it. Sorry , I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Well, it is,” Aurora growled as she stomped to the room she was camping in and dumped the laptop on her sleeping bag.
“Whoa,” I said, raising my palms as she shoulder-checked me on her way back to the kitchen. “ Wanna loop me in?”
“Not particularly,” she hissed as she yanked open the fridge, stared at it—probably hoping for something different to magically appear—then slammed the decades-old door. The hinges creaked at the force of the push.
“I’ve got some WD -40 over at my place,” I said. “ Want me to bring it over for you?”
“No,” she hissed.
I didn’t particularly care for women who played hard to get. The chase wasn’t my thing. But something about the way her shoulder constantly curled in, like she was waiting for the world to shatter around her, tugged at my heartstrings.
Aurora wasn’t playing hard to get. She was wounded. That much was evident. Like a delicate creature hiding to heal, then lashing out when disturbed.
I glanced at the time. It was well past lunch and, after all the mattress throwing, she was probably due for some caloric reinforcements.
“You got plans this afternoon?”
She threw her hands up at the house. “ This is my plan for the next three months.”
“I’m taking you out to lunch. Be ready to go in fifteen. I’m gonna run to my place and shower real quick.”
A caustic laugh slipped from her cherry lips. “ Um . . . no.”
“No?”
“Yeah. No .”
“So, yes?” I said, scratching the back of my head.
Aurora huffed. “ No .”
“But you just said ‘yeah.’”
“No,” she growled. “ I was agreeing with you that I was not going out with you.”
“So, you agree with me?” I said in the most neutral voice I could. Messing with her was quickly becoming my favorite pastime.
“No!” Aurora shouted. “ Now , get out of my house. It smells bad enough. I don’t need your sweat adding to it.”
I had one more trick up my sleeve. Diabolical ? Maybe . But there was one thing I could offer that I knew any reasonable woman would never turn down.
“How do homemade potato chips sound?”
Aurora paused, and I knew I had her.
“There’s this spot not too far up the road. Ernie shaves down the potatoes fresh and fries them. You get a big basket for three bucks, and it comes with homemade ranch.”
Fifteen minutes later, I held the door open while Aurora begrudgingly slid into the passenger’s seat of my pickup.
“So,” I said as I hopped in, clicked my seatbelt, and draped my arm across the back of the bench seat so I could back out. “ Have you been to Cedar Island before?”
I grazed the shoulders of the tanktop Aurora had thrown on over her sports bra. She had traded the work boots for flip-flops and let down her hair. The pink flush across her cheeks from the heat softened the hard edge of her clenched jaw.
“I’ve been here before, but I was too young to really remember much. Just for quick vacations when I was little.”
“Well, you’re in luck. Not much has changed since then.” I pointed out her window. “ That’s the fire and EMS station. Not too far from our street, so if you ever need anything while I’m on duty, you know where to find me.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “ Are you my self-appointed tour guide or were you assigned by some backwoods welcoming committee?”
I chuckled. “ Neighborliness . Remember ?”
“Right . . .”
Aurora settled in for the drive while I pointed out the necessities. Our one gas station, a small grocery store, the good beaches and the ones to avoid, the oyster farming operation, and the ferry terminal.
I pulled into the lot at the Fish ‘n Fuel and cut the engine. Aurora rested her head against the back of the seat, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “ Hot food,” she whimpered. “ How I’ve missed you.”
I chuckled. “ Were you planning to survive on cold sandwiches for the entire summer?”
She shrugged as she unbuckled. I beat her to the door, opening it for her before she could. “ I’m a homebody. Exploring wasn’t on my agenda.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said as we walked to the double-wide. I slid my hand onto the small of her back, holding the door to the diner open for her. “ But if you want something other than PB & Js , this is the place to be.”
The lunch crowd was just starting to disappear, which meant that Aurora and I were able to snag two barstools along the front line.
“Wharton,” Ernie hollered with his back to me as he flipped burger patties. “ That you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s June’s great-niece doing?”
I cracked a smile at Aurora . “ Ask her yourself.”