Chapter 17
A TEAM SPORT
Barry was gone when I woke up the next morning, his air mattress already folded beneath his blankets and pillow.
His keys still hung from the hook he kept them on, and his sneakers were gone from their spot on the shoe rack, so I guessed he was on a run.
A text on my phone confirmed it, said he was jogging with his dad before his parents flew home later today.
How Barry had played thirty-one minutes of yesterday’s game and still wanted to run today was beyond me. He was a freak of nature.
I had a rare weekday off, which meant that, after sleeping in, I could finally tackle a few of the smaller projects that were waiting patiently in a line in the workshop room.
I started with putting art prints and pictures into thrifted frames for the baby’s room, then picked up the also-thrifted shelf that was just waiting to be hung up by the back door.
I’d already done the hard work of stripping the paint, sanding (this is the part that’ll kill you), and staining the old wood shelf with three routed hearts that someone thought needed a coat of neon green paint.
I hated to hate on someone else’s DIY journey, but my grandpa told me once that painting over hardwood was a sin, and I had to agree with him. He was probably smiling down on me for my efforts.
Fixed-up shelf in hand, I juggled a handful of tools—the drill, the level, a pencil between my lips—and started playing with placement by the back door.
I had just determined where it should go, shelf in one hand, level in the other, when the back door opened, cold air coming in with a red-nosed Barry. He grinned as soon as he saw me and didn’t even take his coat off before reaching over my shoulder to hold the shelf for me.
It pressed his body to the side of mine in a way that immediately made me entirely aware of my nerve endings, my skin on high alert to every place his body was molded against mine.
“Morning,” he said. “I’ll hold, you level.”
I gulped, hopefully not as loudly as I feared, and gingerly pulled my hand away from holding the shelf to take the pencil from between my lips.
“Thanks,” I managed, and nudged his hand up or down until it was exactly in the place I wanted and level. I took my pencil and marked a line on the top of the shelf. Done with the task, he didn’t move for a couple of breaths, and neither did I.
I peered back over my shoulder and found him already looking down at me. His cheeks were pink too, like his nose, and I had the absurd desire to press my warm fingers against his face until he was warmed up.
It was the closest physically I’d been to Barry since finding him again. He stood much closer than this task necessitated, and the smell of him so close reminded me of New York. Of lapping kisses up the side of my neck and little pink hickies left in their wake the next morning.
“You can put it down now,” I said in what might have been my smallest voice.
Barry nodded just barely before lowering the shelf and stepping back.
I felt cold all over and like I could suddenly breathe again, which was both a relief and something more concerning, too.
I didn’t want him to step away; I found my mind crafting a catalog of fantasies of finding out once again just how good our physical chemistry was, one home improvement project at a time.
I tried to clear my throat, but I think it just sounded more like a growl, so I conjured a cough, which also sounded fake.
“My parents wanted me to tell you bye,” Barry said, saving me from making any more embarrassing sounds. “They adored you.”
“They did?”
“Of course they did. Come on.” Barry took another step back and shrugged out of his coat before toeing his shoes off and stowing them in their spot on the rack.
“Come on what?”
Barry pursed his lips and tilted his head like I was being obtuse.
“What’s not to like about you?”
I opened and then snapped closed my mouth, refraining from listing many, many unlikeable qualities about me.
I needed him to stop saying things like that, things that were making me feel. . .confused. My body was so far beyond that, very sure that we should be standing close to each other again, maybe kissing like we had in New York, and the other stuff, too.
I shook myself and stood up straighter while Barry filled a glass of water and took a long drink. I watched his throat as he did, then looked decidedly away from him. “Thanks for the help with the shelf.”
“Of course. That’s what I’m here for, right?” He drained the rest of his water and then immediately started washing his cup instead of stacking it in the sink like I would have done.
I blinked, suddenly distracted by other things my traitorous body seemed to think he was here for.
“Right, well, I do appreciate it, but I’m not entirely helpless, you know.”
Barry’s hands paused in rinsing the glass, and he looked at me with confusion written all over his face. “What are we talking about here?”
“It’s just, the meals, the helping hands—it’s not that I’m not grateful, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Barry turned off the sink and then stared blankly at me. “And that wrong idea would be what?”
“That I can’t take care of myself,” I said, hopefully sounding more confident than I felt. “I can cook for myself. Can take out my own laundry. Have for years. I can hang up shelves like nobody’s business, too.”
It was his turn to blink in surprise, reorienting himself in this conversation, which was quickly taking a turn for the confrontational. Whatever. It was better than horny-ass tension crackling from me like a Taser.
“Of course you can take care of yourself, I don’t doubt that.”
“You don’t? Like, do you believe I know how to feed myself beyond jalapeno burgers? Because I swear I do.”
I thought of the meals he made for me, the stacks of them that were sitting in the fridge even now, all kinds of food and easy-to-put-together ingredients for us both, a shit ton of it, even when I knew most days he ate breakfast and lunch at the practice facility.
“No, it’s—I like to cook. And I want to help make your life easier. You’re growing a literal human in your body. You should have good food when you need it.”
“But you’re so busy,” I said. “I really can take care of myself, is what I mean. I don’t want you to think I’m some incompetent kid who needs caretaking.”
It’s how I felt about myself sometimes—especially when Kate nagged me about nutrition, or vitamins, or my protein and fiber intake—but this was just her way. She’d hovered over Jeremy and me since we were kids, but ultimately, we could both take care of ourselves.
“I’m not so busy that I can’t cook some meals and help you with your projects. It’s kind of the whole point of me staying with you, right? To help?”
Not to keep tabs on me? I wanted to ask.
“I don’t have a single doubt that if I wasn’t here, you’d still be eating three round meals a day, this shelf would find its way perfectly level to the wall, and your laundry would get done. But the whole point is that you have another body around to help share the load.”
“Right.” I tried to see the last days through the lens of a helping hand rather than a man who thought I couldn’t take care of myself. “You don’t feel like I’m…taking advantage of your kindness?”
“No, you’re just not doing everything alone anymore.”
I didn’t say that I’ve never been alone with my family always buzzing around, but even with Kate coming over as often as she did, she wasn’t my roommate, taking on the shared mantle of housework in my house.
And yes, she’d help with the baby when she was born, but she wouldn’t be co-parenting with me.
“And honestly you’re not using me enough, Harvey.”
Calling me by my last name, like I was one of his teammates, made my neck hot for an unknowable reason. It was a new level of familiarity, a new thing that felt like flirting. It felt dangerous.
Plus, using him also invoked unbidden images of other ways my body was craving, very loudly, to use him that made me feel like a pervert, so I instead busied myself which drilling the screws into the wall.
“What’d you have in mind?” I asked over my shoulder after I screwed in the first one.
“Well, I know how to use power tools,” he said. “You tell me where to drill and I’d do it.”
Not the only thing I know he can drill.
Dammit, Hannah—pervert. Shit.
“I’ll paint walls, change lightbulbs, help with landscaping. I’d learn how to cut your hair if you asked me to.”
I could clearly see myself sitting on a stool in the kitchen, Barry’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration while he trimmed my hair. He’d probably learn the curly girl method, even. He’d cut my hair first and then our daughter’s, little orange curls scattered on the tile.
I drilled the other screw into the wall.
“Why?”
“I wanna be helpful to you,” he said simply. “Want you to know I’m a good teammate.”
He handed me the shelf from where I’d propped it against the wall and I hung it on the two screws, satisfied with the placement.
“I already know you’re a good teammate. It’s your full-time job.” I sidestepped his wide frame and went to the junk drawer in the kitchen, pulling it open and immediately retrieving what I was looking for.
“Sure, but I can be a good teammate in other aspects of my life, too. A partner, even.”
“I have no doubt that you’re a great partner.” It was just me that couldn’t be. Barry was never the problem.
I didn’t look at him as I retreated to the workshop room for one of the tiny frames I’d just finished.
I came back with it, both items secured and placed them on the shelf Barry was still standing by.
We both looked at them, and I smiled. First, the teeny Statue of Liberty figure I picked up in New York.
Next to it, a little golden frame, the last ultrasound inside.
There was still a lot of room on the shelf, but it was a start.
I looked up at Barry and he grinned down at me, dimples for fucking days.