6. Chapter 6
Chapter six
Evander
Even though they couldn’t make any solid plans without seeing Melanie’s parents’ house and getting an idea of their style, Evander still sketched and brainstormed out every night when he got back to the hotel. So he carried his journal full of ideas as they drove through Three Rivers proper to reach their home. Aras and Robinson were in the back seat of the SUV with him, and Ozzy was in the front, with all the leg room he could possibly need. Going to have to relegate him to the back when we head out.
Her parents didn’t actually live in Three Rivers, but it wasn’t too far. They lived in a somehow even smaller town. Not a town, actually, if the internet could be believed. A village called Burr Oak, about half an hour away. So it still wasn’t too long before they pulled up in front of a small cottage-style home in the middle of town. It looked like it had seen better days, the white paint peeling up to reveal grayed, damaged wood siding, and the pink trim faded almost completely. However, if there were any doubts at all they’d arrived at the correct house, the bushes and trees spilling out over the short, chain link fence banished them. Evander didn’t recognize a single one of them, but the leaves were all healthy and full, in deep shades of green and red and umber.
Maybe most important for their current mission, none of the neighbors were too close. Hard to have a surprise in a town with a population less than one-thousand if everybody was living on top of each other.
As they climbed out, Ozzy whistled low, hands on his hips. “God damn. I’ve got my work cut out for me to keep up with this.” Even as he said it, a smile pulled at his lips.
In spite of himself, Evander’s chest fluttered and buoyed. The passion was never the problem with them, and that expression was Ozzy fully engrossed in the landscaping. There was never a time he was sexier than when he gave something his all.
He just didn’t do it enough. Too closed-off, too careful, too worried. He put up one too many walls and Evander just got tired of cracking through them, but in moments like that, it was easy to recall exactly why they worked.
When they did work.
Evander snapped himself from his thoughts and let the single cameraman get into position. There’d been a little back-and-forth about the process. Evander was firmly on the side of ‘it’s weird to film in someone’s house without their permission,’ along with Melanie, but they’d landed on a single camera and the caveat that, after the surprise was all done and over with, they’d talk with her parents and get their permission to use the footage.
Once they got a nod from the cameraman, they all headed in. Like the actual house walk-through, this would be covered in voice over, so everyone seemed as relaxed as they could be, going into someone’s house without explicit permission.
As Ozzy slid the key into the lock, a throat cleared from the back of the crowd. They all turned to see Robinson, red in the face and scrubbing up and down, from his jaw to his temples and back again. “I’m sorry, guys. I thought I’d be cool with this. It’s just…a lot more than I thought.” He reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, fumbled it, and barely caught it before it crashed against the ground. Then he handed it up to Aras. “Take so many pictures of the fixtures, and all the angles you can of any bathrooms. This just…sorry.”
Ozzy sighed. “Drop the drama. No one’s mad at you for dipping.” He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, then stepped back. “Why do you think I’m not going in? Let them get weird about it. You can chill with me in the yard.”
Evander rolled his eyes. Ozzy couldn’t just be real about this shit. He had to couch everything in that stupid veneer of edgy douchebag. Another wall, which made it a lot easier for Evander to nudge past him and forget that passionate look that had crossed his face not a minute or two earlier. “Have fun with your grass, Oswald.”
Then he and Aras headed in, along with the cameraman. Ozzy grumbled something, but Evander was already walking into the house, stepping carefully so as not to disturb anything. The polite word would be ‘maximalist’ to describe their decor. It worked for Evander just fine. He loved his stuff and patterns and bright colors. The details were a little dated, with far too many lace doilies and weird tchotchkes with giant creepy eyes, but it was better than the minimalist hellscapes that used to festoon every town in America. So few people had the means or the wherewithal to make minimalism actually work, yet everybody wanted to try it out.
Aras left Evander alone almost immediately. They crossed paths here and there—it was a two-bedroom, one-bath house without much of a footprint—but mostly, they were on their own. Evander almost felt bad for the camera guy, trying to capture anything useful with them split up. Almost. They were still traipsing around someone else’s house and, in spite of his flippant responses to Ozzy, it felt weird.
He pulled out his journal as he walked, making notes on a clean page and dogearing pages that had designs he would need to axe. The maximalism was key. He wasn’t sure he could bring himself to go quite so old-fashioned, but he would make sure to leave ample room for them to fill in.
Mostly, he wanted to pull in the colors. They were more muted than what he used in his house, lots of pastels and washes. He pulled out his phone and started snapping photos. He’d confer with Melanie to find out if there were any major pieces she knew they would want to keep. Couches, chairs, that sort of thing. The TV was…well, he was sure no one would complain about them getting a new TV handed to them, even if the Trangs could clearly afford to furnish one themselves.
He didn’t linger in the master bedroom, but did make sure to get several detailed pictures of an embroidered quilt stretched across the bed. It was stunning. Black with gold and red stitching, showing off a peacock on a branch of delicate flowers. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, or if it could somehow be woven into the future design, but anything that captured his attention so completely, he couldn’t just leave alone.
All-in, it took them about half an hour to tour the little cottage. The biggest things, at least for Evander, were the large windows showing off all the plants around the house, as well as the well-appointed patio in the back. Clearly, they were big on using the outdoor space, and on connecting the two. Which was ammunition for Evander’s argument.
As Aras and Evander headed out, they saw Robinson leaning against the SUV. Alone. Evander waved at him. “Oswald run away?”
“Looking at some…I don’t know what kind of rose bush. Big. Around the back. Kind of shitting himself over it.”
Aras waved his hand through the air and headed for the SUV to stand with Robinson. “Go fetch him if you want. I’m not paid enough to listen to him prattle on about flowers.”
“I’m immune to the prattling, so I’ll take the bullet.” Evander bowed to them, then flounced off around the corner of the house. “Oh Oswald. We’re all done inside. You and I still need to have a talk about the patio space.”
Around the second corner and he saw Ozzy, gently running his fingers along the petals of a pale pink and yellow rose. It was easily the size of his entire hand, and there were similar blooms all over. Based on Evander’s mental map of the area, these rose bushes would have been along the side of the patio, hemming it in for privacy.
Ozzy lifted the blossom to his nose and inhaled deeply, a smile spreading across his face, and once again, Evander remembered all the good shit about him. All the passion. All the reasons they worked so well and got so fiery.
He walked up and rested his hand on Ozzy’s shoulder, keeping his voice low. “You need more time to commune with nature?”
“No.” Ozzy was still smiling as he turned around, fixing bright, wide eyes on Evander. “He’s maintained these roses very well. Peace roses, Barbara Bush roses, Grand Dames. The man’s not afraid of pink, which I appreciate. It’s a shame to leave these here after all the hard work he must have put into them.” His smile faded and his back stiffened. “Guess that’s the job, though. Rich motherfuckers always feel like they know what’s best, even if it means leaving your dad’s life’s work in the hands of some nimrod who buys this house just to tear it down.”
Evander shook his head, then stepped away. “Come on. Let’s get going.” It was a touch heartwarming to hear him so concerned about the plants and the work that Melanie’s dad had put into the gardening, but of course he shut it down and pulled on that damned veneer again. “We have a patio to discuss, still.”
“There’s no discussing it, Ev. “He walked side-by-side with Evander, back around the corners of the house. “The outdoor area is mine to deal with.”
“We’ll see.” It felt almost like they were normal together again. Standard couple needling and sniping.
Which almost made Evander stumble over his own feet. Is that even something I want?