Chapter Twenty-Four #2
While painting the dining room, I was also able to convince Macon to buy a new table.
We spent an entire Sunday driving around to garage sales, estate sales, and thrift stores.
It had been a while since I’d ridden in his car.
Like all cars, it smelled intensely of its owner.
He was a safe driver, and I felt as if I were snugged in a protective cocoon as I breathed in his scent all day.
We found it at the Humane Society’s thrift store: a huge round wooden table.
“They never have furniture this good here,” I said.
“It was mine.” The woman behind the counter’s voice was jolly and sweet, and her petite body was shaped like a gumdrop. “I brought it in this morning. My ex-husband loved that table. I did, too, but I hate the lying cocksucker more.”
I promised her we’d take good care of it. It was easy to slip into that we , easier than explaining who we actually were. Macon paid, the woman slapped a SOLD sign on it, and we agreed to pick it up within the next twenty-four hours.
“Do you know anybody with a truck?” I asked when we were back in his car.
“Richard still has that big van,” he said.
Our old coworker had needed it to help his wife get around town in her wheelchair.
Lucy had died during the pandemic, and he’d had to bury her alone.
We’d all attended her memorial a year later at the bird-watching park near Thistle Lake.
I felt resistant about asking, but when Macon texted him, Richard was happy to let us borrow the van.
Librarians were always happy to lend and borrow.
We picked up the table the next morning, and Macon surprised me by donating his old table and chairs to the store.
“You could sell those and make a little money,” I said.
“Passing along the good luck to somebody else feels more important,” he said, probably enjoying the fact that his donation would also help out all those unloved cats who still needed homes.
It was too much for me. Kat was right: I did still want to sleep with him.
I had never stopped wanting to sleep with him.
And, even worse, my feelings were about so much more than wanting to sleep with him.
I liked him liked him, I realized, reverting straight back to childhood and all of those unreciprocated crushes. The sensation was torturous.
No. Ingrid. No.
The circular table fit perfectly into the square room. I touched up the yellow walls and tried to tamp down my useless raging infatuation while Macon conditioned the wood and asked me about chairs. He’d already brought the two patio chairs inside to use in the meantime.
“Thrifted,” I replied. He was bent in an odd position to reach one of the table legs, and his shirt had ridden up enough to reveal a triangular slice of abdomen.
His stomach wasn’t muscular or toned or anything particularly special, but it hinted at the exercise he received while gardening, and it was his skin, and it was bare.
I wanted to bite into him. “Mismatched. All wood. But seats the same height and all painted the same color.”
“So, mismatched but matched,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Just like your napkins.”
It took a moment for me to realize what he was talking about. He’d remembered. It was unfair for him to be this romantic right now. “Yeah.”
“What color?” he asked.
I shook my head, reminding myself that I was still an emotional disaster. I could get through this. I was an adult. These feelings would pass.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I haven’t thought it all through yet.”
He paused to look at me, searching for something. I wasn’t sure what. “Fair enough.”
My feelings did not pass, but I had so much practice managing them around him that it was easier to keep managing them than I expected.
Near the end of the month, the weather took a chilly turn, and he started wearing his duffel coat again (cute) and fretting about his Japanese maple (also cute).
The fire at the library had been lit all week, and everyone was bemoaning climate change.
Normally I liked the cold, but a cold Memorial Day weekend was unsettling.
Still, I felt a nervous excitement as I pitched him my most ambitious project yet.
I wanted to bring the outside inside and turn his strangely long living room into a cozy green reading room.
It didn’t make sense for his books to be tucked away in his study and his television to be out on display, so my plan was to switch them.
The rarely used television would go in his study, and his library would go in the living room.
I planned to build my dream shelves all the way across the longest wall.
I wasn’t sure how I would build them but felt confident I could figure it out.
Books would also add warmth and art and texture, which his house still lacked.
And I’d make their colorful spines stand out by painting the shelves and walls the same deep shade of green.
I knew he’d be willing to add some cat-safe plants to enhance the greenness, but I also needed to persuade him to ditch the mini blinds and buy some curtains and rugs.
The room had no softness apart from Edmond’s beds and the couch.
The couch depressed me, too, but I was spending Macon’s money, not mine, and could only encourage him to purchase so many items.
I laid out my plans, expecting him to look weary and overwhelmed. Expecting him to declare that enough was enough. Instead, something rare happened: He perked up.
“So, the room would become sort of a… book forest?”
I brightened, albeit hesitantly. “Or a garden, depending on the sort of rugs and curtains you want. Or if that’s too much, I could help you find those things later. I know all this paint hasn’t been cheap.”
But he waved that off. “I can do rugs and curtains.”
Because he wasn’t much of a consumer, I imagined he had some savings.
I was glad he was willing to spend some of it to enrich his daily life.
He would be happy in this room, and I wanted my friend to be happy.
Complicated feelings aside, I did love being his friend again.
And I suspected that I was his best friend, which felt even better.
We sat at his new table and put together a task list for the living room. When we were finished, he added one more item.
I sighed. “Ridgetop Means Bizness.”
“I loathe the z , too.”
“Macon.”
“I looked into it. Orientation is free. After that, if you’re interested ”—he emphasized this, interrupting my protestations—“it’s six weeks of classes, but only one class per week. And it’s only four hundred dollars, which may or may not be a lot on your budget, but it’s reasonable.”
I pushed away from the table, but he wasn’t deterred. “You don’t even have to sign up for the orientation. You can just show up.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, exiting the room to end the conversation.
But I underestimated his stubbornness. For the rest of the week, he hounded me.
“Orientation is this Saturday,” he said, as I repainted the living room ceiling and he repaired the spidery cracks in the plaster walls.
“You’d have to leave work a few minutes early, but you know Sue won’t mind,” he said, as I pushed a cart through the double doors to empty the outside book drop.
“They’re not going to try to sell you a time-share,” he said, as he helped me put painter’s tape around his windows. He was unknowingly doing his best to make himself less appealing, and it was almost working.
I climbed off his stepladder and set down my roll of tape in defeat.
“Excellent,” he said, and kept taping.