Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
SEAMUS
I watch Emma go upstairs, grinning at her back. Her figure might be hidden by that coat, but I remember the curve of her hip under my hand and the way her lips moved against mine—demanding and needy. She’s one hell of a woman. I’d probably let her take my wallet too, especially if it meant feeling her slide her hand into my back pocket.
Truth is—I’d like to fuck around and find out.
But I’ve promised myself not to. If I can get Nicole to stand down, I can stay here with my brother and sister—and if I’m going to stay here, the worst thing I could do is take Emma to bed. No good would come of it.
No, that’s not true. I know it would be good. Fucking great. The kind of thing I’d want to repeat. A lot . Worse, I enjoy being around her. I like arguing with her and flirting with her, which are one and the same. If we went there it would be messy as hell, because it would inevitably end in flames. Maybe literally, lit with my own lighter.
Might be worth it , my dick suggests.
But I’m no kid anymore. I’m old enough not to be led around by my dick. So I stand out there in the cold for a couple of minutes to get my shit together.
I breathe in the frigid air, watching the evergreens across the street dance in the wind. Thinking about what’s going on upstairs. Will Emma go in hard or soft?
She’s obviously pleased with our plan. She needed a push, and she got herself a shove. But she wouldn’t want to let her friends and family know that. She wouldn’t want to admit to any vulnerability or weakness.
I get that.
I’m here, aren’t I?
When Nicole let me in on this plan, building on Chuck’s offer of a place to stay, it felt like an answer to a question I’d been afraid to ask.
What comes next?
This, I guess. Living in a new city with an older male roommate who knits and bakes and wants to watch sitcoms with me. Working, temporarily, at Honey Do, an online company someone told me about at a bar a few nights ago. It’s a website where strangers hire people to do chores they either can’t or don’t know how to do themselves. It was laughably easy to get listed with them—all I had to do was provide the license with my fake name.
I figured I could use a filler job until Ellie and the asshole arrive, so I can avoid selling my car. Now that keeping Ingrid is a real possibility, I can’t see my way toward listing her. It puts bitterness in my mouth to think of her sitting around in some rich guy’s expensive garage, tasting the road only once every four months. Even then, she’d be driven cautiously. Furtively. I built her back up from the ashes, and a phoenix of a car like that deserves to be driven.
Someone should give me an award for Most Banal Accomplishments in One Week, because I also have a job lined up for after it’s all over, at a garage in Asheville. City life is more my style, so I figured I’d prefer that to fitting into the handyman/mechanic void in Marshall. It’s boring work, safety inspections and the like, but steady. Easy.
Declan and Rosie know all about Nicole’s scheme for Emma and my part in it. Rosie said she was one hundred percent behind any motivation that would get me to the great state of North Carolina. Declan was more reserved, worried about any attention my involvement might bring our way. He has no need to worry about that, something I’ve wanted to tell him for years, but I can’t explain why . So I settled for telling him that even a camera-happy woman like Ellie could not give a shit about who’s driving her around—drivers are faceless entities who might as well be fused to the car for all the rich passenger cares.
Truth is, I’m glad Nicole gave me a boot to the ass too. I’ve always liked being around other people. The noise of them. The energy. The back and forth of conversation. The buzz of possibility. Will I sleep with her? Will I punch him in the face? Will we be friends? Will she ruin me? When I’m alone, the back and forth is all in my own head—and the only real possibility is that I’m going to fall into melancholy places, the way I was before that lunch with Chuck.
There’s not much chance of that happening here. My roommate wouldn’t give me enough peace and quiet for it to be possible.
Smiling and shaking my head, I finally head back inside.
It comes as no surprise that everyone’s sitting around the dining area. Emma is holding court at the head of the table the way my uncle used to do. My uncle, the crime boss. The comparison makes me grin. Uncle Rory was an asshole—no two ways about it—but he knew how to own a room. So does this woman.
Emma looks like a goddess crowned with fire and rage, her eyes glittering with purpose, her dark hair spilling in inky handfuls around her shoulders. Her nose is a bit pink from the cold still, but she’s taken off the gloves.
Her gaze flies to me, and I salute her as I settle in against the wall, wishing for a cigarette. Or maybe just wishing I could slide my hand into her pocket to get my lighter. I wouldn’t want to pull it out too quickly, though.
Off limits.
I’d been in a mood to forget that at New Year’s, but I’d be forgetting it to my peril now.
Her lips twitch, but she returns to her very serious expression as she pans her gaze around the room with an intensity that makes me grin. “Let’s go through the plan,” she says, and they do.
Emma will be staying at the Grove Park Inn for spa services. Nicole’s job—with an assist from me—is to get Ellie and dickhead out of the way so she can search their room, including whatever they put in the safe. Hopefully, Dickhead’s computer, which he brings everywhere, will be accessible. We’ll go from there.
Here’s the thing: if I’ve learned anything about plans over the last thirty-ish years of my life, it’s this—they never work.
But I know better than to say so. Emma’s fighting someone other than me, and it’s a glorious sight. I’m not going to be the one to fuck it up.
“We need a name for this operation,” Nicole says as the conversation draws to a close. She has chocolate frosting on her upper lip from one of the donuts, and I’m guessing Damien’s going to be in some shit later for failing to fill her in on that little chestnut. There’s a glimmer in his eyes that says he knows it and finds it funny. “Every good operation has a name,” she continues, glancing around at each of us.
“Operation Love Destroyers.” The suggestion was made by Claire’s friend Lainey, who lives next door to her and my brother. From my understanding, she and her boyfriend run a company called The Love Fixers—services offered for the broken-hearted. It seems fitting. Our job will be to break hearts, and theirs will be to mend them.
Chuck frowns and seesaws in his chair. “Well, that’s a tad negative, isn’t it? Can’t we think of a more positive spin?”
Laughter rips out of me. “Never change, Chuck. You’re perfect the way you are, man.”
To my surprise, Mrs. Rosings gives him an assessing look and says, “Why, yes, he is.”
He runs his hands over the buttons of his sweater and beams back at her.
It’s the following Monday, four days before Operation Love Destroyers kicks off with me picking up Ellie and the asshole from Charlotte. Yes, I’ll be driving two hours so I can then drive them two hours. But I don’t mind. I love driving, especially here. Sometimes, I take my girl Ingrid out for a couple of hours onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, enjoying the rhythm of bringing her around the curves and taking in the views of the sloping blue mountains. My sister would argue that your car can’t be your girl, but she’s never known the joy of loving a motor vehicle.
When I’m out there on the winding road, I can understand why Declan and Rosie have found peace in this place, so different from the flat expanse where we grew up. Nowhere to hide out there, in the flat nothing. It feels safer here. More peaceful. Full of possibility, too, like you might turn a sharp corner and find something worth keeping.
My pick-up jobs from Honey Do have been a source of amusement. I’ve had several of them this week, and it’s mostly amounted to running around and doing errands for another man’s woman. If I had a woman, she wouldn’t be texting a stranger over the internet, asking him to fix the sink or carry a couch to the curb. She definitely wouldn’t be watching him sledge a wall, the way I did yesterday for a woman who’d be my mother’s age, if she’d lived. My woman most certainly wouldn’t tell her internet “honey” it was okay if he wanted to take his shirt off because he looked sweaty. Then again, I’ve never met a woman I couldn’t do without, which is the only way I could imagine willingly entering into another relationship.
If you listen to Rosie, she’ll tell you I’ve avoided making real connections, and maybe that’s so. I like to have fun—to have a laugh, a fuck, a ride in a fast car, a night spent drinking or dancing until the early hours—but the weights I carry are my own to bear. I don’t need someone picking at my scabs to find out what’s underneath, or telling me how to fix myself. I don’t need to be steered in the right direction by some well-meaning woman who wants me to make something of myself. I have no hidden desire to become middle management at a convenience store or run my own garage or start a Ponzi scheme. And I definitely don’t want to go the other route, either—the one that ends in blood and bullets and jail. I’m better off in this liminal space. Existing. Doing no harm. Enjoying myself whenever and however I can.
Have I been thinking about Emma over the last couple of months?
Assuredly.
You don’t kiss a woman and run your hand up her barely covered thigh without dreaming about what could have been if you weren’t her sort-of brother-in-law. Doesn’t help that I haven’t had another woman since I kissed her.
If Rosie knew that, she’d make something out of it. Normally, I like having women around. I just…haven’t been in the mood, is all. I was feeling down before I came here, and now I’m in too deep with Nicole’s plan to divide my attention.
Besides, I might be interested in Emma, but she’s the kind of woman who expects plenty of herself and the people around her. Don’t get me wrong, a woman should have high standards.
I appreciate that about her, just so long as it’s not directed at me.
Still, I won’t lie. I tried to text her the other night to ask what her ransom terms were for the flask and lighter, but she still has me blocked.
And, fine, after I figured that out, I picked up a new burner phone so I could reach her if I had a mind to.
It was an unnecessary purchase in more ways than one. In a development that shouldn’t have surprised me, Chuck is a social butterfly. We’ve hosted three dinners since the intervention a week ago. The first guests were Claire and Declan, but the second party was made up of Emma, Mrs. Rosings, Rosie, and Anthony.
Did I slide into the seat next to Emma?
Obviously. She was wearing a green sweater that hugged her tits in a way that made me instantly jealous of a piece of fabric, and a long black skirt with a high slit that I wanted to believe she’d worn for me. And maybe she did, because she made sure to flash my flask at me, a sly grin on her face that did all kinds of things to my willpower.
She ignored me for half of the night, then leaned in during one of Chuck’s stories to ask me if I’d seen any good hatchbacks lately.
I couldn’t help leaning in closer and whispering, “No, but I’ve seen some nice asses.”
I earned the glare I got, and it felt like a tonic for my soul.
Later, when I told the group a story about finding a family of squirrels living in someone’s car, I could see her listening. I felt her, always. Right there next to me. Inches away but not to be touched. It was maddening and glorious at the same time.
When I was finished, she leaned in closer and said in an undertone, “Did you put the squirrels there in the first place?”
I had to grin at her. “That’s between me and the squirrels.”
Then there was another moment…
Chuck served crème br?lée for dessert, after telling us it needed to be our little secret because Claire knew he wasn’t supposed to have cream and sugar, and Mrs. Rosings made a very appreciative sound.
Chuck’s eyes hooked onto her, and she cleared her throat and said, “Why, that was absolutely divine.”
“Maybe we can make some together sometime,” Chuck told her easily, but there was this look in his eyes that said this was different than the one hundred easy offers he made on a daily basis.
“Oh, how dear of you. I’d enjoy that,” she said, and Emma nearly choked on a bite of her own dessert. “Perhaps we could do it at Smith House sometime soon. We’d love to have you over, of course. I can give you a tour of the grounds.”
In an undertone, she whispered to me, “She’s never used her kitchen before. Never .”
“That would be just the thing,” Chuck said, nodding and smiling. “I would love to have a tour of your grounds.”
I grinned at Emma, and she turned her laugh into a pretend coughing fit.
It was a nice moment, a moment I wanted to live in for a while, but my sister pulled me into my room after we cleared the dessert dishes. She said she wanted to see how I’d decorated the space—I hadn’t—and I felt sure she was going to give me some shit for coming on to Emma. I was almost disappointed when she didn’t. Instead, she asked, “Aren’t you staying, Shay? You said you’d probably stay. But…” She waved a hand toward the main room. “None of this is you. The only thing that is you is the Camaro model you built with dad, and some of the pictures on the wall, and Chuck says he’s the one who put those things out.”
She was right. It was his place, not mine. What I didn’t see fit to tell her was that our tiny-ass apartment in New York had been the same way—more hers than mine. I’ve always had the feeling of not wanting to make myself too comfortable. Melting into a place is like melting into a person: dangerous.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, mostly meaning it.
And we went back out to find out Mrs. Rosings and Emma were already gone. Chuck seemed as disappointed about it as I was. He mentioned at least five times what a fine woman Mrs. Rosings is, so I’m not the only one to fall prey to the charms of a beautiful, commanding woman.
“You like her, huh?” I asked.
But he got a worried look and started playing with his wedding ring, so I decided not to press him. He’d get there, but he was a man who needed a lot of time to think things through.
I know he has been, because I saw him googling crème br?lée recipes last night. He’d probably be doing it again this morning if he weren’t checking out some shared working spaces. Even though he’s definitely past the age most people retire, he doesn’t think he can sit idle, a sentiment I understand, so he’s going to do some freelance work.
Chuck’s apartment feels too empty without him around. Cold. Sighing, I kick back on the plaid couch in the front room and pull out my phone, slapping it down on the glass coffee table.
My mind wanders back to what Rosie said. How I haven’t really taken ownership of this space. She’s right, of course. It’s his apartment, and I’m only staying here, although not for lack of effort on his part.
Maybe I don’t like making myself comfortable because of what I did. Maybe I’m worried karma, which skipped over Jeffrey Nichols for months and me for years, is going to come knocking on my door and ask for its pound of flesh…
As if karma hears me and wants to watch me flinch, my phone dings. Shaking my head at my nonsense, I pick it up and check out the notification.
Honey Do
DoItYourself: While I do, usually, prefer to do it myself, I need a wall knocked down. My mother’s friend says you’re the guy to ask.
My lips twitch at the memory of Reba, the older red-haired lady who’d brought out a chair and watched me knock down the wall between her two spare bedrooms—step one in making them an enormous combined room. She’d already hired a company to do the actual construction, but knocking down the wall would have been an extra seven hundred bucks, and I only charged her an hourly rate.
Truthfully, it had felt damn good.
I’ve already gotten two referrals from her—one from a seventy-nine-year-old woman who’d wanted me to move the cans on the bottom shelf of her pantry to the top. Given she was probably five foot one in her stockinged feet, it seemed to me the only reason she wanted me to do it was so she could watch me do it—a theory that was validated when she told me, after the last can was moved, that she’d changed her mind and wanted them put back.
Shaking my head, I write,
Mr.FixIt: Your mother’s friend sounds like a sensible lady. She wouldn’t be Reba, would she?
DoItYourself: That’s the one.
Mr.FixIt: Will you also be asking me to take my shirt off? Because that’s fifty bucks extra.
There’s a pause before she responds…
DoItYourself: If you take your shirt off, I’m macing you. Is that clear?
Laughing, I type back,
Mr.FixIt: Crystal.
She must really want that wall knocked down, because the offer comes through thirty seconds later.
I click through and whistle through my teeth, because what are the fucking odds?
The offer is for a job at Smith House, just outside Marshall.
Unless there are people secretly living inside of the walls, only two people reside at Smith House—Mrs. Rosings and Emma, and Emma’s been on a kick about renovating the house.
I run my finger over my lips. The wise thing would be to warn her it’s me. There’s a decent chance she’d change her mind. We both agreed it’s a bad idea for us to mess around, something we both want to do. Impulse control isn’t easy for me, so the smart thing to do would be to avoid her. Although that’s obviously not possible all the time, this is a situation where it is. Still, I find myself hitting the button that says, “Honey is on the Way!”
Because yes, I would like to sledge a wall for Emma.
Hell, I’d like to do it with her eyes on me, glued to the shirt I will most definitely be wearing, because I’ve been maced before, and it’s not the kind of experience any sane person would repeat.