Chapter 2
Ididn’t sleep that night, and not for any of the reasons a normal person doesn’t sleep after winning a free vacation.
I lay in bed and did math.
The Hargrove job was three weeks behind because of a drywall situation, which meant the framing inspection would slip, which meant the electrician would have to be rescheduled.
Everyone knew Dave the electrician held grudges the way other men held mortgages, for thirty years and with interest. If I lost my slot with Dave, I lost two weeks minimum.
If I took a week off on top of that, I was looking at a month.
A month was the kind of delay that turned a happy client into a bad online review.
So by the time the sun came up, I’d already decided.
I’d give the prize to Finn. He could take whatever poor soul he was currently failing to date, lie on a beach, and send me a postcard I’d pin to the trailer wall and resent quietly.
I told him this at seven-forty the next morning, on the Hargrove site, over the whine of a saw.
“No,” Finn said.
“It’s a good plan,” I countered, slowly turning to face his glare.
“It’s a coward’s plan dressed up as a generous one, which is somehow worse.
” He’d brought me a coffee. I should’ve recognized that as a tactical maneuver, because Finn only brought coffee when he wanted something.
A rebellious lock of red hair had fallen across his forehead.
He shoved it back with the heel of his hand without breaking eye contact.
“You won it. Your number, your night. The universe finally did you a kindness, and your first instinct is to hand it off like a hot scone.”
“You’re the one who wants a vacation,” I said. “Besides, I don’t eat scones.”
He harrumphed. “I want you to have a vacation. For the love of God, I need you to have a vacation. Everyone who knows you does.” He leaned against my truck, far too comfortable for a man standing on an active job site in canvas shoes. “When’s the trip even for?”
I didn’t answer.
“Mark.”
“I haven’t looked at the dates.”
“You haven’t looked at the dates?” He repeated it slowly, the way Ineeda Phalis had repeated everything I’d said the night before, as though each word was a small gift I kept handing him without realizing it. “You won a free week in paradise and you haven’t so much as opened the envelope?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve been awake doing sums about drywall.” He was right, which was infuriating, and he knew he was right, which made it worse. “Give me the envelope.”
“It’s in the truck.”
“Give me the envelope, Mark.”
I shoved him aside, stuck my body halfway through the open window, and retrieved the unopened envelope from the passenger’s seat where I’d tossed it the night before.
He snatched it out of my hand and tore into it with the enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas, unfolding the glossy packet inside and scanning it while I pretended to care about a stack of two-by-fours.
“Oh, this is gorgeous,” he said after a moment.
“This is genuinely gorgeous. Look at the water on it. It’s the color of mouthwash.
Flights included, transfers included, all your meals, all your drinks.
” He flipped a page, and his eyebrows rose.
“And here’s the kicker: it’s open-ended.
You can book any week you like over the next three months.
Three months, Mark. There goes every excuse you were about to manufacture, because somewhere in the next quarter year there is one single week where the world will survive without you. ”
That landed differently than he expected, I think, because I didn’t argue.
The three-month window was both a problem and a gift.
There was no good week in it, but there was no bad week I could point at either.
There were no inspections or clients or crises I could hold up as a shield, because whatever I named, he’d just tell me to pick a different week.
The open-ended date didn’t give me room; it took away the wall I usually braced myself against.
It also gave me a deadline.
I have never in my life missed a deadline.
“You’re quiet,” Finn said, his eyes narrowing.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s never a good thing. You’re thinking quietly makes me nervous. Think out loud so I can supervise.”
I turned from the boards I’d been pretending to inspect and looked at him properly.
At six-three and somewhere north of two hundred and forty pounds, I tended to do a fair bit of looking down at people.
Most stepped back. Finn never had. He was a narrow, freckled thing a full head shorter than me.
From the first week we’d known each other, he’d squared up to me like we were the same size, which was probably the entire reason we’d lasted as friends.
“You’d come as what?” I said. “A chaperone?”
“More like a safety blanket . . . or a human off switch. Call it whatever lets your pride survive the trip.” He grinned.
“And I get a free holiday out of it, which I’ll not pretend I’m above.
I’ve been bartending at that miserable chain for too long, and the closest I’ve come to the sea is the lobster tank by the hostess stand.
I’ve earned a glimpse at a beach through all my suffering. ”
“It’s not a sad solo thing if you’re there,” I said, mostly to myself, testing the shape of it.
“It’s not a sad anything if I’m there. It’s two mates on a beach, which is a normal thing that normal people do.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder, or as near to it as he could reach without a running start. “You’re not booking a tragedy. You’re booking a Tuesday that happens to be tropical.”
I should explain something about how I’m built, because otherwise none of what came next will make much sense.
I’m not a man who relaxes. I’ve never been able to point to the use in it.
My father worked himself into an early grave laying tile across three counties.
The lesson I took from that, fairly or not, was that work was the thing.
It’s not a thing. It’s the thing. Work was the proof you existed, and everything else was what you did with scraps of free time.
I started Delgado Construction with a borrowed truck and a reputation for showing up.
I’d spent every year since making sure nobody could ever say I didn’t.
I showed up so hard there was nothing left of me to be anywhere else.
So, if you’ve ever wondered why a friendly enough man in his late thirties spent most Friday nights with exactly one friend, that’s most of your answer right there.
The rest of the answer is that I’m big and have a beard going salt-and-pepper while the rest of me insists it’s still young.
Men take one look at my size and the gray in my beard and decide I’m older and meaner than I really am.
By the time they figure out I’m neither, they’re usually already with someone smaller and less alarming.
The guys who liked a strong, brooding type were either too freaky or too flighty for my taste. At least, that had been my limited experience. The good guys, like Finn, wanted . . . well, they wanted something else—someone else.
Over the years, I’d made a sort of peace with it all.
Work didn’t care what my face did to people.
Work just wanted me there at seven.
“You planned this,” I said.
“I bought a raffle ticket for charity. You won. That’s not a plan; that’s grace.”
“You sat me in the front row.”
“That was a plan,” he admitted cheerfully. “But the winning was all you. Even I can’t rig a fishbowl.”
I took the coffee from him on principle, since it was mine, drank some, and looked out at the half-framed house I was three weeks behind on.
Three months.
Somewhere in there, I could find one week.
Reyes, my number two, could hold the site together for five days. He’d done it before. The world wouldn’t end. Work would be there when I got back. It was always, eternally, going to be there when I got back.
“Fine,” I said. “Book it.”
Finn went very still again, the way a man does when he’s afraid that moving will spook the thing he’s just caught.
“Say that again.”
“Don’t make me regret this.”
“Say it again, slowly, so I can frame it.” He had the glossy packet clutched to his chest now like I might wrestle it away from him. “You’re letting me book a holiday for the both of us.”
“I’m letting you book a holiday before I come to my senses, which gives you about four minutes.”
And that was all he needed.
Finn was already whipping out his phone, thumbs flying, narrating as he went. “Right. I’ll book it tonight. You’ll touch none of it. The one thing you’re allowed to do is turn up at the airport with a bag that does not contain a laptop. Can you manage that?”
“I can manage the airport.”
“The bag, Mark. The no-laptop part of the bag. That’s important.”
“I heard you.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I’m not saying it.” I crossed my arms.
“Say, ‘I will not bring my laptop, Finn, light of my life, the only man who’s ever loved me enough to embarrass me in front of two hundred strangers.’”
“I’m leaving now.”
“You work here. You can’t leave. It’s your site.
” He was laughing again, that big, unbothered, happy laugh only an Irishman could produce, the one that always seemed too large for his narrow frame.
“We’re going on holiday. You’re going to hate every minute of it for about a day and a half.
Then something in you is going to crack open, and you’re going to thank me.
I’m going to be unbearable about it, and it’ll be the best week of your life. ”
I told him not to get ahead of himself.
I told him it was five days, not a personality transplant, and that he shouldn’t expect miracles from a man who saved screws in a coffee can.
I told him a lot of things while standing on that job site with the saw whining behind me and the coffee going cold in my hand.
Every single one of them turned out to be wrong because Finn booked the trip that night, and he never read the fine print.
Neither of us did. We saw “all-inclusive” and “tropical” and “worth more than both our cars combined,” and we never scrolled down to the part that would’ve told us exactly what kind of resort a travel company donates to a charity drag show.
In fairness to us both, the brochure photos were very tasteful.
Everyone in them was wearing clothes.