Chapter 9 #2
I cross my arms. “Obviously, the outside wall is going to dry easier. It’s closer to the heat out there.”
He purses his lips like it’s a valid theory, but his eyes shine with laughter.
I glare at him. “I thought you were here to help.”
He bends to lift the orange machine off the cart. “Tell me what happened.”
“My mom replaced the faucet in here, and when we got home last night, it had fallen off and water was overflowing from the sink.” I decide he doesn’t need to hear about the cabinet hardware falling off. That will only bolster his “the house refuses to change” theory.
“You did a good job of getting the water out.”
My chest puffs a little with pride. “We aren’t sure how to tell if the wood got damp, so she went to get fans.”
“That’s the right plan, but the equipment I have will get it done faster. I’m going to get a few more of these out of the truck. Call your mom and tell her she can forget the fans.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.” As much as I want to keep giving him a hard time, he didn’t have to come over here on a Friday morning to help us out. He barely even knows me.
I do, however, follow him to the door while I text my mother, to make sure he’s not getting in any impromptu ghost hunting on his way out.
An hour later, Theo and I are sitting in a booth at Nobody Puts Pancakes in a Corner, a diner on the edge of Harlow’s Rest.
It was way too hot in the house to wait around for the industrial humidifiers to do their job, and Mom headed to her office at the college, so rather than wander the town alone on foot, I accepted Theo’s offer to grab breakfast.
Now we’re staring at each other over plates of delicious-smelling food. My buttermilk pancakes are smothered with ripe, vibrant berries from a local farm, and the eggs are, according to the menu, courtesy of Mrs. Cluckers, Camilla, Gouda, and the rest of the diner owner’s flock of chickens.
I pop the bright yellow yolk at the center of the fried egg, then cut the white into pieces to eat. “This place is bonkers,” I say, glancing around us.
“The owner harbors a deep obsession with Dirty Dancing,” Theo points out.
He’s not kidding. The entire interior is modeled like the banquet hall from the climactic scene in the movie with the big dance number.
Small circular tables with white tablecloths and votive candles are arranged in the middle of the room, facing a trellis-laden stage at the back with flatscreens that play clips from the original and the prequel over and over.
Decorative paintings of landscapes hang on the walls and green plants crouch in every empty corner.
The only things out of place are the booths that line the walls by the windows, but even they kind of work.
Like we’re part of the audience or something.
“Does the staff dance too?” I joke.
“Only during the weekend dinner services.” His face makes it clear he’s not kidding. I will absolutely need to come back here for that.
I saw into my pancakes. “Thanks for your help today. Mom and I would have figured it out.” I don’t know why, but it’s important to me to clarify that.
We aren’t damsels in distress. “But cutting out some of the time waiting for everything to fully dry is a godsend. I’d really love to have a livable house before I graduate from college.
All this mess just keeps reminding me of what we left behind. ”
My cheeks flushing, I shove a bite of pancake in my mouth to shut myself up. My brain seems to misfire every time I’m around Theo, and instead of clamming up, I start verbally hemorrhaging.
He grimaces. “That’s got to suck. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I couldn’t imagine my dad suddenly dragging me away from all of it.”
“Well, my parents got divorced and my father pretty much forced us out of the house so he could sell it.” I’m a veritable TMI vending machine.
Theo swears.
“My feelings exactly.” I don’t buy my mother’s claim that selling the house and moving immediately was her idea. I give Theo a small, sarcastic grin. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m trauma dumping on you.”
“I have one of those faces,” he jokes. “My brother tells me I should become a priest because everyone wants to confess to me.”
He does have a really open, kind face.
And those moss-colored eyes are always so sunny. They draw you right in.
When I don’t respond, he goes on. “Here, I’ll go. My dad is forcing me into a career I’ve told him a million times I don’t want.” He shovels a heaping forkful of chocolate chip pancakes into his smiling mouth. “Now we’ve both trauma dumped,” he says around the bite.
“Your family’s construction business?” I ask.
He nods. “It’s been the family business for like four generations now, and my dad was an only child, so he’s determined that my brother and I keep it going.” His already downturned mouth dips into a deeper frown.
It feels like we’re commiserating now, so I add another complaint. “My best friend, Taylor, and I were supposed to go on this epic taco adventure, and now I am stuck here in the land of the lobster roll.” I sigh.
“Okay. That really sucks. You win.” He raises his hands in surrender.
We both laugh, and it feels like a little bit of the heaviness of the past few weeks seeps out of my chest. It was honestly nice to let this out to someone who’s not also affected by it.
Every time I complain to Mom, I feel like a jerk because she’s going through it too.
And Taylor lost me as much as I lost her.
I pop a strawberry in my mouth. “So anyway, yeah, getting the house done fast would be nice.”
Theo watches me for a moment, then his eyes narrow. The way his whole face screams I have an idea!, I kind of expect a lightbulb to appear above his head. “What if I can get my dad and brother to help?”
“I’m sure they’re super busy.”
He shakes his head of messy waves. “I do their schedule. Things are slow right now. We only have two clients and we’re waiting on both to make décor selections.”
Getting professional help would speed things along. And lead to fewer wet kitchens. “I have to check with my mom, make sure we could pay you and all that.”
“Obviously. I’ll give you my number and you can text me after you talk to her. Tell her you’ll get the friends-and-family discount. It’s a pretty reasonable rate.”
I laugh. “Friends, huh? We’ve known each other for two seconds, and I’ve spent half that time proving you wrong.”
“Trying to,” he says with a wink.
Sighing, I wring my hands in my lap. They could help with the upstairs too. His dad might have ideas for how to make the space flow best if it is going to be my quasi-apartment.
I want to say yes so badly, but…“Why are you doing this?” Like every other thing I’ve said since we sat down in this booth, the words take on a life of their own and are out of my mouth before I’m sure I want to say them.
Theo’s lips break into a big grin.
Up go all my internal alarms. Red alert. Red alert. Danger. “What?” I demand.
“I want to investigate the inside of that house.”
Of course he does. I should have seen this coming. Asking didn’t work out for him, so now he’s trying to barter. Or extort me. (Is it extortion to dangle something really, really helpful over someone’s head until they give you what you want?)
I lean across the table like we’re corporate lawyers in a serious negotiation.
We’ll just pretend I don’t have a big drip of syrup on my shirt, and that there isn’t a tiny spot of chocolate chip debris at the corner of Theo’s mouth.
“Don’t you work for your dad? Won’t you have to help with the renovations? ”
He angles toward me. “I want to come back after hours.”
Our noses are like four inches apart and I can feel his breath warm on my face. I don’t think I’ve been this close to anyone but my mother and Taylor, and for a second I panic that he can see how wildly my heart is thumping in my chest.
When his eyes dip for the quickest second to my lips, my brain explodes, and I jerk back against the booth. It’s only then that I can admit to myself that I was staring at his mouth too. And not because of the chocolate smear.
Because I was wondering what it would feel like on mine.
This cannot be happening. My first kiss is not going to be with a ghost-believer.
Clearing my throat, I force myself to focus. “I suppose that’s better than you breaking and entering.”
His mouth falls open. “I was not going to break in. I thought the place was abandoned.”
“That’s still breaking in.”
“But I wouldn’t have broken anything.”
“I guess we’ll never know now.” He’s so completely offended that I can’t stop laughing.
Clearly, Theo is a rule-follower, one of those people who can’t even jaywalk without feeling guilty, and here I am insisting he was trying to commit a felony.
His expression is more delicious than my pancakes.
“Okay, fine. If you can get your dad and his crew to finish the house with the discount, I will allow you a few hours of ghost hunting.”
He sits back, smug satisfaction on his boyish face. “There’s one more thing.”
“Oh?” I match his casual pose.
“You have to help me.”
“Help you prove the house isn’t haunted?” I smile as I stake another bite of pancakes and shove it in my mouth. Once I’ve chewed and swallowed, I look him straight in the eye.
“It’s a deal.”