Chapter 8 #2
“Hey!” he calls out. His skin is patchy and red.
His eyes are puffy and bloodshot. For a second, I worry that I didn’t think things through.
What if he’d gone into anaphylaxis? I just assumed it was a minor cat allergy since his own sister had a cat, but…
I didn’t want to kill him. Not even maim him.
I just want him to move away. A spark of remorse lights up the dark side of my mind, illuminating things about myself I’d rather not think about.
No. Black and white is the only filter for this situation. Jack = bad. Penny = good.
“What?” I ask, returning my attention to the wall.
“I’m ready to start taking this thing down if you’re game for the help. Though… You’re making so much progress with your crew.”
He surveys the pathetic patchy damage I’ve done to my side of wall with an evil twinkle in his red eyes, and I mentally take back what I said about maiming.
“Okay.”
“You can be reasonable? Who knew?” He gathers up my wall covering and drapes it over the sofa so that The Hole is exposed, then fetches some tools wrapped in a cloth and a few rolled-up blankets from his bedroom before returning.
I accept them and he steps through, grabbing my broom and waving me away as he sweeps up the debris.
“First thing is setting a tarp or blankets down, or you’re going to destroy my future floors.
Not to mention that it helps keep the dust to a minimum.
Surprised your crew didn’t tell you that. ”
“My crew is made up of a scientist and an actor, so.”
He moves my sofa and stuff out of the way and takes the blankets from me. “We’re going to try and rip this side of the wall down, and then we’ll stab through the lath.” He reads my expression correctly. “That’s this wooden slatting.”
“I know. Avery told me.”
Avery did not tell me.
“All of the walls between apartments on this side of the building probably started as quarter walls that divided two rooms in the same apartment. You can tell because they used different building materials. They drywalled over lath and plaster closer to the front door, and over here in the middle of the room it’s mainly Sheetrock.
Which is why you were able to punch that hole in the wall so easily and kickstart this entire fiasco. ”
I yawn and barely reach up a hand to stifle it. “I don’t need a history lesson. I just want to tear this wall down, rebuild it to code with extra noise-muffling properties—”
“Not helping you with that second part.”
“And then carry on with my life. Find a guy who is the opposite of you in every way, you know, in that he doesn’t make me want to vom-gag. And then I’ll get married, have babies, and with my soundproofed walls, it’ll be like you never existed.”
“Thanks for the play-by-play. It’ll come in handy for the biography I’m writing about you: Moaning into the Void: The Penelope Huff Story.”
“Cool. It can be the companion piece for the self-help book I wrote about your life, Repulsing Women: The Jack Craig Handbook. I’ve already sold the movie rights, too.” I wave my hand so he can picture it in lights.
A glance in the mirror by my door confirms that I look just like I did when I sneaked into his apartment: cheeks flushed, eyes bright.
And it’s not just my appearance that’s impacted.
It’s like my senses are heightened; the colors on my wall hanging are more vibrant, the fire truck siren outside is louder.
He hands me a scraper-like tool, handle first. I grip it, but he doesn’t let go, instead staring into my eyes with a smolder that is part annoyance, part something.
I swallow.
Sparring with Jack sets my pulse racing. With rage, obviously. Nothing more. I yank the tool away from him.
He lifts an eyebrow and then scoops up a second tool before aggressively stabbing one edge of it through the wall.
I follow his lead.
We work side by side, me in my yoga pants and a tank top, him in joggers and a faded green T-shirt.
At one point, I try to squeeze past him but fail to calculate for the sofa at his back.
My breath hitches at the slide of my thigh against his, the heat of his chest against mine.
Stuck between Jack’s body and the wall, I freeze and tip my chin up, my startled eyes meeting his inscrutable ones.
He sets a steadying hand on my hip. I’m enveloped in the crisp, woodsy scent of pine forests and something decidedly Jack.
The intense urge to press my nose against his chest and inhale is mortifying.
You do not like him. Not physically. Not his personality. Not anything. He might not be a cheater, but he’s still a dick. And he doesn’t smell like a pine forest. He smells like cab air freshener.
“Hands off me.” The bite in my tone is jarring even to my own ears.
“Reflex. There is literally nothing I want less than my hands on you.”
“Super! We finally agree on something.” My voice is chipper, but I want to swing my stabby tool at his head.
He grits his teeth as I press on past him. “Next time, go around the sofa,” he says, his voice strained.
I clamp my jaw shut and continue chipping away at the never-ending debris coming out of this wall.
I catch him watching me one or two times after that, though I’m not sure if he’s dissatisfied with my demo technique or if he’s noticed these yoga pants are the most flattering I own.
After his proclamation, it’s probably not the latter.
The light beyond my curtains dims, and the streetlights come out to play, sending our shadows dancing across my apartment floor.
I glance at the time on my phone and yawn reflexively when I see the hour.
It’s contagious, and Jack struggles to contain his own as he hands me a bag for our debris.
It’s a good two hours of bending and grunting before everything is cleaned up.
And then Jack walks through The Hole—no more climbing, since he managed to rip out the wall in that area all the way to the floor—to get his vacuum.
I watch him methodically attack every corner where dust could possibly be hiding.
He even uses the hose and all of the attachments I’ve misplaced for my own vacuum.
There is a serene expression on his face as he works.
“How much of the vacuuming is to piss me off?” I ask.
He powers off the machine, and for a second, I think he didn’t hear me. Finally, he mumbles, “About twenty percent.”
Wow.
“Why?” I don’t need to elaborate. We both know what I’m asking.
“I deal with a lot of messed-up shit at work.”
“What do you do, anyway? Han Solo impersonator?”
“Yes. Looking for a Chewbacca. You game?” He’s squeezed a laugh out of me, and he smirks in return. “Lawyer. Have my own shingle, but do some pro bono work on the side.”
A lawyer donating his time. What the shit? Does. Not. Compute.
“How about you?” he asks.
“I’m in marketing. For a software company. Evadon. You didn’t hear that through the wall already?”
He ignores the jab. “Sued them on an employment matter not too long ago.”
“So you were made to be my Lex Luthor. I don’t follow what about your job makes you vacuum, though.”
“Maybe I lied. Maybe it is just to piss you off.”
I narrow my eyes and glare, wondering if he’s really a lawyer at all.
“By the way, nice illegal fire-escape garden you have out there.” He smiles like the demon spawn he is and pushes his vacuum through The Hole before dragging my sofa back against the wall behind him and letting the sheet fall into place. “Interesting no one’s reported it… Yet.”
“I hate you!” I call out, like a normal person would shout “good night!”
“Feeling’s mutual!”
I take a half step forward, staring at that curtain. I listen to the soft scrape of his vacuum as he drags it across the room, the steady whir as he starts on the floors in his bedroom. It’s a disturbingly long time before I finally walk away.