25. Sutton
Sutton
The smell of fresh paint hits me before I even reach the door. I linger in the doorway, letting the hum of nail guns wash over me. The house is a hive of activity today, which feels like a godsend because it means the remodel is almost finished.
“Hey, girl,” Greer’s voice calls from the kitchen. She’s in the middle of pouring paint into a tray, her hair pulled back and tucked beneath a ball cap. “Hunter said it was okay to start without you.”
Aside from our nights wrapped in each other, Hunter and I have barely spent any time together. He’s been busy at work. I’ve been trying to salvage the open house and find someone to fix our roof.
After calling every company in town, I caved and placed an SOS call to Easton. Thankfully, a buddy of his owns a roofing company in the next town over and, by the grace of all things holy, had an opening.
I step into the kitchen. The soft gray-green color in the tray catches my eye immediately. “Where did this color come from?” Slight panic rises in my voice. I know there were a million cans of paint in the garage, but I definitely do not remember picking this color.
“It’s all good.” Greer holds her hands up in surrender. “Hunter gave it to me.”
“He did? But how?” I’d meant to get to the paint store over the weekend, but Hunter and I decided to stay in all weekend. And then the week got away from me.
“I’d take a guess that Jim at Paint Land helped him pick one out of the millions you’ve got samples of.” Navy slips past me and into the kitchen.
“Thank you for that,” I say sarcastically. “But seriously, I didn’t pick this color.”
“So what?” Navy tosses a to-go container of coffee and a pan of muffins onto the kitchen island. “It’s a great color.”
“Yeah, but it’s not in the right tonal family as the rest of the color palette.”
“I don’t even know what that means.” Greer rolls her eyes and slaps the roller against the wall. “And what does it matter? It looks fantastic against the wood tones in this room.”
I step further into the kitchen, spinning a slow circle, and take in the kitchen. Greer might be on to something. I’d not imagined a color so green, but against the wood of the newly stained floors and the cabinets it’s much more muted than in the tray. It even makes the brass hardware pop.
“Go with it, woman,” Navy says with a mouth full of muffin. “It’s just paint. Not the end of the world. Hunter has a pretty good eye.”
“You’re right. He does.” I sigh.
Let go.
Hunter’s words float through my mind and all at once, I let the tight coil of trying to make everything “right” go.
Navy takes a bit of muffin. “Have you slept off all that Hunter-induced adrenaline yet?”
I laugh. “Getting there.” Greer and Navy don’t need to know that we’ve been making up for lost time and can hardly take our hands off each other. Not that I mind making up for lost time. Not one bit.
“How did your date go, Navy?” Greer asks. “What was his name again? Tim? Tom? Something with a T.”
“Wait, you had another date?” I ask.
Greer almost has the entire kitchen painted, so instead of getting in her way, I join Navy and grab one of her new muffin concoctions, the top coated in sparkling crystals of sugar. I take a massive bite from the top, groaning at the warmth and whatever magic she apparently baked into it this time.
Navy stares in horror. “Someday you’ll learn to savor food.”
I shrug and take another huge bite.
“You’re impossible,” Navy says. “But to answer your question, I did. And his name is Theo.” She passes me a mug of steaming coffee with the perfect amount of creamer. I’m not sure who I pleased in my last life, but having a best friend who’s a coffee expert is a dream come true.
“Okay?” Greer and I say at the same time.
“That about sums it up,” Navy says. “We went bowling.”
“Bowling?” I snort and end up choking on a morsel of muffin. I gulp down some water.
Greer laughs and moves to the far area of the dining room. I’m not sure where she learned to paint this well and this fast, but maybe I should hire her for future projects.
“Yeah, yeah,” Navy says. “Laugh it up.”
“You hate bowling,” I say.
Navy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, not all of us are lucky enough to have a best friend to fall in love with, and some of us have to do dumb shit in hopes of meeting a man.”
“But you hate bowling,” I say. “In fact, you hate most sport-like hobbies except one.”
Navy shrugs, grabs an edging brush, and trims around the countertops. “Theo didn’t know that, now did he? And I’m trying out the whole Don’t crush a man’s spirit on date one thing. You know, be more dateable.”
Greer snorts. “You’re already dateable. But it is a good thing he didn’t take you to putt-putt.”
“I would have annihilated him,” Navy says, dead serious. “I don’t play mini golf for fun. I play to win.”
We all laugh, the kind of laugh that soothes the frazzled pieces inside me. Maybe it’s the paint fumes. Or the sugar. Or the fact that, for the first time all week, I feel okay going with the flow.
“Are you going to see him again?” Greer asks.
“Maybe.” Navy drags the brush along the cabinet’s edge. “He’s very sweet. He listened. Asked questions that didn’t make me want to jump off a bridge. I know, the bar is very low.”
I nod approvingly. “Listening is a green flag.”
“So is being hot,” Navy says, “which Theo definitely is.”
Greer laughs. “What you’re saying is the date wasn’t a disaster. That sounds promising.”
“It was fine. Nothing earth-shattering,” Navy says, and points her brush at me. “Enough about my lame love life. How are you?”
I lift a brow. “How am I what?”
Navy gives me a look that makes me want to shrivel up and hide in a corner. Woman could earn a medal for her death glare. Greer pauses her painting too, like she’s waiting for my answer.
Oh. That.
“I’m good,” I say honestly. “Better than good actually.”
Greer softens. “You seem different.”
“I do? Different how?”
Navy hums.
“What’s that hmm supposed to mean?” I point my death glare at her this time.
“Please,” Navy says. “You’re literally glowing these days.”
I roll my eyes, but it’s useless. The warmth in my chest betrays me. “Am I really?”
“Yup,” Greer nods. “You seem lighter. Like you’re not holding everything together by sheer force of will.”
I’m about to argue, but something stops me. Maybe it’s the color of paint—one I wouldn’t have chosen. Maybe it’s knowing Hunter trusts me enough to let me make his house ours. Or maybe it’s the way he looks at me, like I’m what his world spins around.
“Being with Hunter is very different than I imagined,” I say. “He very much likes to be in charge, and, spoiler alert, I like it when he is. When I’m with him, I can just be. It’s also out of my comfort zone, so I’m still in the new stage.”
Greer smiles in that quiet way she has, both gentle and encouraging. “New is good.”
“Yeah,” I say, letting the weight of that truth settle. “It is.”
For a while, the only sounds are rollers sliding over walls, the thuds from feet on the roof, and Navy humming off-key to whatever playlist she’s put on. I realize with sudden clarity this is what people mean when they say I needed this.
“Ladies,” Hunter says, coming around the corner, startling me. “How’s it going?”
“I didn’t know you were here,” I say. “Where’s your truck?”
He bends down and kisses my temple. “Around back.”
That immediately piques my interest. He’s been very sneaky lately, refusing to allow me to open any of the curtains facing the rear of the house. He said he wanted to be in charge of the backyard, but I figured he’d at least want some input from me. Turns out, he doesn’t.
“You check out the guest bedroom yet?” he asks. “It looks pretty good now that we’ve put things back together.”
“You finished? How? I thought you were working today.”
“Not going in until later, and yes, I did finish,” he says. “I’m very productive when my girlfriend doesn’t stay the night.”
Navy and Greer devolve into a fit of giggles. They whisper, “Told you.” My belly pulses with a mixture of embarrassment and desire. I widen my eyes in his direction. He pretends to zip his lips.
“Put those brushes down,” he tells the girls. “Let’s see if things measure up to a pro’s standards.”
We follow one by one up the stairs and pause outside the door. Hunter turns the handle.
“I know this might not have been the exact vision you had for this room, but . . .” He shifts his feet in a nervous way and opens the door.
A dark-colored floral pattern covers the back wall.
The adjoining walls are a complementary shade of a blackish-gray.
There’s a drafting desk in front of the large window, a wall of empty bookshelves, and a cozy lounge chair.
It’s deeply romantic and serene, with mid-morning sun casting the room in a dreamy haze.
Greer gasps at the same time Navy mutters, “Holy shit.”
Hunter smiles and looks expectantly at me. I step inside, completely in awe at the transformed space. Gone is the damaged drywall. Gone are the beige walls. Gone is the bed I’d use when I stayed over.
“Hunter,” I say, “ I can’t believe you did this.”
“Someday, this house will be ours. Figured you could use an office.” He snakes his hands around my waist and pulls me flush against the hard planes of his body.
The closeness makes my pulse spike. “And lucky for me, I saw the designs you had for a home office planned out in one of your sketchbooks, but I might have deviated with the color palette.”
I stand on tiptoes and press my mouth to his. It’s slow and sweet at first, but quickly deepens into something more.
Navy clears her throat. “You know we’re still here, right?”
Hunter pulls his lips from mine. His chocolate-colored eyes burn with desire. He leans down, about to kiss me again, but suddenly pulls away. My pulse beats a wild rhythm. “Later.” His tone indicates exactly what I can expect later.
“Sutton?” Greer’s voice is muffled from standing half in and half out of the closet.
I bite my lip, smiling at Hunter. “Yeah?”
“Is there a reason you have a stockpile of throw pillows?”
Confused, I break from Hunter and join her. Sure enough, the closet is overflowing with throw pillows in various sizes, hues, and patterns.
“I have no memory of these.” I start laughing immediately, the sound bouncing off the walls as I rummage through the ridiculous amount of pillows. Every time I think I’ve reached the end, there’s another shoved behind it. By the time I pull out the seventh pillow, tears are streaming down my face.
“Good lord, girl.” Navy peers over my shoulder. “This is what we call an addiction.” She grabs a pillow and whaps Hunter on the arm with it.
“Hey, now.” He grabs a rather large pillow and chucks it at her head. Unfortunately, Greer gets caught in the cross fire and goes down in a heap. Thankfully, it’s a soft landing.
Within moments, the three of them are chucking pillows back and forth.
Navy grunts when one smashes into her stomach.
Greer sneak-attacks and hits Hunter on the back.
I step back to survey my collection again, and—I hate to admit it—this might actually border on hoarding.
Hunter has said I have a problem with throw pillows, but I guess I truly needed to see it to believe it.
I lean my hip against the empty bookshelf, a bright yellow pillow held against my chest, watching them fill this room with laughter and life, and something inside me melts.
Who cares if the paint color wasn’t what I chose?
Who cares that we had a setback with the guest room?
Who cares about roofs or caterers?
Who cares that these three goofballs are destroying the structural integrity of brand-new throw pillows?
This messy, loud, imperfect moment is what I want every day of forever to feel like. I raise my yellow pillow and toss it.