14. Repairs and Measurements #2
He looks at me. “You’re not an idiot. This floor was a time bomb. No one could have known when it was going to go.”
“I know, but I knew it was soft.”
“You had seventeen other things to worry about. You work part-time.”
“Worked. I worked part-time. I got let go three days ago. Tommy needed me full-time, and I couldn’t, so he hired Dunkin.”
“Ah, but you still take care of your ranch, your dad’s, and you’re restoring one of the oldest houses in Everwood. I’ve seen your list.” He picks up the pry bar. “Nobody gets to all of it.”
We pull the vinyl in strips, which is satisfying, as removing something ugly always is. Underneath is the rest of the damage. Pine boards darkened with age and moisture, soft in a radius around the vanity. Bo presses the edges and calls out which sections need to go. I mark them with chalk.
Then he hands me the measuring tape.
“Can you measure four feet from the wall?” he says.
I take the tape, walk it out, and flip it so the numbers face away from him.
“Four feet,” I announce.
He squints at the tape. “I can’t read that.”
“I can read it.”
“Falon.”
“It says four feet. I’m telling you it says four feet.”
He gives me a look that is trying very hard to be stern and not quite getting there. “Turn the tape around.”
“I don’t see why that’s necessary.”
“Because I need to verify?—”
“I’m the one holding it. I’m verifying on your behalf.”
He reaches for the tape. I pull it back. He reaches again, and I step sideways, and then somehow we’re both holding it, laughing, and he gets it turned around and reads it himself with exaggerated focus.
“Four feet,” he says flatly.
“That’s what I said.”
He points at the corner. “Go get your pencil.”
“I have my pencil.”
“Then go use it over there.”
“You’re sending me to the corner?”
“Yes, I’m sending you to the corner.” He makes a small shooing motion and laughs. “Go. Mark over there.”
I go, mostly because I’m laughing too hard to argue. When I look back, he’s shaking his head, but his shoulders are moving.
We get into a rhythm after that. I handle the chalk lines, and he manages the cuts, and somewhere in the middle of it, we stop being polite, and things go back to how they were before the tension, before the exaggerated manners and careful housemates, and back to the playful friends we once were.
He leans across me to check a joist near the vanity wall, one hand bracing close to mine on the floor, his arm brushing my shoulder on the way. I go very still and try to focus on the joists. He checks the joist, and when he straightens, there’s a glint in his eyes that tells me he is not fooled.
He’s teasing me. A part of me is almost miffed. I’ve tried to play it careful and cool, not to push, but now that I know what he’s doing, I wonder if I could tease too.
Twenty minutes later, I’m backing up to measure the space between the joists when the cord of the drill catches my heel. I’m balancing on the edge of a two-by-four when I trip.
I fly backward, and Bo catches me around my waist. I end up with my back against his chest, his arms around me, both of us completely frozen before I belt out a laugh so hard I’m wheezing, and then laugh even harder when I accidentally snort.
“You’re a disaster, you know that?” Bo asks, holding me to keep me from rolling on the floor. “I don’t remember you being like this.”
“You and Tyler were in a world of your own. Besides, how would you know? You were dating a new girl every fifteen minutes.” Bo goes still for a moment, then changes the subject, and I instantly regret saying it. It was supposed to be a little funny, but it bothered him nonetheless.
“You okay?” he asks. Low. Close to my ear.
“Yes. Fine, thanks,” I say, catching my breath. “Tripped.”
“I see that.”
I should step forward. I’m aware of this. I stay exactly where I am and tip my head back slightly instead, and I feel him exhale.
“Falon.” His arms are still around me. His voice deepens.
“Yeah?” I hear an intake of breath, like he’s going to say something.
Instead, his arms tighten, just for a second, and then he says, “You’re making this really hard.”
The words land softly but seriously. And just like that, I can hear the war within him. Want and discipline are battling for control. I turn in his arms, slowly, and look up at him.
Something moves through his expression. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
I hold his gaze. “I think I do.” I pause. “More than you know.” I could tell he was running through his head, dusting off files and moments we’ve shared over the last few months.
Bo’s jaw tightens. He looks at me for a long moment. I can see he is trying to figure out what I mean, and then he steps back. His hands drop from my waist slowly.
He hands me the measuring tape. “Measure the far wall.” I shake my head.
“Tell me about the promise.” I counter by keeping my emotions in check. Oh, I was angry, but I was mostly upset that he was choosing a promise to Tyler over me. Was brotherhood really more important than love? Than me?
There was a long pause. His eyes soften, and pain and worry fill them.
“It’s not what you think,” he forces out.
“Oh, really? Because to me, it sounded like you made a deal with my brother that you would never date me, and to add insult to injury, you also agreed to come here and babysit me.”
“I never agreed to babysit you,” he tries to say, but I talk over him.
“Okay, let’s start there. If you aren’t here to babysit me, then why did you agree when Tyler called you?”
“I was already here when Tyler called, and I never said I’d babysit you.
You are very capable of taking care of yourself, but Tyler did ask me to watch you,” I open my mouth to argue back, but he keeps talking, placing a finger to my mouth.
“I agreed to keep you and Kevin in my sight. Tyler didn’t trust Kevin and just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he rushes out before I could try to interrupt again.
“Tyler is doing what any brother would do, and that’s to watch out for his sister,” Bo says, looking down, then dropping his finger.
“And I would do the same, even if Tyler didn’t ask me.
You mean too much to me for a leech like Kevin to do something stupid.
I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t look out for you. ”
“Then, if I meant so much to you, why did you tell Tyler you wouldn’t touch or date me? I guess I don’t mean that much to you,” I say in a whisper.
Bo stops flipping the pencil in his hands, a nervous habit, and steps so close I can almost feel the heat come off him.
“I was seventeen. I’d already lost my parents and didn’t want to lose Tyler.
He was a brother to me. You were only fourteen at the time.
You were so beautiful and amazing. I’d fallen in love with you the moment I saw you punch Cindy Walch in the jaw for talking about me behind my back.
You had always been Tyler’s little sister, a rare and exciting woman who kept Tyler and me on our toes.
You broke the rules, and you were unlike any girl I’d ever met.
Until Tyler saw me looking at you at the lake on the Fourth of July. He made me promise that summer.”
As he speaks, I can see his control rise and fade. His hands reach out to touch me on more than one occasion, but he fists his hands and lets them fall. Rowdy had moved into the bathroom and was now standing right next to Bo, his head nudging his thigh.
“You have always been everything I’ve always wanted, and because I value Tyler and his friendship, I know that I can’t have the one thing I want.” His jaw tightens.
I watch him and see the frustration and pain in his eyes. I am dumbfounded. When I brought up the promise, I was so angry. Instead of denying it, as I’d expected, he owned it. I can’t lie and say I’m not hurt; I am, but maybe not angry.
“You aren’t seventeen, and I’m not fourteen anymore.
Time and things change. I know you, my parents, Tyler, and the town see me as Tyler’s little sister, but do you not see the woman standing in front of you?
Do you not see that I am more than just Tyler’s little sister?
” My breathing shakes, but I keep going.
“I can’t believe that I was naive enough to think that one day, you would see me for me. I have loved you since I was twelve, when you defended me at the rodeo. I have watched you flit from girl to girl and wondered when it would be my turn. If you would ever see me, as you saw them.”
I start to cry now, and the tears stream down my face. I wasn’t a crier in general. I didn’t cry when I needed thirteen stitches in my leg, I didn’t cry when Oliver Perkins slapped me across the face, but while pouring my heart out to Bo for ten seconds, I am a blubbering idiot.
Bo reaches out and wipes at my tears. I bat his fingers away and used the back of my hand to swipe at my betraying tears.
“I wish I could say that I was angry with you or even felt lied to. But I’m hurt that you didn’t choose me.”
“Falon, please,” Bo reaches out and pulls me into a hug, his chest heaving as he holds me close. I can feel my tears soak his shirt as I cry like those girls I swore I wasn’t.
“Falon, I would choose you over anything.” I close my eyes and let out another sob.
“Even Veronica Eden?” I ask, knowing he’d dated her the longest in high school.
I feel his chest rumble as he chuckles. “Even Veronica Eden,” he said, kissing the top of my head, making my heart melt, and the tears stop for a second. “Besides, I only dated all those other girls because they weren’t you. And if I couldn’t have the real thing, then I didn’t want anything close.”
I pull away from him and wipe at my eyes. “Does this mean we can’t date now?” I ask, feeling my heart hammer in my chest. If he says yes, I am going to push him through the floor and fix it myself.
“No, it just means that I still need that measurement for the far wall,” he says, pulling away and placing a measuring tape back in my hand.
I playfully scowl at him. “Not fair,” I say. “That wasn’t an answer.” I stare at him, then stick my tongue out at him.
“The far wall,” he says. His voice comes out rough at the edges.
I pick up the tape measure. “Are you sending me to the corner again?”
“Yes. It’s the only place you’re safe from yourself.”
I go, laughing on the outside. But inside, I’m a train wreck.
We fit the new subfloor in sections, and the work falls back into rhythm, but a little quieter. My leg throbs steadily, and my mind is still preoccupied.
He calls out another measurement, and since my notepad is across the room, I write the number on my palm and finish my task.
He sees it and stops, resting his hands on his knees.
“What was that measurement?” he asks, measuring a two-by-four for another cut. I look down at my hand and call out four and five-eighths.
Bo pauses and narrows his eyes at me.
“What?”
“Did you write that on your hand?”
“Yes, the notepad is next to you, and I was busy, so I wrote it down on the next best thing.” I didn’t see any problem with this. If he thought this was bad, it was a good thing he wasn’t here when I hung the new cupboards in the laundry room.
“You use your hand to write down measurements.”
“It’s actually not a bad idea. It goes where I go. Very convenient.” I hold my palm up. “Four and five-eighths. Read it yourself.”
He crosses the bathroom, takes my hand, and tilts it toward the light. His thumb rests against the inside of my wrist while he reads the numbers, and my pulse jumps.
“Four and five-eighths,” he confirms. Then, slowly, his thumb rubs across the numbers.
They smear.
“This is why you don’t write it on your hand.”
“It wouldn’t have smeared if you didn’t rub it.”
He releases my hand, not quite hiding the expression on his face.
“Told you it works,” I whisper, a little distracted.
He shakes his head and goes back to his side of the room.
When the last screw is in, we both sit back on our heels and look at the new subfloor.
“That’s not going anywhere for a long time.
” I feel pretty good about the work. It took us most of the day, but that’s only because I, and I quote, played too much.
But he liked it and even laughed with me, even if he wouldn’t admit it. It’s the most relaxed I’ve seen him.
I stretch out my legs and back. There is dust in my hair and on my face and probably in places I won’t discover until I shower, and I can’t find it in me to care, because the floor is done and we did it. I would do every minute of it again. Maybe next time I skip the shin, though.
Bo stands and reaches for my hand. I take it, and he pulls me up slowly.
“Thank you,” I say. “For all of it.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere.”
I look up at him.
He reaches out with his free hand and brushes something from my cheek, his thumb moving in a slow pass.
His eyes meet mine.
There is something in them I don’t yet understand. It’s not like I haven’t made myself clear. But it goes much deeper than that. It looks like want, but it feels like effort and control.
He steps back.
“I’ll clean up the tools,” he says.
“Okay. I’ll order a late lunch. How does pizza sound? If I order now, Denny might deliver it. He owes me twenty from the last time I ordered.”
Bo laughs. “Pizza sounds great. And give Denny a break. The poor kid has to deal with Mrs. Winslow on a weekly basis. That old woman is a riot.” Bo picks up a few tools and heads to the garage, Rowdy at his side.
And then it’s just me in the small bathroom with dust in my hair and my hand still warm where his was.
I press my fingers together.
Then I grab my phone and call for pizza. Standing still was more than I could do.
I stand in the bathroom doorway, looking at the new floor.
Clean boards, tight seams, solid underfoot.
We built that today. Together, in the particular easy way that only happens when something real is already underneath the surface.
I press my fingers together where his hand was.
I can still feel the warmth of it. The careful way he held my calf.
The slow pass of his thumb, and the way he looked up at exactly the wrong moment, and I forgot what I was supposed to be thinking about.
I know what I felt in that look. I've known for a while.
It's not fondness. It's not comfort. It's the thing that makes me aware of every inch of space between us and every inch where that space closes.
He stepped back today as it cost him something.
I think it did. And I think one of these days, one of us is going to stop stepping back.
I'm not going to pretend I don't know which one of us is going to be first. Besides, he wasn't going anywhere.
And for the first time, I'm not just hoping that's true about the guest house.