Chapter 16
THE DISCOVERY
Thomas
When Stella texts me, it’s in the form of a plea. “If you REALLY love me,” she wrote, “bring your tools and mount the shelves, please please please. Not a euphemism (ha, ha). We are helpless. Also bring some snacks, these girls are hungry bitches.”
It’s only after I park in the crumbly little lot behind the apartment complex that I realize I didn’t text back.
But that’s fine—Stella didn’t give me a date nor time, so I figured I’d drop by, even if it’s a Friday night.
Besides, my daughter knows her father, knows that I travel a lot and am often out of pocket midweek.
She doesn’t know, of course, the real reason I’m at her apartment.
It’s not the shelves. I’d pay a guy to do that, in a heartbeat.
But I want to see how Andie is living.
The stairs reek of spilled beer and overcooked onions, each landing littered with flyers for furniture that looks one careless breath away from collapse.
The door to their unit is propped slightly open with a sock, of all things, and the sound that comes through—laughter, the tinny buzz of music, the fizz of a can popped open—pulls me forward with a sudden, unmanageable hunger.
I stand in the hall for an extra beat, running my palm over the back of my neck to calm myself.
Then I knock, and the door swings wide as if someone’s been waiting on the other side, breath held.
It’s my daughter, in shorts and a t-shirt with a sad sloth on it. Her hair is up, and she grabs my arm the second she sees me, as if she’s afraid I’ll escape back down the stairs.
“Dad! You actually came!” She laughs, tugging me through the door into a wall of air that smells like microwave popcorn and Pantene shampoo.
“Here I am,” I say, lifting the toolbox in my free hand as a peace offering. “At your service, milady.”
She ignores the joke. “We’re all in the living room. Come say hi.”
She’s matured since freshman year, both emotionally and physically; there’s a confidence to the way she moves, the way she doesn’t let go of my sleeve until we’re through the tiny entry hall and into the main room.
The place is a mess, but the happy kind.
A couch that must have taken three lives to drag up the stairs is slouched under a blanket with holes in it.
Picture frames—most of them still empty—are lined up like dominoes along the baseboard, waiting for someone ambitious to hang them.
The coffee table is a door on cinder blocks, scattered with half a deck of cards, a bowl of popcorn, the glittery stubs of a manicure party.
Andie is there, of course.
She’s cross-legged on the floor, a battered MacBook open on the rug in front of her, laughing at something Kayleigh says.
Her hair is up in a messy knot, strands falling in front of her face.
She’s in leggings and a sweatshirt with the sleeves somewhat shredded, and when she sees me, her smile flickers—but only for half a heartbeat.
She recovers instantly, lifting a beer bottle in greeting, her lips twisted in a perfect, polite “Oh, hello, Mr. Moreland.”
“Ladies,” I say, giving them the old head-nod, the one I use in boardrooms and faculty lounges.
They chorus back: “Hi, Thomas,” “Hey, Mr. Moreland,” “Can you pass me a soda, please?”—the last from Mary Kate, who’s trying to get popcorn from the bowl to her mouth without spilling it all down her shirt.
I set the toolbox down with a deliberate clank and hand the woman a soda. “Where are these shelves, anyway?”
Stella grins, all teeth. “Rescue us from our own incompetence, O savior.”
Kayleigh, stretched out on the couch with her feet up says, “You’re the only dad who ever actually fixes shit. My father just Venmos me and tells me to call the landlord.”
I look at her and shrug. “That’s because I’m a control freak. And I don’t trust landlords.”
The whole time, my gaze keeps sliding back to Andie. She keeps her eyes on the laptop, but I see the way her fingers tense around the neck of the bottle, how her shoulders set a fraction straighter when I enter the room.
I can’t help myself. I stare at her—at the curve of her back, at the way the leggings cling to her ass—because just twelve hours ago, I had that ass in my hands, and she was moaning my name, and now I’m supposed to pretend I barely know her, that she’s just another coed, just my daughter’s best friend.
It’s fucking agony.
I force myself to look away. Stella is standing by the window, motioning at the blank stretch of wall above the radiator. “Here,” she says. “I want the big shelf, so we can do plants. Then another over the TV, for the speaker.”
I nod, squint at the space as if it’s a puzzle only I can solve. “Do you have the brackets? Anchors? Did you buy the shelves, or am I supposed to improvise with plywood?”
Simone laughs. “We bought them at IKEA and left them in the car because they were so heavy. Like, all the boxes. We’re hopeless.”
I look to Stella, who shrugs. “I was going to get them after the beer. I have a system.”
I can’t help but smile. “Of course you do.”
While Stella and Mary Kate run down to the car to get the shelves, the rest of us are left in the room, the silence suddenly bigger than before. Kayleigh changes the music on her phone, dialing up something slow and lush—Frank Ocean, maybe?—and the low notes fill up the corners of the room.
Andie is the first to speak, her voice soft but not uncertain. “You don’t have to do this, you know. The mounting and drilling. I’m pretty sure we could bribe the super to come by and help us.”
I meet her eyes, and I let the smile hang there for a second too long. “I like to see things done right.”
She looks away, cheeks pink. “Of course.”
Kayleigh catches this, and for a second, I think she’s going to say something. Instead, she just grabs the beer from the table and hands it to me. “You want a cold one, Thomas?”
“Absolutely,” I say.
Simone gives me a look that’s half-fascinated, half-suspicious.
This particular woman I’ve only met once or twice, and I’m cautious around her.
I don’t know why because she’s not older.
But somehow, she seems more mature, and is the only one I suspect is really watching.
But she just nods, then says, “Andie’s a perfectionist too.
Everything has to be just so. Remember when she hung pictures in our dorm room, girlfriend? You were insane.”
Andie doesn’t respond, but her knee bounces under the table, heel thumping an irregular beat on the floor.
Stella comes back with the IKEA box, which is half the size of a casket, with Mary Kate right behind her, and together we open the boxes on the living room rug. The girls crowd around, giving advice and making a contest out of who can mispronounce the Swedish product names the most outrageously.
I watch Andie out of the corner of my eye, and every time I catch her looking at me, she glances away, flushing a little. I can tell she’s dying inside. Me too.
I start sorting the screws and brackets, lining them up by type and size. Stella calls me “Rain Man” and starts separating the dowels by color, which makes Kayleigh laugh so hard she snorts beer through her nose.
After a while, the conversation shifts from the shelves to weekend plans, then to relationships, and then—because college girls can’t help themselves—to sex.
Kayleigh is the boldest: “Simone, have you gotten it on with your professor again yet?”
Simone blushes, but she grins. “Maybe.”
Stella claps her hands. “I told you. Liam Thomas is obsessed with her. He writes her love notes and everything.”
Simone shakes her head, but doesn’t deny it. “He’s a really good writer. He’s going to be nominated for poet laureate soon. I can feel it.”
Mary Kate, mouth full of popcorn, says, “Andie’s dating someone, too.”
The room hushes for a beat.
I freeze, the screwdriver held like a weapon in my fist.
Andie just laughs, but it’s high and fake. “Not true. It’s just some guy. We’re not even official.”
Kayleigh pouts. “He’s super mysterious. Like, she never lets us meet him.”
Andie shrugs, and her hands go white around her knees. “He’s just busy. He works a lot.”
Mary Kate leans over, stage-whispers, “We think he works for the FBI. That’s the only reason she hasn’t brought him around yet.”
Everyone laughs—everyone but me, because I can’t. I can only look at Andie and see the quiver in her lip, the way she’s dying to reach across the table and touch my hand, just once, just for a second.
I turn back to the box, masking my face with the shadow of the shelf. “FBI agents are overrated,” I say, voice light. “Too many trust issues.”
Simone laughs, the tension broken. “That’s exactly what an undercover FBI agent would say.”
We all join in, and for a moment, it feels almost normal. Like I could stay here forever, building shelves for these girls, fixing whatever needs fixing.
When the laughter dies, I pick up the drill and test the trigger, the sharp whine cutting through the soft hum of the room.
“Let’s do this,” I say.
Stella claps, delighted, and drags a dining chair over for me to stand on.
As I work, Andie stands just behind my left shoulder, holding the level and reading the instructions.
Our arms brush, skin on skin, and every touch is a jolt—half pain, half pleasure.
I want to reach for her, to press her against the wall and kiss her until she cries out, but I don’t.
I keep my hands busy, my mouth full of instructions, my eyes on the task at hand.
Occasionally, I let my gaze drift down the length of her body—the curve of her hip under the thin leggings, the way the sweatshirt hangs loose off her shoulder, exposing the pale, soft skin of her collarbone.
I want to bite it.
She senses my stare, and for a moment, the air between us is electric, the only real thing in the world.
“Does that look level?” I ask, not turning.
She checks it, her hand trembling just a little. “Perfect,” she says.