The Selling Point

by Marci Bolden

  Darby’s heart sank. “Jade can help. Jade’s a marketing goddess. Right?”

  “She’s tried,” Taylor said. “It’s not the marketing, Darbs. It’s me.”

  “No,” Darby stated. “I refuse to believe that.”

  “Okay,” Taylor corrected, “it’s this.” She gestured to her body. “People don’t want to give me a chance. As soon as they figure out Taylor O’Shea is a woman, they decide to go with a so-called real contractor. I don’t think I can keep fighting for this.”

  “We can try some other marketing, Tay,” Jade offered.

  Taylor shook her head. “It’s time to accept that this isn’t going to work.”

  “What are you going to do?” Darby asked. “You can’t give up.”

  “I’m not giving up, but I am thinking that maybe I need to switch directions. I need a new line of work. That’s all. I’ve been thinking about that a lot.” Taylor opened her phone and tapped on the screen. “Remember how I lectured you for being irresponsible with your rental property last year, Darby?”

  “Yeah.” Darby hadn’t been a fan of Taylor’s lectures, even if she had been right. Had Darby realized how much work went into owning a rental property, she never would have tried it.

  Taylor handed her phone to Darby, and Jade scooted closer to take a look.

  “You’re buying a house?” Jade asked.

  “I was thinking, maybe I’m not cut out to do the business end of contracting, being all female and everything. Maybe I’m better suited at being a property manager. I have the skills to do the repairs, I won’t have to deal with people in person much, and I’m not afraid to evict someone if they act up. In fact, I’d probably enjoy it.”

  Darby pictured Taylor tossing someone’s belongings out onto the street while telling them to get the fuck off her property. The image suited her much more than smiling as she tried to prove she was the best contractor for a job. “Yeah, I think you would.”

  “You know how to do the rental end, right?” Taylor asked Darby. “You can teach me how to list the houses on all those vacation house sites. Most of the business end is online, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Darby said. Her spirits lifted as she realized Taylor was asking her for help…like genuinely needed her help. Excitement filled her veins, and she beamed brightly. “You wouldn’t have to even see the renters if you didn’t want to. Actually, that’s how it’s supposed to be. I only introduced myself to my renters because I couldn’t stand not knowing who was staying beside me. You’re not as social as me, so that probably won’t be a thing for you.”

  Taylor widened her eyes. “No. Probably not something I’m going to do.”

  “I can help with advertising,” Jade said. “You don’t have to rely on those sites to show your rentals. You can run ads too.”

  “See?” Taylor laughed as she focused on the stars coming out above them.

  Darby smiled. The answers are in the stars, her mom always said.

  Taylor returned her gaze to Darby. “I need to change direction. This is perfect, don’t you think?”

  “Could be.” Darby flipped through the photos. “What about your company? O’Shea Construction is so important to you.”

  “You started that company to honor your grandpa,” Jade reminded her. “You shouldn’t give up because people in this town are scared of hiring you.”

  Taylor frowned. “I can still do projects, I guess, but this would probably be my main income. Then I don’t have to stress about not getting bids. I mean, let’s face it, the small projects I do land aren’t going to be enough to keep me going. The last big project I had was your remodel, Jade.”

  “Which is amazing,” Jade said.

  “Amazing doesn’t pay the bills.” Taylor accepted her phone back. “I can do this.”

  “Would you live in one of these?” she asked. “I’d visit you more if I wasn’t so scared of your neighbors.”

  Taylor didn’t try to defend the neighborhood where she lived. Located in the outer edges of Chammont Point, the area was mostly forgotten as the tourist industry grew and people wanted to be closer and closer to the lake. The houses weren’t well-kept, and the residents were a bit more sketchy than in other areas of town. Taylor insisted she liked the neighborhood because people kept to themselves. “I guess I could. If I found a decent place, I could live there while I fixed it up and then sell it for profit or something.”

  Darby gasped in the way she always did when a firecracker of an idea went off in her head. All her boutiques started with that little spark that grew and grew. She lived for that spark and the excitement of starting something new.

  Even Jade moaned. “Oh boy.”

  “No,” Taylor said before Darby could speak. “Whatever you’re thinking, no.”

  Darby sat forward in her chair. “Listen—”

  “No.”

  Darby clutched her hands to her chest. “Taylor,” she begged, “listen to me. This is brilliant.”

  “No.”

  Darby focused on Jade. “Seriously, you guys. We could be like Chip and Joanna Gaines.”

  Taylor sat back and creased her brow. “Who?”

  Darby rolled her eyes as she wondered how Taylor lived so out of the loop of everything but decided this wasn’t the time to educate her. “We buy a house. You do the repairs. I do the décor. Jade lists it to sell by owner so we don’t have to pay some agent. Then we move on to the next one, making a big pile of money along the way.”

  “House flipping?” Taylor asked flatly.

  Her tone implied she wasn’t nearly as excited as Darby, but that was nothing new. Taylor rarely got excited about anything. She turned to Jade, who was looking equally skeptical.

  “Yes,” Darby said. “House flipping. We can do this. The three of us. We would be unstoppable. We would rule this town.” She sat up and acted like she was placing a crown on her head. “Jennifer who? I don’t know who that is. I’m queen around here.”

  “Darby.” Taylor chuckled and shook her head. “That sounds great when you’re watching a TV show, but the reality is not so glamorous.”

  “I have to agree,” Jade said. “They don’t show the really ugly side of house flipping on those shows.”

  “What side?”

  “Losing your ass financially if you can’t sell the property,” Jade said.

  Taylor nodded. “Or buying a property that’s beyond repair and has to be torn down. Those people make money by being on TV.”

  “We would make money solely based on resell profits,” Jade said. “It’s risky.”

  “But it would be really cool remodeling run-down houses,” Darby teased. “We could knock down walls and yank out cabinets. And…you know…sledgehammer stuff.”

  Taylor smiled slightly, which was saying a lot. In fact, that little smile said all Darby needed to know. Taylor was tempted. She liked the idea, even if she didn’t want to admit it out loud. Which meant she needed Jade to agree so Taylor wouldn’t be able to refuse.

  Clasping her hands under her chin, Darby batted her eyes at Jade. That approach rarely worked, but she had to try. “Come on, Jade. It would be so much fun. We would have so much fun. We would be working together all the time.”

  “Oh,” Taylor said, “in that case, I’m out. No way.”

  “Hey,” Darby yelled. “That’s rude!”

  “What about your online store, Darbs?” Jade asked.

  Darby waved her hand to dismiss the notion. “Un-Do is all but sold.” She gasped. “Oh my God! I really would be like Joanna!”

  “That sounds like a lot of work,” Jade said.

  Darby knew that was more of a warning than an observation. Okay, she never did enjoy the laboring part of working, but this…this would be different. “This would be so much more exciting than running an online site. Don’t you think?”

  Taylor laughed lightly. “Maybe.”

  “It would be,” Darby insisted. “And you know it.”

  “You couldn’t do crazy décor,
though,” Jade stated seriously. “If you’re staging a house to sell, you have to use neutral tones and normal furniture. Things that appeal to the masses.”

  “I can appeal to the masses.”

  “Right,” Taylor said with a snort. “Okay, look, some states have restrictions. We’ll have to check the laws and determine cost and how all this would fall into place. I’m not going to agree to anything without proper research. I’m not…you.”

  Darby grabbed her phone and tapped on the screen until a search engine revealed the answer to her question. “There are no state laws prohibiting flipping,” she read, “but your mortgage holder may have rules on how soon a title can be changed.” Beaming, Darby eyed Taylor as she used a cheerful, singsong voice. “We can totally do this.”

  “It takes money, Darby. We’d have to buy a house and pay for supplies with the hopes of making a profit. Just to be clear, what I’m saying is that we have to have money to buy a house and pay for supplies before we can even try to make a profit.”

  “Once you pick a house,” Darby said, mocking the way Taylor emphasized so many words, “tell us how much we need and we’ll get the money.”

  Taylor rolled her eyes to her. “Darby, it’s not that easy.”

  “Actually, it is. I’m about to sell Un-Do for way more than is reasonable. This guy really wants the site. He’s an up-and-coming designer, and this is the perfect starting point for him.” Earning money had never been a problem for Darby. She’d always found a way to earn a buck when she needed one…or several. Her problem was that once she had the money, she invested in the wrong things. Like the cabin that Jade had to buy from her so the repairs didn’t swallow her up. Or that time she let a co-worker at a bar convince her to give him the money to create a company based on this brilliant idea he had to create a coffee soft drink. She later realized he’d stolen that from a well-established brand that had failed, despite investing millions compared to her measly deposit. By the time she called him on it, he’d already spent her money “testing the product.”

  Because she’d handed over cash, Darby had no way to prove she’d given him a dime, and she’d lost all the money she’d been saving up to move to California. Not that she would have stayed out there long anyway.

  No, it was better if Darby used her good luck to make the money and let Taylor decide where to invest it. That way, they’d make their money back. And she could trust Taylor not to disappear with her investment.

  “I don’t mind making an initial investment,” Jade said. “So long as Taylor is on board to do the repairs.”

  Darby gasped. “Did you hear that? We can do this, Taylor. We can so do this.”

  Taylor hesitated. “There’s no guarantee we would make our money back. It really is risky.”

  “Okay,” Darby said with a rarely used practical voice, “so we’ll buy a house we can rent during the summer. If we can’t sell it, we have a rental that will pay for itself over time. People pay out the ass for vacation rentals.”

  Taylor chuckled before nodding. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  Squealing, Darby bounced in her chair. “This is going to be awesome!”

  Darby put her hand under her nose as she stepped into the living area of the house she, Jade, and Taylor were viewing. The avocado shag carpet looked original to the place. The previous owner must have never moved the furniture. Walkways had been worn in, but where the couch, a coffee table, and what seemed to be a spot for a box TV in one of those big wooden consoles were, the carpet was as thick and green as if brand-new.

  The scent of cheap beer and stale cigarette smoke overwhelmed the space. If she were blindfolded, Darby might have thought they’d walked into a bar that hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. However, the little house wasn’t large enough to have hosted more than a handful of people. At least not comfortably.

  The entryway had a set of four carved floor-to-ceiling wood poles that Darby was certain didn’t serve any purpose other than being what used to be stylish. The dark cherry stain on the outermost pole had been worn away from years of someone running a hand over the same spot time and time again.

  She smiled slightly, despite the stench, as she pictured some stranger she’d never met running her hand over that spot as she aged. Or maybe the culprit was a child who had grown up in this home and was constantly chastised for touching the pole but hadn’t been able to resist for so long, leaving a permanent mark that his parents had eventually grown to cherish.

  Her heart grew heavy for a moment, wishing her mom had lived long enough to cherish all of Darby’s quirks. There certainly had been plenty of them. When Darby was at some of her lowest points in high school, her mom seemed to sense that she was struggling. She’d always seemed to know when Darby had needed a walk on the beach or a long car ride listening to loud music to make her feel better. Of course Darby’s taste in music compared to her mom’s had been night and day, but her mom would usually let her listen to whatever she wanted.

  Her mom had even learned the words to some of the more popular songs that Darby had listened to over and over. She’d drive along the scenic routes surrounding Chammont Lake doing her best to mimic Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. But then she usually followed up with a reminder to Darby that pop music wasn’t the best influence on her and that she should really consider sticking to more traditional music like Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton.

  Darby’s mom loved a good classic country song. A lump formed in Darby’s throat as she ran her fingers over the pole again. She’d give about anything to have her mom there to take her on a car ride. She’d even let her listen to country music.

  And she’d sing along.

  “Holy shit,” Taylor muttered, drawing Darby’s attention to her.

  Taylor and Jade now stood in the middle of the room looking over the sage-colored textured wallpaper. As she dared to run her fingers over the wallpaper, Darby gawked at the window trim that someone had painted an odd shade of lime.

  “Oh, Taylor,” Jade said. “What is this place?”

  “Why is there so much green?” Darby asked. “I mean, I like green and all, but…why?”

  “Well,” the real estate agent said as he joined her at the window, “you can see why it’s still on the market.”

  “This is going to be a lot of work.” Taylor joined them and peered between the dusty vertical blinds toward the street.

  Darby didn’t need to look outside to recall how the little ranch reminded her of the set of a horror film. The front yard needed a lot of tough love from a landscaper. The bushes had been left to run wild, and the grass looked like no one had mowed the yard since the previous summer. The weeds were so overgrown, they seemed to be an intentional part of the abandoned home aesthetic this place had going on.

  Darby had been hesitant to even get out of the car and walk to the front door. Honestly, if Taylor and Jade hadn’t been with her, she probably would have driven right by, kept going without slowing down.

  The house practically screamed Come on in if you’d like to be brutally murdered and buried in the backyard with the others.

  The thought made Darby skim the old carpet for bloodstains and body parts. “I think a serial killer lived here. Or at least someone who aspired to be one.”

  The real estate agent chuckled. “Well, at the very least, they murdered every fashionable trend that ever entered here.”

  Jade eyed him, but Darby laughed.

  When he turned away, Taylor elbowed Darby and shook her head.

  “What?” Darby whispered. “He’s funny.”

  “He’s trying to charm us into buying a house from him,” Jade said.

  “By being funny?”

  “Yes. Stop responding to his cheesy jokes,” Taylor warned and rolled her head back. After looking at the ceiling for several long seconds, she frowned. “This place needs so much work.”

  “Most things worth the time and money do,” he said and then offered Darby a wink.

  Darby started to
smile but remembered Taylor’s advice and simply shrugged. “I guess.”

  As Taylor and Jade moved farther into the house, Darby followed behind, almost afraid of what she might see next. Like the living area, everything in the kitchen was outdated and green—even the cabinets.

  “What is with this color palette?” Darby asked. “Olive on top of avocado on top of sage.” She trembled dramatically. “What kind of monster did this?”

  The real estate agent chuckled. “Believe it or not, this was quite the setup in the seventies. I bet this was a happening place to be.” He smiled and winked at Darby again.

  Her breath caught a touch. The man had a killer smile, and that wink… He was adorable. But then she spotted Taylor glaring at her. Darby looked away. She wasn’t going to flirt with him. She wasn’t going to flirt with him. She wasn’t… Not much, anyway. And only because she needed Taylor to focus on the house rather than Darby’s behavior.

  Before Taylor would commit to anything, she wanted to find a house and estimate the cost of the purchase and repairs. Darby was trying to respect Taylor’s logical approach, but she was dying a little inside. They’d been talking about this business idea for days. Taylor had a long list of if this and if that and what if, but Darby was ready to jump. Jade fell somewhere in the middle. She wanted to be cautious, but she also understood whatever they bought was going to need a certain amount of work. But she seemed ready to make a decision.

  Taylor, on the other hand, was dragging her feet and doing calculations and…being Taylor. How many times did they have to go round and round about if they needed the money first or the price first? How many times could they possibly debate if they could or should or would? Taylor was driving Darby to the point of insanity. She was ready to scream from frustration. Shaking her head, Darby walked away so she wouldn’t smile and bat her eyes at the agent. As much as she wanted to, that would distract Taylor from her internal cat and mouse chase, which would add more time to Taylor making a freaking commitment to their business idea.

  While the real estate agent tried to break through Taylor’s resistance using potential income and possible corners to cut on repairs, Darby opened a door and backed up three steps. “Oh, Lord. There’s carpet on the bathroom floor. Ladies.” She spun with her hand covering her heart as shock and horror rolled through her. “There’s carpet in the bathroom.”