99 Percent Mine

by Sally Thorne

  He pulls up the window for me with two fingers. Lift, jiggle, the lovely flex of a bicep.

  This house can be such a jerk to me.

  “My usual crew is here—Colin, Ben, and Alex.” He points at the three that I threatened within ten minutes of their arrival. “Dan and Fitz are plumbing. Alan is roofing. Chris is our electrician, but he doesn’t get here until nine. Anyway, we’ve got a lot to do, and a pretty blank canvas.”

  Tom’s bigger than any guy in here, from muscles to height, and they all look like stubbled, bloodshot messes next to him. I’m beginning to think he always has this flawless sunrise glow on his skin.

  “Who’s this?” one guy says at the back. He means me.

  “Darcy Barrett. She’s the homeowner.”

  “I’m the demolition squad. Here’s one I prepared earlier.” I gesture to the exposed kitchen cabinets. Tom keeps looking at me like I’m supposed to make a speech. A rally-the-troops battle call? I have no idea. I wish I had a bar counter between me and all these dicks.

  “This cottage belonged to my grandmother Loretta. She left it to me and my brother, Jamie. I’m not sentimental about much, but this house is special to me. I know it’s a total dump, but if you could just refrain from saying it over and over in my vicinity, that would be great.”

  Ben takes pity. “It’s a great little place.”

  Tom nods. “What she’s saying is, it’s not just any old house to us. Darcy and I are staying on-site in the backyard. Anything beyond the fishpond is off-limits.”

  He takes my mug from my hand and takes a slow sip. Every guy watches him do it. They understand what their boss is telling them. Speculation is now in expressions and I wire my jaw shut to stop it from dropping open.

  “Is there an induction checklist for us to sign off?” Colin prompts.

  “What’s that for?” I reply.

  “Tom wants to do things right,” Colin says, his tone a little dry. “He said he wanted to do a first day induction checklist for the crew to sign. So we make sure all workers have been shown where the first aid kit is. How to report an accident. What the procedures are if there’s a fire. Things like that.”

  “Oh. Like a worker’s safety thing. Okay.” I look up at Tom.

  “Ah,” Tom says, and I can see the spike of panic in his eyes. He puts the mug back in my hand and reaches for his leather folder, jammed full of crinkled quotations and a big sample square of carpet. I dimly recall his asking me if I have a printer. It has no ink, like all home printers. This would be killing him, especially after the long nights he’s sat up with his spreadsheets.

  “You’ll get it from me by lunchtime,” I say, covering for him.

  “We don’t get a lunchtime,” a guy replies with a pinch of sarcasm.

  I give him my shark smile. “I was referring to my lunch break. I look forward to learning your schedule real good, buddy.” He scuffles his boots around, eyes down.

  “And what about contracts for the subbies? Tax forms?” Colin is genuinely trying to either help or undermine. At this stage, I can’t work it out. Tom’s jaw tightens. He’s been so absorbed in ordering the right number of nuts and bolts, he’s forgotten that he’s a boss now.

  I give Colin a glare and to my satisfaction he withers underneath it.

  “I’ve never met someone so obsessed with paperwork. What did I just say? Lunchtime.” I look to Tom. “We do a full site induction when the electrician’s arrived, right?” He doesn’t need to know that I’ve got a House Renovations for Dummies book on my nightstand.

  Tom nods, his expression tight. “Water and power will be off for most of the morning. Porta-Potties are being delivered in the next hour or so, so hold on. One men’s and one ladies’.”

  “He spoils you, Darcy,” Alex booms. “Just wait until an hour after lunch and you see the queue.” There’s grossed-out laughter.

  Tom’s wrapping it up. “I’ll come and give each of you your jobs for today. Start unpacking but stay out of the house until seven. Darcy’s taking some photos for me. Then we’ll do induction.”

  The guys begin trooping out of the house, hands all over it. Toes nudging skirting boards and hands testing door frames.

  I rinse my mug. “What do you want photos for?”

  There’s so much energy shimmering in Tom right now as he stares down at me. His phone rings, and he rejects the call. Maybe he’s about to say, Thank you so much. Maybe I’m an idiot optimist.

  “Do you want to tell me what the hell that was?”

  Chapter 12

  I dry the mug. “I saved your ass. You’re welcome.”

  He’s incredulous. “I didn’t need you to save me.”

  “Looked like it to me. You’d still be tucked up asleep if it wasn’t for good old DB.” Alex was right. Tom’s never in a mood like this. “You need to shut that old guy Colin down. He’s trying to undermine you.”

  Tom’s hand is on his hip now. “You want to tell me about undermining. Right. What the hell do you think you just did?”

  “You started to drown a little. I just pulled you up.” I walk down to my studio, a grouchy shadow at my heels. “I just see where you need help.”

  “Did I actually hear you threaten to fire Colin?”

  I step over Patty’s welcome dance and pick up my camera. “He needed to be reminded whose name is on his shirt. Trust me on that.” Doesn’t he know that I am always Team Valeska?

  “Colin’s done this forever. I really need him on-site.” His phone rings again. He answers it. “Can I call you back? One minute. Thanks.”

  “You’re being such a jerk. Please don’t let this change us.” I mean the renovation, but my voice breaks a little. I’ve been a wreck over what I did. My overly honest get in me has turned into get away from me. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “I think it’s too late. It’s changed.” He puts a hand into his hair. “I’m being a jerk because I’m stressed, and I’ve got you walking around in the middle of everything.”

  “Ignore me.”

  “You’re real hard to ignore.” He looks sideways at the house, eyebrows pulling down. “Okay, here’s where we’re at. I’m attempting the first day of what should be the rest of my career, and I can’t focus on it.”

  “Because you want to put me against a wall and kiss me.” I’m taunting that thing inside him that always responds to me. It protects me and hunts me. “And you’d do it in front of everyone here. You like having keys in your pocket. It’s what your whole life is about. You want to be the only one with a key to me.” I count his breaths. “Am I right?”

  “I am not going to answer that.” His body answers anyway; a shrugging of his entire body, like something is dropping down onto him. He looks so desperate that regret fills me. What have I done to him? I love his inner animal so much that I’m stopping him from turning back into the calm, controlled version he needs to be.

  I think I do an identical shudder-shrug. Get yourself back on your leash, DB. “What am I photographing?”

  “Everything,” Tom says, raspy. “I want you to photograph everything.” He propels me up the back stairs with a hand on my waistband.

  “For what purpose?”

  “Two purposes. To keep Jamie in the loop, because if we don’t, he’s coming down here.” He positions me at the doorway of the hall. “And I need content for my website. A before-and-after section. Lucky for me, I’ve got a professional photographer right on hand.”

  I don’t really care for how he put a little sarcasm on professional. I really screwed up just now in front of his crew.

  “How many times in my life have you rescued me? I can’t even count. I will always do the same for you. I will not stand there and say nothing when I could step in and help. It’s what we do for each other.”

  He blinks, trying to understand. “No one does that for me.”

  “I do it.”

  “How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?” Tom steps against my back and reaches around
me. His fingers slide between mine and he raises my hands up until the camera is roughly in line with my eyes.

  “Can you do your job like this?” When I line up the viewfinder on the hall, he moves our hands. I snap a shot that is, of course, garbage.

  I try to shrug him off; he steps closer, dropping his mouth to the side of my neck. That mouth that sipped from my mug, telling every male in the room that I’m off-limits and untouchable. He’s still too far into the dark forest place we play in. He breathes me in. I feel the briefest scrape of his stubble on the curve of my shoulder and the most intriguing hard press on my butt. I feel like an animal about to be bitten, soft and slow, by its mate. Maybe he’d do it hard enough to leave a mark. When he finally releases the breath he’s been holding, his heavenly warm air goes down the neck of my top.

  He says, “There’s so many things I’d do, if I could.”

  “Well, seems pointless to tell me about them.” I bump him off.

  Tom Valeska is a fucking liar. He does want me. He just doesn’t have the guts. In my pulse points, I’m nothing but Morse code: bed, bed, bed. And I’m disappointed in his lack of faith in me. No one could possibly succeed with messy Darcy Barrett around. That’s what I’ve been my whole life, right? A complication.

  He puts another wobble into the camera as I try to take a shot. “This is how hard it is for me to do anything with you here.” Above my ear, his voice drops to a growl. “This house? This renovation? It’s what I do. Don’t step in again like that.”

  “Get away from me. Safer, remember?” I sound bitter.

  “Oh, you’re still on that?” Tom’s phone rings again. I’m ready to toss that thing into an active volcano. “I don’t think you fully got what I meant.”

  “Of course I did, I’m not stupid,” I snap, and force my entire focus through the viewfinder.

  “I was just . . .” There’s a pause so long I think he’s left. I take a few shots. “Surprised. I didn’t know that’s what you thought of me.”

  “You weren’t surprised, you were traumatized. I heard you, loud and clear. From this point on, we’re going to ignore this thing between us. We’ll get ourselves a sold sign and we will see each other at Christmas. Maybe. There’s a festival in Korea around that time that’s always interested me.”

  “Could you tell me why you did it?” I hear the floorboards under his feet creak. “Were you lonely? Mad? Trying to get back at me for something?” He hasn’t reached the conclusion that I want his body and his pleasure, more than I want water and food.

  “I’m not telling you a damn thing,” I reply, because I know that’s what will annoy him the most. “I’ll tell you one day, when we’re eighty years old.”

  I click the camera and look at the display. It’s hard to argue with reality, and here it is. This room—and this potential relationship with Tom—is not the flower-wallpapered version I’ve been carrying around in my head. This house is no longer beautiful, and Tom has receded out of reach. I’m down to zero.

  His phone begins ringing again. “I’ve got to get this.” He starts to walk, but I stop him.

  “What you did before, in the kitchen?” I snap a couple more frames. “With my coffee? Don’t do that shit again.”

  “What did I do?” He looks up from the ringing phone, his thumb hovering. His brow is creased. He seriously doesn’t remember.

  “You took a big slurp from my mug. Now your boys are looking at us like we’re . . .” I can’t finish.

  Tom has the good grace to look embarrassed. “I guess not all sledgehammers are created equal.” He answers the phone. “Tom Valeska.”

  I should get out of here and do my job. I should be taking advantage of the strawberry-sundae light.

  I go down to the fishpond and hold the camera up to my eye. I haven’t taken an outdoor photo in probably a year, and it doesn’t help that my hands are shaking. What the hell just happened?

  “I don’t know what to shoot,” I say to no one in particular. A tight feeling is in my chest now that I’m alone. Taking photos of this house? It’s too real. These are photographs of something I’m going to lose.

  I want my white lightbox and mugs.

  “Shoot everything,” a guy near me says, unfolding a metal table. He lifts a circular saw onto it with a grunt. “Because everything’s going to change.”

  I walk around the outside of the house. “Just try to take one,” I whisper to myself. The first click is the hardest, and I barely look through the lens.

  I take real estate shots, coaching myself through it, but before long, I’ve loosened up enough that I can pick out the little details. Just for me, so I can have them forever. I lean against the fence and shoot up at the crooked weathervane, topped with a galloping horse, that hasn’t spun in years.

  This isn’t what Tom had in mind, but I shoot the moss and ivy clinging on the side of the wall, and the way the honeysuckle hangs low, dusting everything with yellow powder. I’m photographing this house like it’s a bride. As much as I ache to have it stand in the frozen fairy-tale clasp of roses forever, I know it’s time to let it go. The only way that I can is because it’s now in Tom’s care.

  Inside, time is running out, so I click and reposition, zooming in on individual hydrangeas in the wallpaper. I probably look insane, but I take a shot of the tile Loretta replaced in the bathroom—one salmon-pink square in a sea of cracked buttermilk relics.

  I’m chasing the clock, and guys are stepping out of my way, falling respectfully silent as I step back and take a portrait of the fireplace. I will not let so much as a sheet of sandpaper touch this mantelpiece.

  Why didn’t I do this earlier? Why didn’t I take days, recording and archiving these memories I have? I truly forgot that this was a skill of mine, something that could be used for a purpose other than a paycheck.

  A banging sound begins, like the outside world is trying to break in.

  I think I take more than twenty minutes and I’m a little drained. I really want to load these into my computer. I look at the time. I was immersed up to my neck in a state of creative flow for an hour. I took over two hundred photos. How did that happen?

  I look up in astonishment and make eye contact with Tom. I wonder if he even has a website.

  He doesn’t smile, but I can tell he’s pleased with me. Maybe all is not lost.

  “Good work, Darce. Now get gloves on and get to work.”

  * * *

  I’M WILTED WITH tiredness and it’s only Wednesday. Three more months of this? Stepping out of the way, tripping over power cords, and being covered in dust? I had a bar shift thrown in last night for good measure, and just finished a photoshoot for Truly. I think I need to go to bed at six P.M. tonight.

  I’m sorting through photos of butts in underwear when Jamie calls. For once, it’s me answering the phone with my heart in my throat. Is he dead-dying-drowning? Surely it’d take an emergency for him to call after this long.

  “What’s up?” How cool I sound.

  “Voicemail Darcy is picking up her phone for once in her life. That’s what’s up.”

  Even when my phone isn’t in urine, I’m not a great phone answerer. Most people love their phone like a baby, but I would have left mine on the church stairs.

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Jamie decides how to proceed for a second. “I know something.”

  “That must feel extraordinary,” I reply, and continue scrolling through the photos I’ve just taken. “You’d better let your employer know. They’ll be so glad they took a chance on you.” I grin as his sigh partially deafens me.

  “How’s the progress on site?”

  I’m not his employee. “I bet you feel like I once did. Those summers I watched you and Tom mowing all the neighbors lawns, raking in the cash.”

  “We sweated for that. We worked like mules. Be glad you sat inside in the air-conditioning.”

  “I wanted to do what you guys did, but I had to watch from the window. Just l
ike you’re doing, right now.” I don’t hold much hope that he’ll understand what I’m telling him, or why it feels so important that I see this through. “The renovation is fine. Tom and I are making sure of it.”

  “I know that you know. About Tom and Megan.”

  “Oh, that. Sure.” I click and drop a file. “We’re buds. He tells me stuff.”

  That’s a bit of a stretch. I’m permanently screwing things up around here.

  “Sure,” Jamie says, dripping sarcasm. “But here’s the thing. You’re leaving him alone.”

  “What do you—”

  “Cut the shit. When he’s in the same room you’re a drooling mess. Like, for years, and it’s painfully obvious. That’s why he tried to not tell you.” Jamie confirms what I had just started to hope was a pathetic misunderstanding on my part. “He’s embarrassed to be around you. He’s never going to reciprocate.”

  Only Jamie could make a word like reciprocate sound like he’s holding a turd with a pair of salad tongs.

  “‘Drooling mess’ is a bit of an exaggeration. But yeah, he’s gorgeous. My eyes like gorgeous things. I’m a photographer.” I hate hearing my own voice being so flippant. Diminishing Tom down to a face and body feels wrong. “Don’t you go for beautiful women?”

  “I go for women in my league,” Jamie says forcefully, “and I don’t go for childhood friends.” He laughs a little. “I can’t believe we actually have to have this conversation. You and him? Never happening.” A pause. “So you’ve decided you’re a photographer again?”

  I’m not touching that one. “He told me it was completely over with her. He seems surprisingly okay about it.”

  “He’s devastated. Did you know that?”

  My stomach twists up. I didn’t exactly try to listen before I began tearing the world apart with my bare hands.

  Jamie continues. “He’s been trying to find a time to meet up with her to talk it through and get back together. But you wouldn’t know that, ’cause he’s not your bud, and you never stop thinking about yourself.”