99 Percent Mine

by Sally Thorne

“You are weirdly possessive over your childhood friend. Something you need to tell me?” The thought has crossed my mind once or twice.

  Jamie doesn’t take the bait. “That guy has had my back probably a thousand times by now. Now it’s my turn. I want to make sure he gets the future he deserves.”

  “You should be a motivational speaker, Jamie. I’m inspired. He’s already got his business. His dream. He got it.”

  “That’s only phase one. Tom wants the real deal. A house, a picket fence, a wedding. Taking triplets to Disney or some shit like that. Haven’t you ever noticed his obsession with taking care of things and fixing them? We’re not getting younger. Darce, he’s a husband and a dad.”

  Goddamn it, I hate when my brother is right. I don’t say anything.

  Jamie senses I’ve understood what he’s saying, and his next harsh sentence is spoken with unbearable kindness. “That’s what he wants. To be the dad he never had. He wants a wife and to make sure his mom is sorted out. Not a one-night stand with the queen of one-nights.”

  “Maybe I want . . .” I trail off. I never thought about it before. Those sorts of things are for Megan-type girls.

  “Not with him you don’t. Megan hasn’t given the ring back. He doesn’t want it back. Connect the dots, Darcy.”

  I feel like throwing up. “Okay, I get it.”

  “If you make him get all wrapped up in your drama and get a little crush on you, only for you to leave? Just like when we were eighteen? I will never speak to you again.”

  I shouldn’t be surprised that Jamie knows about this. But I am anyway. “That was complicated.”

  “That was something that should have been a no-brainer and you blew it. Just like the developer’s offer on the house.” Jamie says “One minute” to someone in his office, then says to me, “I’ve got someone on-site keeping an eye on you.”

  “Colin.” His name is out of my mouth like a curse.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Prove it.”

  “You dropped a nail gun yesterday and broke it. I’ve got to go now. Funny. You’re usually the one saying that.” He hangs up, and I put my head in my hands.

  Of course he’s going back to Megan. Why wouldn’t he? He’s got an entire life built, painstakingly, over eight years. He just needs to walk back to it and flick on the lights and screw the house number on the letterbox.

  After a minute, my door slides open and I hear the tink of Patty’s name tag. For the first time in my life, I wish Tom would turn around and walk away.

  “Oh, great, what have I done this time?” I know what I did. I blew it.

  Tom sits heavily down on the computer chair behind me with a tired groan. “What makes you think you’ve done something wrong?”

  “You only talk to me when I have.” I smooth my hands over my face. I shouldn’t be a jerk. He’s got no animosity in him as he slumps. He’s so tired I feel sad. Beside me, my white backdrop is still up and there are robes and Underswears samples all over my bed. Maybe we can start over for the tenth time. Let’s try.

  “Just spoke with my brother dearest.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Just to threaten me about behaving myself and to remind me of my failures.” That’s the top-level truth.

  “He’s so hard on you.” Tom is far more empathetic than I deserve. “Well, keep sending him the progress photos and we won’t get a surprise visit.” Tom swivels his chair gently, side to side. “The ones you took on the first day were insanely good. You know that, right? Glad to see that again.” He nods at the white backdrop, set up against the free section of wall by the door.

  “Everyone has a camera in their pocket these days. I’m obsolete.” I haven’t had enough time to pack down the emotions Jamie has just stirred up. Tom’s walked in here with a white flag. I should make the most of it. But it’s hard, coping with these two extremes between us. I make myself be grateful for the quiet and the civil, but I know what I want.

  I crave his lust like a drug.

  Let’s find a really civil topic. “How’s your mom doing?”

  Tom groan-sighs. “She’s stressing me out. No. Her landlord is stressing me out. There’s someone you can go beat up for me.”

  Tom’s mom, Fiona, is a sweet, spacey lady who always seems to be amid some kind of low-level crisis. She’s a pot permanently simmering, and if Tom takes his eye off her too long the smoke detector goes off. I’d like to say this was a recent thing, but he’s been trying to take care of her his whole life. I sometimes wonder what Tom’s dad must have been like. I’ve never met him, and I don’t think Tom has either. He must be big and handsome. And a total piece of shit, obviously.

  “Can’t she move out?” I ask.

  “She found a pregnant cat last year and couldn’t bear to rehome the kittens. They’re all black and white. I have no idea how she tells them apart.” He rubs the heel of his palm on his eyes. “Her landlord told me she could have one cat. She hasn’t filled him in yet that one has become six. Her hot water is playing up, and he’s not returning my calls.”

  “Buy six cats, get the seventh cat free?” I point up at Diana’s bed.

  “Don’t even think about it. The next place I carry her boxes into is gonna be the last house she ever has to live in. I can’t move her again. I don’t have it in me. A picket fence is what I promised her.” Tom looks ten years older in an instant.

  At this rate, a picket fence paling will be my tombstone. “Is that what you’re saving for?”

  He speaks like he hasn’t heard me in the crystal-quiet room. “The guys keep asking where you are. Well, Alex mainly. Your puppy dog doesn’t know what to do with himself.” His eyes sharpen on mine, watching for my reaction.

  Every atom in my body knows that Tom wants to see indifference. I look back at my computer and shrug. “Little turd has gotten lonely without me kicking his ass, huh?”

  “He told me things are fun with you around. He’s going to get the wrong idea if you keep leaning on him. He doesn’t know what you’re like.”

  “I don’t lean,” I retort, then I remember my shoulder pressing on something warm. Me and Alex leaning together watching an excavator being unloaded out front. “Oh, I did lean a bit.”

  “He worships you.” Tom has affection in his voice as he glances up at the house. “He reminds me so much of myself at that age.”

  “Worshipping me?” I accidentally defy Jamie’s direct order and immediately gloss over it. “Well, that’s cute. The one I really want to worship me is that old bastard Colin. I want him to kiss my boots by the end of this.”

  “Should I be jealous?” Tom answers his phone. “Hi. Yes, drop them around. Before four.” He hangs up. This is what our conversations are like lately. Everything is interrupted by that goddamn phone. I don’t know how he’s keeping it together.

  “Jealous or not, it has nothing to do with me.”

  “I forgot, I did come in here to yell at you. Who were they?” Tom means the girls who left twenty minutes ago. “You can’t just let people walk through a building site.”

  “They were models.” I click through the images. “I just did a shoot for Truly. Funny, Tom. Last time we had a proper exchange, I got the impression that you needed me to stay out of your hair. And yet, here you are.”

  “This is my site and you’re doing a photo shoot in the middle of it.” Tom leans sideways to look at the computer. He’s lip-pursed Mr. Perfect. “You should have told me. There’s safety issues with people on-site who aren’t inducted. If they hurt themselves—”

  “Okay, I screwed up again. Don’t get grouchy, or I might not give you your present.”

  “A present?” Behind me, the computer chair squeaks.

  “Do you deserve one?” I’m stalling, because I don’t know how he’ll receive this tiny olive branch. It’s been made abundantly clear that he doesn’t need or want my help.

  “I had to get a dead rat out of the wall cavity in the kitchen. I do deserve a present.”<
br />
  “Dead rats are Alex’s job. You’re a boss now.” I click through my photo files, trying to feign nonchalance. “You’re sitting on your present. I made you a desk. I noticed it’s getting harder for you to work inside.”

  This is my way of apologizing for putting a coffee ring on a fairly important report for the county. “And that apple crate down there is for Patty.”

  Tom swivels and looks at the desk again. It’s just the old kitchen table, a lamp, and a jar of pens, but he runs his hands on the tabletop in a lustful way. “I was just about to start working out of my car.” He flips the lamp on. “Thanks, Darce.”

  “I’m not trying to lure you in here for any nefarious purpose.” Ugh, why did I say that? I swivel around on my stool in a way that probably looks ominous.

  Tom ignores my blunder. “Oh, I’m lured all right.” He gets up and leaves, appearing again with his laptop and a bulging folder. Business cards flutter mothlike in his wake. “There is no way I’m passing up a desk.”

  He leaves a second time, returning with an armful of samples: tiles, carpets, laminates. Patty hops into her new bed and watches Tom, her big bug eyes lit with their usual worship.

  I’m right there with you, Patty. I think I could sit here and watch him for hours, stacking bathroom tiles with that serious tilt to his head. He always was like this: a tidy boy with a straight spine and a neat desk.

  Scratch that. Fast-forward things.

  I could sit here and watch this gorgeous man forever, the glints in his hair and those big careful hands. The lamplight pools in those brown eyes and turns them to honey. He breathes, even and easy, under the lead-gray weight of my stare, and makes three piles of paperwork.

  He finds the old trash can under his desk with the toe of his shoe and smiles to himself.

  “You thought of everything, Darcy Barrett,” he says to me without looking over, and I realize he has always been aware of my staring, dazzled by the light shining through him. He’s probably felt this stare for most of his life. I am intensely grateful for how he’s erasing that one moment of insanity in the kitchen.

  I’m not going to lose him. If I just stay laser-focused and careful, we can walk out of these three months as friends and part with a handshake.

  If I can keep my mouth shut and not say things like, Get in me.

  “This is really going to help. I can get organized.” Right on cue, his phone rings, and he grabs at a pen.

  As he writes himself a note and looks up at the house, biting his lip, thoughtful and lovely, I think about how much he needs to get in me. And not just into my body. I want more than that. I want him to get in my head. I think that’s what I meant.

  Unzip me, climb into me, don’t come out.

  When he hangs up and looks over at me, I pretend I was just looking up at the house.

  “It’s getting hard to think in there during the day.”

  “Twelve weeks is a crazy time frame,” he says with apology in his voice. He looks back around at my room and smiles. “I feel better about you being in here now. Very cozy.” He looks down the long narrow space. It only takes up a quarter of the floor space, but the room feels like it is brimming full of bed.

  I turn back to my laptop.

  “I’m snug as a bug. Sorry, but Truly’s got a meeting with a brand consultant and she has to have a lookbook to show them. She’s going to be turning up any second, saying, Hi, are they done? So, off you go.”

  “I haven’t seen her for years. How is she?”

  “Fucking adorable as usual.” I scroll and try to squash down the panic when I look at the clock. “She thinks I have way more graphic design skills than I do.”

  “That’s a big-deal meeting for her, isn’t it? So these are Underswears.” He ambles over to my workbench and laughs. “Who wears the word dipshit around on their butt?”

  I prickle up defensively. “I do, every day of the year. Best underwear on earth.”

  “I’m going to be intrigued about what yours say, every day of the year.”

  “You couldn’t handle what’s written on my underwear.” It’s hard to ignore him when he’s leaning against the bench, probably looking down at the back of my neck. I can feel the warmth of his body, and out of the corner of my eye I see that his T-shirt is layered across his abdomen like fondant icing.

  He makes it harder when he lifts a hand and touches my skin.

  Chapter 13

  Do you do all this for free?” He touches my shoulder and pulls my tank strap back into position. It immediately slips back off and his defeated sigh gusts across my skin. “Just stay there,” he says to my tank in irritation.

  “I get paid in underwear and candy. In this economic climate, alternate currencies are required. Jamie would lecture me about charging what I’m worth. But who cares. If this is how I can help her, then I’m doing it.”

  “You’re a good friend,” Tom says with such admiration in his voice that I look up, startled. “You’re so generous, Darce.”

  “Oh, sure.” I look back at my screen. This is getting too hard. He pulls me close with fang-and-claw intensity, then expects me to sit here like a sister. I’m a kitchen-trashing psycho, but at least I know it, and I’m consistent.

  The problem with Tom is that he doesn’t know what he is. Not really. The question, who do you think you are would be really interesting to ask him, because I know he’d get the answer wrong.

  “I want you to know, when I was going to renovate the house under Aldo’s business, I was planning on doing it for free.” I see his big fingers twist together out of the corner of my eye. “I feel real bad about taking the five percent.”

  “You’re worth every penny,” I tell him, just like my mom used to. “Don’t sweat it, Tiger.” I tack on Dad’s nickname for good measure. Still, the reminder of my parents doesn’t work. He doesn’t recoil away from me like I thought he might. “Do you need to get back to work?”

  He confides, a little playful, “I don’t want to go back out there. Alex is right. Things are always more interesting where you are.”

  “I’m sure,” I say, because my screen has a backside on it. But when I look up, he’s looking at me, and he has softness in his eyes.

  “I’ve been really hard on you lately. I’m sorry.” He rejects an incoming call with a practiced motion. “I’m sorry for everything. Can we be okay now?” His phone rings again. He needs me. I know it.

  “All you have to do is ask me.” I can see he doesn’t know what I mean. Instead, his eyes drop to my mouth. My pulse bumps and I rush to clarify. “Ask me to help you.”

  “How could you help me?” Now he’s looking into my eyes, and there’s that warm buzz sensation. The room gets smaller. We’re shrink-wrapped together by walls and air, and I cannot stop myself. I put my hand on his forearm, just to feel his skin.

  “I will help you however I can.” I squeeze, and I feel his muscles squeeze back. Above my eye line, I see him swallow. “I will break my goddamn back for you.”

  He takes my hands in his. This is an important thing he wants to say. “Yeah, I know. But it’s really important to me that I do this on my own.”

  Colin’s words echo back to me, and again I flare up inside. “You’re never going to be on your own. I’m here. I’m with you.”

  He looks at my growly little face with a new realization in his eyes. “Yeah. You are.” He looks sideways at my bench and notices something among the mess. The one thing I was hoping he wouldn’t. “Passport application?” He releases my hands.

  “I concede defeat. Jamie must have taken it. But it makes no sense. I know I had it after he left. I checked the expiration date for something. I wonder if Vince sold it on the black market.” I laugh, ha ha, so he knows that was a joke.

  He doesn’t find that funny. “You’re going to get a lot of money when the house sells. You’ll never come back.”

  Truly slides open the door. “Hi, are they done? An old man at the house just yelled at me.” She notices how close
we’re standing and falters.

  “Hi.” Tom smiles, and it’s lovely enough to make me want to shred that passport application and flush. “Colin’s right. You can’t walk through here anymore.”

  Truly looks him up and down with frank appreciation and I cannot blame her.

  He’s glorious, from the top of his head to the soles of his boots. He’s a big, glowing, muscled miracle, and as the silence stretches on, his brow creases in puzzlement. He hasn’t looked in a mirror in a while.

  Truly reboots her brain. “Wowee, look at you! So muscly! Have you buried the hatchet with Darce?”

  “I was just in the process of doing that,” Tom replies. His phone buzzes on and on. He looks at it with a weary expression. I know from personal experience that once the voicemails begin building up, checking them feels like shoveling in a snowstorm.

  He jams it back in his pocket and focuses on Truly. “How are you?” They embrace tentatively, Truly’s face making an exaggerated eyebrow-raised oh of pleasure at me over the curve of his bicep.

  “That’s made the trip worthwhile, I bet,” I say, sounding extremely bitter. “Not that I’m jealous, but hugs are few and far between around these parts.” I hunch over the laptop like a gargoyle and begin to edit. Since Tom’s full-body hug in the kitchen, I’ve been brittle and cold.

  “Aw,” Truly croons, and comes to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders from behind. Her hugs are heaven. I wish they’d both hug me at once. “Tom, you know what our Darce is like. She’s like a Tamagotchi.”

  “I’m a digital pet. Sounds about right.” I lean back against her and close my eyes. We rest our temples together, and just in this moment, I’m crystal clear on the inside.

  Tom resumes his bench leaning. “I know exactly what she’s like.”

  “She needs cuddles more than she will ever admit,” Truly says, hugging me tighter, “and she dies without them.” She releases me with a kiss on my cheek. “Oh, and candy, obviously. She runs on all different colors of sugar.” She begins unpacking bags of candy next to me.

  “I almost feel like you’re buttering me up for something.” I grab the nearest bag and tear it open with my teeth.