by Lorrie Kruse
“What’cha up to?” Matt asked.
His voice sounded upbeat but there was an edge to it. The same edge she’d heard the night she took him to meet her mother. “Pretending I’m a wallpaper pro.”
“Pretending, huh?”
The single strip of paper crept closer to the floor. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about wallpapering, would you?”
He laughed. A real laugh. One that eased her worry. “Uh, Abby, that’s part of what Huntz & Sons does. We mostly do remodels, which includes painting and wallpapering.”
She stood straighter. “I’d pay you to come help. Pizza. Except the pizza’s just a frozen one, but I’d really appreciate your help.”
“Frozen pizza, huh? Best offer I’ve had all day. I’ll be right over.”
She hung up and leaned against the wall. By the time Matt got there, her only strip of paper would probably be puddled on the floor. She thought about trying to press it back into place. Recognizing the futility in such an attempt, she pushed herself away from the wall and left the scene of the crime.
Her spirits weren’t bolstered much when she stepped in front of the mirror a moment later. She looked like a victim from a slasher movie. Wallpaper paste smudged her cheek. Several locks of hair hung loose from her limp ponytail. Matt would probably take one look at her and turn tail and run, screaming in horror. Either that, or he’d double over laughing. Neither prospect was favorable.
After washing her hands and face, she pulled her hair free of the elastic band and brushed her hair smooth. Her face looked pale in the bathroom light. She applied a dusting of blush and then ran some gloss across her lips. Just a touch of eye shadow. Maybe a little mascara.
“Why don’t you just spend an hour curling your hair while you’re at it?” she asked, disgusted with herself. He was coming to help her wallpaper. That was it. She gathered her hair back into its ponytail, secured it in place with the elastic band, and then left the bathroom.
When she opened the door for Matt five minutes later, he didn’t double over laughing. He didn’t turn tail and run, either. He simply said, “Lead me to the project.” She wondered if he would have noticed if she’d shown up at the door in a string bikini?
She took him to the kitchen where it looked like a paper bomb had exploded. A roll of wallpaper was stretched out on the table next to a ruler and a pencil. Additional rolls of paper were propped up against the cabinet. The strip on the wall was still clinging on for dear life, but just barely.
His lips twitched before he covered his mouth with his hand. He nodded. His mouth still covered, he said, “Honey, I’m going to have to teach you the meaning of pretend.”
She put her fists on her hips to keep from whacking him. “What?”
“Pretend implies you have a basic knowledge of what you’re doing.”
She held out her hands. “What’d I do that was so wrong?”
He looked at the lone piece of paper making a desperate attempt to cling to the wall. “Need I say more?”
“It’s my first attempt.”
Moving closer, he visually followed the pencil line she’d drawn halfway down the wall. He rubbed his hands over his face as though he was already exhausted. “Let me guess. You drew that horizontal line by measuring off the ceiling.”
He said it like that was a bad thing, so she simply shrugged.
“Bad thing is the morons who built this place obviously never heard of a level.” He pointed toward the cabinets. “Your ceiling slopes upward in that corner by two inches. Therefore, so does your line.”
His eyes went to the rolls of paper waiting to be used. “That all the paper you have? Or is some of it hiding in fear of what you might do to it?”
“Might I point out that no rolls of paper came crawling out of hiding when you showed up.”
“So you don’t have any more. Is that what you’re saying?”
She swatted him.
He wheeled over to the strip she’d applied to the wall. He grabbed the loose corner. To press it to the wall again, she assumed. Instead, he pulled the sheet free.
Her hard work. Gone. In one quick yank. “What’d you do that for?”
“You’re going to run short if you stick with the match pattern you’ve established. We can make it stretch if we move your line down just one inch.”
“But—”
He gave her a hard look.
“But—”
He widened his eyes.
“Fine. You’re the expert.”
“That, I am.” He handed her the strip. “Fold this so the glued sides touch and put it somewhere safe. Bathtub would be a good spot.”
When she returned to the kitchen, he was gone.
“Matt?” There was no answer. She threw her hands in the air. “Great. Rip off my wallpaper I spent twenty minutes on and then leave. Some help you are.”
Her telephone rang. She grabbed it. Matt said, “Can you bring that cute little ass of yours out here to my car?”
She hung up and smiled. Maybe he would have noticed if she’d opened the door wearing nothing but a string bikini.
Don’t get your hopes up. He’s going back to Fuller Lake someday, remember?
Still, her step was light and bouncy as she made her way across the lawn to his car. His trunk lid was open and he was leaning into it, but he wasn’t moving. From her vantage point, he appeared to have his hand covering his eyes. The edge in his voice she’d heard earlier came to mind.
“Matt?”
For as still as he’d been, he became the complete opposite as he dug in the trunk. A man with a sense of purpose. She tried to get a look at him, but he managed to keep his face pointed away as he started handing her tools, almost as though he knew she was trying to get a look and he had something to hide.
He handed her a metal L thingy and a plastic gadget with a crank on the side. A level and a tape measure. A mini paint roller without the fuzzy covering. A bucket of paste and a paint brush.
“I need all this?” she asked when her arms were full.
“Unless you want it to look like Kaylee was in charge of your wallpapering.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He looked and sounded like his normal self right down to the teasing, and she wondered if her concern was unwarranted.
Back in her apartment, he took the level and the tape measure from her. She dumped the rest of the tools on the counter while he started measuring and drawing lines. She watched in wonder as he moved down the wall. His T-shirt strained with every movement he made, defining the rock-hard muscles across his shoulders and upper arms. Watching him was better than any movie she could have picked out at the video store.
The line he’d made shifted dramatically from the one she’d drawn. When he got to the end, he looked at her. Embarrassed he’d caught her staring, she said, “I hope you’re not afraid of spiders. You had one on your shoulder.” She tapped her own shoulder. “I kept an eye on it to make sure it stayed on your shirt.”
He twisted his neck farther, checking out his shoulder, and then turned those chocolate eyes back on her with his eyebrows arched. He clearly wasn’t buying her story.
She shrugged. “Must have gotten away.”
“Hand me that chalk line.” When she hesitated, he said, “The green plastic thing with the crank and the pull ring.”
Within minutes, they had a horizontal blue chalk line snapped on the wall and a vertical line snapped twenty inches from the corner.
“What made you decide to start with the bottom?” Matt asked as he picked up a roll of paper she’d chosen for the top half of the wall. He had a smudge of blue chalk at the corner of his lips.
“Because that’s the pattern I like the best.” She let her gaze stray away from the smudge of blue to roam across his lips. She’d never seen a set of lips that she’d wanted to kiss more. She forced her attention away from him.
He peeled off the plastic wrapping from the roll. “For future reference, that’s not how you decide
on which paper to start with. You always want to start at the top. Especially if you’re going to use this pre-pasted crap.”
“The lady at the store said the pre-pasted paper is easier.”
“The lady at the store doesn’t know shit. You do enough wallpapering, you learn that it’s best to use paste and a brush. It’s messy, but your paper sticks.”
Having taken her eyes off him hadn’t helped. She pictured his lips sucking lightly at her neck before they moved lower, kissing her along the lace edge of her bra.
He leaned back in his chair. His gaze ran the length of her countertop. “About the only thing you did right was clear off the countertop.”
“I didn’t clear off the countertop.”
“You’re kidding? You don’t keep your counter cluttered with wall-to-wall decorative crap?”
“I like to live sparse. Less to pack if I have to move.” She frowned, wondering why she’d said that.
“You move often?”
Was eight times in seventeen years often? “Only when I screw up the wallpaper so badly that it’s easier to move than to try to fix it.”
“Then, it’s a good thing I’m here to save this project because I’d really hate for you to have to move.”
He didn’t want her to move? She became giddy with the thought that he cared. In a flash, she advanced through time—their first kiss, getting married, having children. Thoughts of Matt in her future came too easily. The air in the enclosed kitchen became stale and heavy. She took a step away from him and focused on the roll of paper on the table. “Time’s wasting. Shall we?”
They had two strips on the top half of the wall when Matt’s cell phone rang. She guessed it had to be his mother or father. One of them seemed to call whenever she was with Matt. She ran her finger lightly over the papered wall while he answered. Even though she’d applied the paper herself, she couldn’t believe what a difference there was between the strips she’d put up with Matt’s help and the poor thing she’d tortured earlier on her own.
“Hi, Dad.”
Bingo, she thought. His father would also ask about materials.
“You’re still out at the jobsite?...Three blues and then a black. That’s the pattern we decided on.”
Abby measured the next strip and then grabbed the L shaped metal thing. Square, she corrected herself. She lined the square up like she’d watched Matt do. She looked at him for his approval. When he nodded, she ran a straightedge blade along the square and smiled, pleased she’d done it on her own.
“I’m pretty sure I left you detailed instructions on this,” Matt said. “Yeah, sure. I understand my writing’s not the neatest…Sure, you can have Mr. McCofsky call me. I’d be happy to look over his bid…Two hundred’s more than enough…No, I’m not at home. I’m out…No. Just out, okay?...No, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m fine. Really…Yeah, I love you guys, too.”
Abby dunked the brush in the paste and then slopped it on the paper, brushing it out like Matt had shown her. A few hours later, the top half of the longest wall was papered. Abby stood back. “That looks nice.”
“I think you can be trusted now with that poor piece of wallpaper I rescued from you earlier. Can you get it?”
She got the piece and handed it to him.
“See this clump of flowers here?” He pointed to where she’d cut the paper at the top edge of a bouquet of flowers. “Now, look at the bottom. You’ve got one inch of this same section of flowers showing. That means to match the next row, you now have to cut off twenty inches from the top of your next sheet. By moving our line down on the wall, we’ve managed to eliminate all that waste.”
“Wow. You’re really good. No wonder your father’s always asking for your advice.”
“Don’t be fooled. My dad uses it as an excuse to call because he and Ma worry too much.”
“That’s not true. I mean, sure they worry. They’re parents. But your dad values your opinion.”
Matt patted her arm. “Honey, reality called. It said come back to earth.”
So darned bullheaded. She wanted to cuff him upside the head. Like Deborah Stryker had said a zillion years ago when Abby had first become Matt’s physical therapist, once he got an idea in his head he clung to it. Somehow, she had to get him to see that even in a wheelchair he still had worth.
He handed her back the strip of paper. “Slap some glue on here and put it in place. Then, we’ll cut off the excess.”
She was in the middle of hanging the strip when Matt’s phone rang again.
“Yeah, Ma,” Matt said. The edge was back in his voice. “I’m fine.” After a pause he said, “That’s ‘cause I’m not at home…No, I’m just out, okay?”
Holding the paper in place, she looked over her shoulder. Matt shook his head while he shrugged. “Parents,” he whispered. He nodded as he said into the phone, “Love you, too. Bye.”
He hung up. “I think they have separation anxiety.”
The separation anxiety went both ways. She’d heard the wistful tone whenever he was on the phone with his parents. As soon as the hurt over Crystal and Derrick wore off, he’d be on his way back to Fuller Lake, a fact she’d be wise to keep in mind.
Only one strip was left to be put into place on the large wall when they decided it was the perfect time to break for dinner. She’d be done with the wall and have time to clean up a bit before the pizza came out of the oven.
It felt perfectly natural when Matt put himself in charge of cooking while she prepared the last strip of wallpaper. He washed his hands and grabbed the towel from the bar on the stove. She smiled when he dropped the towel on the counter, just like she’d expected him to. He picked a frozen circle of pepperoni off the pizza and popped it in his mouth.
He’d just slid the pizza into the oven when his phone rang a third time. She paused as she brushed the paste onto the back of the paper. It was common for him to get a call from one of his parents when they were together. Once, he’d even gotten calls from both of his parents. Three calls was unheard of.
“I’m going to shut this damn thing off,” he said as he flipped open the phone. “Hi Ma,” he said without giving the caller a chance to speak. “Oh, hi.” His eyes shot to Abby while he spoke into the phone. “Hold on a sec.”
He set the open phone on his lap. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
The glue bucket and brush became unimportant as she watched Matt wheel from the room. He’d never left the room for one of his parents’ calls.
She remained still as she listened to his movements. He went to the end of the hall and then on into the living room. She heard a muffled, “I’m back.”
For a long time, there was silence. Matt listening to whatever the caller was saying. Abby turned her ear toward the doorway and listened hard, waiting for his reply.
“Yeah, I wish it would have turned out differently too. But it didn’t, did it?” His voice was harsh. The conversation didn’t sound like anything she’d expect him to have with his parents, and certainly not in that tone.
“I think I have a right to be pissed, Crystal.”
The paintbrush fell from Abby’s fingers.
“You cheated on me. With my best friend, of all people. Don’t you get how much that hurts? I have to go.”
Abby snatched up the paintbrush and hastily dipped it in the glue, trying to make it look like she’d been busily working the whole time he’d been gone. The paintbrush blurred. She shook her head and focused on spreading the glue, but she couldn’t get the call off her mind. Crystal had called. There was only one reason she could come up with.
Her hand stopped moving.
She’d known all along that one day he’d return to Fuller Lake. Not once had she thought it would be because Crystal wanted to get back together.
His wheelchair creaked. She spread out the paste and positioned the wallpaper sheet on the wall. As she smoothed it out, she realized Matt was still down the hallway.
She wiped her hands on a towel and droppe
d it on the counter before tiptoeing down the hallway. Her feet barely touched the floor as she moved into the living room doorway. The sight of Matt took her breath away, his head bent and his fingertips pressed to his forehead. Even though she’d been mouse quiet, Matt looked up. Her heart beat hard four times as he stared at her, saying nothing. Then his lips bent into something she assumed was supposed to be a smile but came off more like a grimace.
“You got that piece up?”
Instead of answering, she walked into the room and crouched down in front of him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure, peachy.” He looked away. “Never better.”
“I’m a good listener, remember?”
“Why can’t I move past what they did? Why can’t I just forgive her?”
Abby took his hand. “Maybe because you’re not the same person you were when you asked her to marry you.”
He turned his hand over and threaded his fingers with hers. “Today was supposed to be my wedding day.”
The world stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
His fingers tightened on hers, like he was clinging to her for support. “I’m glad you needed help with your wallpaper. I didn’t want to be alone today. Ma said they would have come down this weekend, but I knew Dad didn’t feel comfortable leaving the guys to work alone on the group home.”
“Me and my wallpaper are hardly a good substitute for family.” Her thighs ached from crouching. She wanted to shift positions, but she was afraid it would distract him. “You should be with them.”
“I could have gone home for the weekend, but I knew my mom would have smothered me. That’s not what I needed today. I needed…a friend.”
He’d chosen to be with her instead of his parents? The idea was both thrilling and frightening. “And you got stuck with me?”
“If this is being stuck, I like stuck.” He rubbed his thumb against her hand. “You may be a pain in the ass, but I’m so thankful you met me at the bar that night. I don’t know why you didn’t blow me off right then and there.”
