Going Wild

by Gretchen Galway

  The same town where she’d gone to high school with Ian and learned what passion didn’t look like. If she’d ever had a kiss like that one last night, she would’ve known better.

  “Tell Ian to email me about his schedule and the door,” Jane said. “And give him my eternal gratitude.”

  “You’ve got mine,” Billie said. “It’ll get him out of the house. He’s as bad as Mom. I hope you’re ready to have him over there first thing tomorrow.”

  “That would be fantastic.” Because her emotional barriers were obviously going to be inadequate.

  Grant wasn’t aware of the start of construction until the feel of shaking walls woke him from a deep sleep.

  Earthquake! his nervous system insisted, flooding his body with adrenaline so he could run out of the house as if it were 1906.

  He made it as far as the hallway before he realized the shaking was coming from a tall guy in cargo shorts with his fist raised to the wall outside Grant’s bedroom.

  “What the fuck?” Grant asked.

  “Sorry, did I bother you?” the guy replied. “I’m Ian. Putting in the wall.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  “Jane was in a hurry. Because of you, I guess.”

  “I guess.” Grant leaned against the doorframe, waiting for his pulse to return to normal. He’d always hated earthquakes. It was embarrassing for a native Californian to react like an Iowan to a little geological activity, but…

  He’d been asleep, damn it. Finally. After that kiss with Jane, he’d stayed up all of Friday night writing, which had been an interesting flood of creative energy he wasn’t going to think about too deeply. He’d spent Saturday at the library, intending to research bird migration so readers would think he was a genius but wasting time on Twitter instead. Back at the house, he’d heard Jane moving around and found himself, as tired as he was, unable to sleep until after two, and then fitfully.

  “Listen, I can come back later if this is a bad time,” Ian said. “The door is for you, after all.”

  “Actually, it’s for her.” Grant nodded down the hall. “She likes her privacy.”

  Ian eyed him. “Do you blame her?”

  “No,” Grant said, telling himself Jane couldn’t have told this guy anything. He was just the suspicious type. “Put in the wall. I’m not stopping you.”

  “It is noon.”

  “I don’t care. Come back at three in the morning if you need to. It’s Jane’s house, not mine.”

  “Yeah,” Ian said. He slipped his hands in his pockets and continued to watch Grant. “You know her long? You seem like, I don’t know, like you two have gotten to know each other.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  Ian’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he nodded, removing his hands from his pockets, and turned away as he cleared his throat. “I was just checking for studs.”

  Grant’s mouth fell open until he realized the guy was talking about the wall. “Sure. Right. Like I said, no problem. Will you need to get into my room?”

  “Don’t think so. No.”

  “Then… as you were,” Grant said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank you.” Now what the hell had Grant said that for? Something about this guy put his back up. With a manly snort, he returned to his room and shut the door, slightly more forcefully than necessary.

  Since when did contractors interrogate people living in the house where they were working?

  Grant rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He must be a friend of Jane’s, maybe even an ex. Definitely had a possessive vibe.

  After pulling on clean jeans and a T-shirt, he went back out into the hallway to use the bathroom. There he saw the guy measuring the wall and tapping for studs again, tempting Grant to pat his chest and suggest he look no further. Stud jokes never got old.

  “I think you’re putting it in the wrong place,” Grant said, watching him.

  “I’d also rather you had a separate entrance from the outside, for Jane’s sake, but it’s just not possible with the architecture of the house,” Ian said.

  “I don’t need a separate entrance from the outside, but I do need to take a piss.” Grant pointed over Ian’s head at the door to the bathroom, located several paces past where he was working.

  “Go ahead.” Ian stepped aside and stretched out an arm.

  Grant didn’t feel like arguing with a man who seemed determined to be difficult, not when his bladder was full. Smiling, he walked past him, went into the bathroom to do the basics, and returned to the hallway more comfortable than he’d been a few minutes earlier, with minty fresh breath to boot.

  Ian was still working in the wrong place. If he put the door between Grant’s bedroom and the bathroom, Grant—and all future tenants—would be shit out of luck. So to speak. “Listen, maybe you don’t want my advice,” Grant began.

  Ian looked up uncomprehendingly, and Grant saw he had bright green earbuds in his ears. He set down his measuring tape and pencil, took out one earbud, and said, obviously unhappy to be interrupted again, “Yes?”

  “Are you putting the door right there?” Grant asked, in case he misunderstood what the man was up to.

  “I’m trying to.”

  Grant smiled. Definitely an ex. He was a lot better than the stalker but not right for Jane. In spite of the tool belt, there was something slick and moneyed about him. His dark hair was cut and styled perfectly, no hair out of place. And his tools looked new, top quality. Even his pencil looked expensive—a mechanical model probably imported from Europe.

  Not right for Jane. No wonder it hadn’t worked out. She needed somebody less like she was, somebody more easygoing and less, ah…

  Rich?

  All right, maybe he was biased against successful guys. Being on the verge of financial ruin would do that to you.

  “You’re putting it between the bedroom and the bathroom,” Grant said. “Isn’t the point to give everyone some privacy?”

  “Why don’t you use the one— Hold on, isn’t there…” Slack-jawed, Ian stared off in the direction of the front bedroom. “Damn it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I was thinking there was a bathroom in there.”

  “Nope,” Grant said.

  “What was I thinking?” Ian slapped the wall with both hands and hung his head between his arms. “I know there isn’t a bathroom in there. I tore the carpet out with my own hands. There’s just a little closet.”

  “Yep,” Grant said, suddenly curious about the carpet and the hands. “You help Jane a lot with the house?”

  “Well, not much lately. She kicked me out.” Ian continued to shake his head as he began moving his tools down the hallway.

  “Did she have a reason?” Grant almost felt sorry for the guy, doing minor construction for a woman who didn’t love him.

  “She said it’s because she likes her privacy, but it’s really because I got engaged to her sister.”

  Grant’s brain belatedly clicked into gear. “You’re the brother-in-law.”

  “Not quite yet.”

  “I hear congratulations are in order,” Grant said, realizing he’d badly misjudged the volunteer handyman. Post-traumatic stress from the faux earthquake, perhaps. “You guys are expecting?”

  “She told you that?” Ian straightened, his tools forgotten, and leveled a hard look at Grant.

  “I was around when she got the call.”

  “Interesting,” Ian said.

  “Is it?”

  They regarded each other.

  “I’d better get back to work,” Ian said, not breaking his gaze.

  “Let me know if you need a hand.”

  “I won’t. We can’t do anything until we have a permit. I’m just preparing the plans.” Ian turned away. “But thanks.”

  “Sure.” Grant returned to his room, wondering what he was missing.

  He locked the door, grabbed a bag of trail mix, started the coffee maker, and took out his laptop to read the words
he’d squeezed out in the middle of the night during one of his bouts of insomnia, pathetic and inadequate as they were.

  Within five minutes, he knew it was hopeless. He could feel her down the hall, even with her oddly intense future brother-in-law lumbering around, banging studs between them.

  That door was going to take weeks to get installed. The Oakland permit process wasn’t as bad as Berkeley, but it wasn’t going to be done overnight.

  As much as he hated to get involved, he was going to have to get involved.

  To make sure he didn’t get involved in an entirely different way.

  12

  “Mark, nice to see you.” Jane greeted her cousin at the door, embarrassed her mother had told her father—who had then told Mark’s mother—about her home improvement project today.

  “I’m here to offer my assistance,” Mark Johnson said.

  “That’s sweet of you, but Ian’s just measuring and planning today. For the city permits, all that.”

  Mark was actually her second cousin, and they hadn’t spent much time together until recently, but their parents were aggressively working to change that. Even Jane’s father, who lived in Seattle with his second wife and had skipped her high school graduation for work reasons and had forgotten two of her birthdays (seventeen and twenty-four), suddenly seemed eager to nourish the family ties.

  It annoyed Jane. She liked her space and her time and her quiet. All were threatened by sociable relatives suddenly within a ten-minute drive.

  And Mr. Nightcap in her front bedroom, a ten-second walk from her own.

  She’d been so relieved to see him drive away earlier. So, so relieved. She was still feeling happy about it. So, so happy.

  Standing in the doorway avoiding eye contact, her cousin Mark looked miserable himself. A somewhat famous computer geek who’d made a fortune in start-ups at a young age, he had limited social skills and, although happily married, seemed especially awkward around women.

  “My mom thought you might want this door she bought at a salvage yard,” Mark said. “I tried to just bring a picture, but she insisted I bring it over so you could see it in person.”

  Jane glanced past him at a large SUV parked behind her minivan in the driveway. “Look, Mark…,” she began, dreading the inevitable rejection of her Aunt Trixie’s junkyard door.

  “I know, I know, but please look at it before you send me away. She’ll know if I’m lying. She can always tell.”

  “I need an interior dividing door, not—”

  “Let’s take a look,” Ian said. “Before we go to Home Depot.”

  Mark beamed at Ian. “That would be great. By the way, I’m supposed to tell you she loves the shelves you put in the kitchen closet.”

  “The pantry,” a woman said, coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “It’s called a pantry.”

  “Hi, Rose,” Ian said, smiling at Mark’s wife. Jane had noticed that men always seemed to smile at Rose. She had long blond hair and a milkmaid complexion and had an effect on straight guys that Jane found surprising, given that her size was considerably larger than the conventional ideal. Jane had to admit she was a little jealous and wondered how she pulled it off.

  “Nice to see you again, Rose,” Jane said, waving for her to come in. They only lived a short drive away, and Ian and Mark had hit it off, which probably meant Jane would be seeing a lot more of them.

  “I’m only here as Trixie’s spy,” Rose said. “She really wants you to see that door. If you don’t actually walk to the car and look at it—with the hatch open, not just through the window—I’m not sure what. It involves punishing my husband, however.”

  Gazing adoringly at his wife, Mark’s awkwardness faded away. “Punish me how?” he asked quietly, raising an eyebrow. “Will we be naked?”

  “I apologize for him,” Rose said to Jane, but her fair skin was flushed and she didn’t look at all sorry. “Will you come see and get it over with? It is beautiful.”

  “How can a door be beautiful?” Mark asked.

  “When it looks like this one, sweetie,” Rose said, patting his abdomen.

  “Can I come out and look at it also?” Ian asked.

  “You better,” Jane replied. “You’re the handyman. Did you measure the, uh, whatever?”

  “You mean the wall?” Ian asked.

  “And whatever else, yes.” Jane was feeling irritable with so many people crowded in her front hallway, her home. And none of them was—

  No, she was glad Grant had left. She didn’t know where or why, but he had, and she was grateful there was one less person she had to worry about. But she knew she would be glad when it was only him and the others were gone.

  And there was a nice, thick door between them.

  One by one, they filed out the door and down to the SUV, where Mark jogged ahead and flung open the hatch. Everyone yielded to Jane, who looked inside at a door that was indeed beautiful. A narrow oak door with ornate stained glass panels rested inside, reflecting the afternoon sun as it fought through the fog blanketing the hills.

  Jane turned to Ian. “Will it fit?”

  “Sure. Don’t see why not.”

  “How will you get it to, you know, stick?” Jane asked.

  “Lots and lots of glue,” Ian said. “And tape.”

  Jane heard a snort, but everyone managed to keep a straight face.

  “Then do it however you’re going to do it,” Jane said. “Please.”

  She and Ian got along as well as could be expected. He’d been a terrible boyfriend, scarring her for years because he’d had absolutely no sexual interest in her, and then, to make everything worse, last year he had somehow found that chemistry with her sister.

  Not surprisingly, Ian and Jane didn’t always enjoy each other’s company. Her mother said it was very painful for everyone, and Jane should find a man for herself so Ian and Billie could truly enjoy themselves.

  She turned to Mark and Rose, who looked surprised but happy. “You don’t have to lie to her,” Jane said. “I love it.”

  “Really?” Mark pinched his upper lip and rolled it between his fingers. “I had a whole story worked out. I had to brake really hard to stop from running over a dog, and the door bounced out the back and rolled down a cliff, and it was all terribly, horribly sad. But the dog was fine, thank God.”

  “That’s a great story, honey,” Rose said. “Except wouldn’t the door slide forward and smack us in the heads?”

  “At first, yes. Which is why I got confused and opened the hatch instead of the hazard lights.” Mark rubbed the back of his head, flinching as if it had really been struck by planks of antique oak and glass.

  “She’d want to know what kind of dog,” Ian said.

  “She’d get suspicious if I named a breed,” Mark said. “I thought of that.”

  “Trixie’s a huge dog person,” Rose told Jane.

  “I noticed,” Jane said. She and Billie had gone to dinner at her house several times now, and there were at least three dogs running around.

  “They’re Chihuahuas, mostly,” Mark said, “so she’s actually a tiny-dog person.”

  “Well, no stories needed. Tell her thank you,” Jane said. “And thanks, Mark, for offering to help.”

  “We won’t be able to do a lot today,” Ian said, “but we can get started on the permit. Help me get this out of the truck?”

  The four of them carried the door up the steps, tripping over each other’s feet, and into the house, setting it next to Grant’s closed door.

  Grant’s door gave nothing away, no hint of what was inside. Would she regret installing a door with glass panels between the two parts of the house? The stained glass wasn’t quite transparent, but not quite opaque, either. If the lighting was just so, a person could see shapes and movement on the other side.

  She shook off her doubts. It was a lovely, unique piece of craftsmanship and would increase the value of her home. There wasn’t any risk of her dancing around naked right n
ext to it with the hall lights blazing; her privacy was secure.

  Ian measured the door, sketched, took notes, and snapped pictures while Jane made everyone iced coffee and they hung around, watching Ian work.

  “Nothing else I can do here,” Ian said finally. “I’ll have to draw up the plans at home.”

  “Thanks, Ian,” Jane said. “Really.”

  “Well, we’ve fulfilled our mission,” Rose said, squeezing Jane’s arm. “You don’t need us to stick around for anything, do you? We’re totally willing to stay if you—”

  “No, not at all. Please, don’t let me keep you,” Jane said, adding a long ramble about how grateful and thankful she was to everyone for being there, for the door, for the company.

  Rose gave her a knowing smile. “I’m married to a hermit,” she whispered. “I recognize the signs. Don’t worry, we won’t start showing up unannounced all the time.”

  “But— I appreciate— I’m not—” Jane began, but Rose was already striding out the door.

  Ian took off in his pickup, Rose and Mark in their SUV, leaving Jane standing in the hallway with only the antique door for company.

  “I’m not a hermit,” she told the emptiness.

  And then sighed with relief to be alone.

  She’d skipped lunch. What should she eat? Maybe a cheddar omelette or chicken-and-vegetable soup. Although it was July, the fog had never burned off, and the strong wind blowing off the bay felt as cold as Tahoe in February.

  She heard a key in the front door, and then it swung open.

  “Hi,” Grant said.

  Shadow, who had been hiding all day, appeared from nowhere and began rubbing against Grant’s legs, making the bark-meows she did to express her annoyance with a long separation.

  Jane, unfortunately, could relate to the impulse.

  Grant had waited until he saw the pickup and SUV drive away before starting up the Rover from where he’d parked down the street, then driving the rest of the way down the block to the house. He’d lurked another few minutes before going inside.

  She liked her privacy, he liked his. By the time he was walking through the front door, he’d thought she would be safely tucked away on her side of the house.