“What you want,” Joshua clarified. “But maybe not what I want.”
“Well, how will I know whether you want it if you don’t come to the showing?”
Joshua sighed. He was not going to win this argument. “I’ll be there. Just hold your horses and don’t sign anything yet, OK?”
“OK. See you in a few hours!” she said, instantly brightening.
Joshua mumbled something and put the phone down slowly. She was utterly impossible when she wanted something. Melina was exceptionally good at getting her way.
THIRTY-NINE
Saturday morning in early February found Joshua turning omelets in Melina’s efficiency kitchen while the rain fell in torrents, rattling the windows.
Melina emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a terry cloth robe, towel on her head. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup and her skin glowed from the heat of the shower.
She sniffed the air appreciatively and sat down at the tiny table Joshua had already set with orange juice and banana bread. He placed a frothy cappuccino in her hands, courtesy of Darth. The espresso machine was one of the few possessions Joshua moved into Melina’s carriage house; the rest remained in storage in the garage below.
“You spoil me. You know that?” Melina asked, taking a careful sip of the hot, silky drink.
“I know.”
The statement hung between them, growing more significant with each moment of silence.
“I mean, I really appreciate what you’re doing … everything you do for me,” Melina said, trying to capture the weight of what she meant. Accustomed to clawing her way to the top, always looking out for herself and watching her back, it was a relief to feel so secure with someone.
Joshua deftly plated the omelets and brought them to the table, taking a seat and a sip of his own cappuccino.
“Mel, you’re my wife. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” he said, offering a reassuring smile.
“I … I guess I just didn’t realize how much I take for granted, and how much you do for me,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “I mean, I know it’s been hard since we got back from Hawaii, living here, trying to find a house, trying to get used to each other.”
“Yeah, you’re pretty tough to take,” Joshua joked, but Melina looked distressed—clearly, she wasn’t ready to make light of their new, domestic not-quite-bliss.
“I’m sorry,” he added gently. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant, well, it is a challenge finding the right place for us. To be honest, I’d be happy with many of the places we’ve seen. I just want the stability that comes with being able to stay in one place, on our own terms. I don’t care if it’s a fixer-upper—I like projects—but we’ve got to be able to afford it.”
“We could have afforded the one on Meadowlark,” Melina said, referring to a glass-and-steel modern house perched on a steep hill that they’d toured last week.
“No way,” Joshua said. “I mean, we could have afforded the mortgage, but it was all wrong for us. It didn’t have a backyard for Aussie. It had a gajillion stairs. It looked really fancy, but it felt soulless.”
“I think you give a house its soul,” she disagreed, thinking of what she could have done with the décor. “I just don’t think you give the best houses a chance. You see the price tag, but you don’t see their potential.”
“We’re not going to buy something that’s financially out of reach,” Joshua said firmly.
“Well, we’re not going to buy something boring, or tiny. I don’t want to live in an anonymous suburban box,” Melina countered. Then she brightened. “But we haven’t seen everything yet. And if I get half as lucky finding a house as I got with finding a husband, I will be ridiculously happy.”
It wasn’t an apology, but it was a start.
***
Joshua had just finished his shower and Melina had finished the dishes and dressed when they heard a knock. Aussie bolted to the door, sniffed, wagged his tail and stood aside; it was friend, not foe.
The rain was still going strong and Momo was in no condition to climb stairs to the carriage house apartment, so Melina wondered who would stop by before nine on a weekend morning.
Melina opened the door while Joshua hastily pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. Squirt was there, rain streaming off his jacket.
“Come in quick!” Melina urged, and he stepped inside on a small rug. Squirt tried to contain the drips, pulling off his jacket and hanging it on the row of hooks. He stood in place to keep his shoes from tracking water across the sitting room carpet.
“Hey there,” Joshua said, extending a hand and welcoming Squirt. He motioned to the chair by the door. “Take off your shoes and stay a bit; I’ll make you a coffee if you like.”
Squirt thanked Joshua and crouched to remove his shoes, trying to avoid Aussie’s eager sniffing. With a word, Joshua directed Aussie back to his pillow. Melina straightened the newspaper sections that were strewn across the coffee table.
“How’s Momo?” Melina asked, affection in her voice.
“Great, great,” Squirt said, nodding. “The kids adored having her this week, and they’re always fighting to get Nana Mo’s attention.”
Since Momo’s accident, Squirt had been taking Momo on “vacations,” as she called them, to visit his house for a week at a time.
“Lynette and I decided last fall, right after the accident, that we wanted Momo to come live with our family full-time,” Squirt said. “I offered right away, but it took a while for Momo to decide.” Joshua handed Squirt a steaming mug. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thank you.” Melina grinned and looked down at her teardrop ring. “I’m so glad Momo was with you for Christmas, especially since we were gone.”
“Momo’s been with us every Christmas,” Squirt said, and Melina looked up in surprise, not realizing the depth of their ties. “She’s truly part of our family. Up ‘til now, she’s always wanted to live independently, in her own house, and we haven’t been as close to her as we would have liked. But since her accident, it makes more and more sense for her to come live with us. We have plenty of room—it’s a huge farmhouse, and everything she needs is on one level.”
Melina looked concerned. “But her garden. Her birds. She’ll have to leave the stuff she loves most.”
Squirt shook his head. “What she loves most is the people in her life. And you know what each of us gave her for Christmas? A birdhouse. So she’s got six birdhouses put up, all over our yard. Momo decided this week that she’s willing to come live with us, but now she’s on a roll—she’s in the house right now putting stickers on what’s she’s selling, or giving away, or taking with her.”
“What can we do to help?” Joshua asked, ready for action. “I guess there’s packing? No wonder you came over—you’re going to need some help with all of her stuff.” Joshua assured Squirt that it was OK to ask for extra muscle.
Melina saw her day’s plans for house hunting fade, but she refused to show her disappointment. Momo was far more important. “We have all day to help, we can do that,” she said, and Joshua nodded, acknowledging what it cost Melina to give up this time.
“What I really wanted to talk to you about isn’t the moving, though,” Squirt said. “It’s the house. Once we’ve got Momo moved out, we’re going to have to sell it, and I’m wondering if you—”
“Sell it?” Melina interrupted. “Sell Momo’s house?”
Squirt misinterpreted Melina’s concern. “I hate to ask you to move, Melina, especially since you’ve been so good to Momo, but at least you can rent the carriage house for as long as it takes to sell the property. You’re not on a lease, so if you want to move out sooner, we’ll totally understand.”
Melina was stunned. She wasn’t thinking of her current living situation at all. She was thinking of her future.
“When are you putting Momo’s house on the market?” Melina demanded, her excitement building. “How much is it?”
Squirt looked confused. “We’re m
eeting with a Realtor tomorrow. She’s going to estimate its market value and figure out if we should leave some of Momo’s furniture for staging.”
Joshua took Melina’s hand and squeezed it. The glance between them confirmed that Joshua understood what was going through her mind.
Yes, this house was different from the houses they’d been touring. It was old, needed a lot of fixing, had cranky plumbing and questionable wiring. It had a massive yard and no view. It was everything she’d said she didn’t want.
But it was perfect.
“Squirt, do you mind if we have a look?” Joshua asked. “I mean, we’ve been inside plenty of times, but Melina and I have been house-hunting and this might be exactly what we’re looking for.”
“How about now?” Squirt said, standing.
“We’ll be right over,” Joshua said. “Just give us a few minutes.”
Squirt suited up against the rain shower and left. As soon as the door closed, Melina and Joshua were both talking at once.
“This is the one, Josh.”
“Are you really serious about this?”
“I just know it.”
“But it seems all wrong, from everything you’ve said.”
“It’s big. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood.”
“But it doesn’t have a view like you wanted. It’s not fancy or modern. It’s not a trophy house.”
“We can fix it up.”
“Fix it?” Joshua looked at her. “Do you realize you just rejected the last twenty houses we looked at because they needed fixing? And now you’re telling me you’re happy to do a bunch of renovation?”
“Yes,” Melina said, thoughtful. “I figured out gardening last year, so there’s no reason I can’t learn to paint and whatever else we have to do.”
“Electrical? Plaster? Carpentry? Melina, this house is going to require a ton of help. You saw how badly it had been neglected when we cleaned it out for Momo last fall.”
“I know, and I’m OK with that. I’ve never been afraid of hard work. This is just work that will get my hands a lot dirtier.”
Joshua smiled. “Say it again.”
“What?”
“Say you like getting dirty. This new DIY attitude is pretty sexy.” He leaned toward her, savoring a long, slow kiss, breathing in the smell of her shampoo.
“So, let’s go look?” She broke away, eager to see Momo’s house for the first time as a potential buyer, rather than just a guest.
“I don’t know why we should even bother,” Joshua shook his head. “You already know it feels like home.”
FORTY
Joshua and Melina started moving in even before the sale closed. Momo told them she wanted it to be cared for by people she loved, and it made the move to Squirt’s house easier.
On their first day moving in, Melina climbed hundreds of stairs as she shuttled her closet from the carriage house to their new master bedroom on the second floor of Momo’s house. Now her house.
She filled the master bedroom closet, then filled the closet in the adjacent bedroom. On the floor of the closet, she stacked clear shoeboxes filled with designer heels—playful Choos, spiky Manolos and red-soled Louboutins.
The two closets were full to bursting, organized with everything in its place. On the inside of the closet doors, Melina added racks for belts and scarves. And in the center, in a place of honor, she hung her burnt orange Giustiniano bag.
Next, Melina turned her attention to the bathroom—in this old house, there was no such thing as a “master bath,” just one small bathroom upstairs to serve four bedrooms.
The pedestal sink offered zero storage for her products, soaps and lotions. A built-in medicine cabinet was little help, so shallow it could barely hold all of her makeup.
It was nearly dark by the time Melina finished organizing the bathroom, and she padded downstairs to see what Joshua was doing.
The kitchen table was set, candles lit and the smell of comfort food rose from the stove, where Joshua stirred something in a pot. Melina came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, kissing the side of his neck. It tasted like salt.
“So what have you been up to?” she asked.
“You mean, besides making our celebratory dinner?”
“Yep. I know you can do more than that in a day. You’re multi-talented,” she said.
“I talked to a contractor about our floors; they’re going to refinish the wood after we’ve painted,” he said. “And then I took down all of the old blinds and washed them, and I polished all of the furniture Momo left us, and I wiped down all of the book cases so they’re ready for us to move our stuff in.”
“What about your stuff?”
“I moved what I needed into the kitchen and started to put that away,” he said, gesturing to boxes that were only partially unpacked.
Over dinner, they discussed plans for the house. It wasn’t a major renovation, just a “refresh,” Joshua said, sprucing up each room before they moved their own things into it. Downstairs required paint on virtually every surface, refinishing the floors, and a few new light fixtures.
After dinner, Joshua suggested, “Let’s go upstairs and decide what we’ve got to tackle there.” Melina followed him upstairs, sore legs reminding her of how many times she had already climbed the stairs that day.
The smaller bedrooms, they agreed, needed little more than a fresh coat of paint. When they got to the master bedroom, however, Joshua stopped and stared.
There was no furniture in the room—nothing large would be moved until Mark, Greg, and Juan came on the weekend to help. And yet the closet was a riot of color, completely full of Melina’s things.
Without comment, Joshua turned and left the room. He peered into the adjacent room’s closet and saw the same: Melina had spent the entirety of their first moving day setting up her closet—rather, two closets—and had not done a speck of work on the rest of the house.
Joshua swept into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly in Melina’s face.
She shrunk back, realizing her mistake. What did he think when he saw that? she wondered. There’s no room in the closet for him. I took two closets and didn’t even ask him. I took all of the space in the bathroom.
She heard the water running, then the bathroom door opened abruptly.
“What the hell, Melina?” Joshua hissed. “This is not how it’s supposed to work. We’re a team. We’ve got a million things to do to get this house ready to live in, and you picked this?”
Melina was aghast. “I can move some of my stuff. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”
“I didn’t realize you were going to spend all day playing with your clothes and shoes instead of working on our house.”
“I was working! Do you know how many stairs I had to climb to get everything over here?”
“You were working for you. You were not working for us!”
With a pop, the lights went out, punctuating Joshua’s anger. Melina felt tears slide down her cheeks and she was momentarily disoriented.
Joshua reached out for her hand.
“Mel? Something must have hit a power line,” he said quietly, his anger extinguished as completely as the lights.
Melina sniffed. She felt so low, so selfish. She pulled away from him and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Joshua moved closer. His arm found her shoulder, then her hip, then he wrapped himself around her, pressing her against the wall in the hallway, pulling her head against his chest.
She hiccupped, choked with tears. “You shouted at me.”
“Mel? I’m sorry. I was mad but I’m not that mad. I just want to feel like we’re working together, on the same team. I’m sorry for shouting at you.”
She took a ragged breath and pulled him closer. Pale light from a street lamp filtered in one window, showing the curve of his jaw but an otherwise unreadable expression.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “For not helping with the house and instead just helping myself
.”
“Hey, I know your stuff needs to be moved over here. And it’s not that. It’s about priorities. We’ve got a million things that need doing, and you were focused on your stuff. I mean, where was my stuff going to go?”
“I’ll move—” she started.
“No. Don’t worry about that part. We just need to figure things out together. Like, what if we wanted to paint the closets first? Or maybe we should turn the small bedroom into your dressing room, so you’ll have all the space you need?”
Melina smiled softly. “You’d do that for me?”
“I’d do anything for you.” Joshua kissed the scar on her forehead. “Don’t worry, babe, we’ll get this house in shape together. But the first order of business is getting the lights back on.”
Joshua moved to unfurl his arms from around her, but Melina pulled him closer. “Let’s make it the second.” Her hands pulled his shirt above his head and she led him down the hall to a bedroom overlooking the backyard, illuminated by pale moonlight.
The room was empty—no bed, no dresser, no rug. “Are you thinking we ought to make this house our own?” Joshua asked, peeling Melina’s clothes off one by one.
“You’re getting the idea,” Melina encouraged him, running her hands down his back and beneath the waistband of his jeans.
Joshua shed his own clothes and then turned Melina slowly in front of him, studying her curves in the moonlight. She let out a shuddering sigh, partly from the drama of a few moments before, partly from the feeling of his eyes all over her body.
It was somehow even more intimate than his hands touching her—she was bared to him, every scar, every imperfection. Surgeries after the accident puckered and marred her abdomen.
Joshua finally reached out to touch her, his hand tracing her figure—shoulders, breasts, waist, hips, knee. He slipped his hand under her knee and hitched it against his hip. He pushed Melina against the wall next to the window, pressing into her.
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