by Cindi Madsen
The walls would get pale aquamarine and white stripes, and the light fixture would be one of those fun flower spheres or something. Too young for me, but not for teenage me.
I sat on the bed, cringing at the squeal of the springs. That’s right, I called these the how-to-get-busted springs. Once I’d snuck in at two a.m. and jumped from the window to the bed, and Mom and Dixie had come to see what the racket was. They excelled at deductive reasoning and immediately knew I wasn’t just all dressed up in the middle of the night for funsies. Then there was the time my high school boyfriend and I were kissing, and the springs alerted Mom that our make-out session had gone horizontal. She came up, interrupted, and made us play Monopoly with her and Dixie.
Every inch of this room told a story. Over in front of the full-length mirror was a dark stain from the time I decided to go from blond to brunette—it looked horrible and washed out weird, but I got to feel like a different person for a while. I toed the crusty rainbow puddle of dried nail polish on the carpet to the right of the bed—my case had tipped over and several of the bottles broke. I’d used an entire bottle of remover trying to get the stain out, but it was no use.
Blips of my sporadic life here were scattered about. The mermaid I’d painted in junior high, a plastic champagne glass from prom and the accompanying picture with the very boy who’d been forced into family board-game fun. Not sure why I kept those mementos, because we’d broken up the week before prom but still went together, “as friends,” and it was super awkward. Enough so that I’d called Dixie and asked her to come get me from the after-party.
And like always, she was there when I needed her, telling me that someday it’d make a funny story, the way the crappiest of days did. Thinking about it now, it did make me smile. The big gap between us in the picture showed we weren’t exactly digging our magical night, but I rocked that strapless red dress.
My eyes skipped to the stack of CDs on the dresser. I stood and scanned the albums, most of which I’d be embarrassed to admit to ever listening to now. I powered on the dust-covered stereo, thinking it wouldn’t actually play, but the CD made that whirring noise, and then Jesse McCartney filled the room.
Yikes. Just because I’d had my doubts about long-lasting love, even back then, didn’t mean I hadn’t understood the allure of a cute male singer with an unnaturally high voice.
I spun in a circle, soaking in the memories.
Ooh, if I was going to fix up this room, I’d build a bookshelf along the short wall. I’d hit my head on the sloping ceiling more than once while retrieving a runaway shoe or earring, and I’d always thought it would make a perfect little reading nook. If I’d had it back in the day, I would’ve rarely left it. I was the nerdy girl who read not just fiction, but fatty non-fiction novels on whatever subject caught my interest. In my early years, animals—especially big cats like tigers, lions, jaguars, and cheetahs—and anything involving space. Then later, history, biology, and politics.
I majored in political science and, more shiny-eyed than I should’ve been, got my first job on a campaign. The older, married candidate hit on me again and again, and I tried to walk the right line, shooting him down without compromising my position on his staff. The night he’d cornered me and full-on propositioned me, following up with a threat about ensuring I would never work in politics again, I quit and concluded I’d wasted four years of college.
Of course I’d filed a report in an attempt to prevent him from treating other women the same way. You know, justice and all that jazz.
And of course he pulled enough strings with his good-old-boy contacts that nothing came of it. Well, nothing except for making me sound like a desperate hussy who threw herself at him. After that mess, I got the job at Azure, telling myself I’d tend bar while figuring out what I really wanted to do with my life. At one point, I toyed with running for office myself, but that was a commitment and a half, and I had a tendency to blurt out how I felt, unchecked, which didn’t naturally lean toward being politically correct or well-liked. I hadn’t completely ruled it out, though. It was in the Maybe Someday column and didn’t feel right for the Here and Now one.
The squeak of the springs punctuated my return to the bed. I picked at a loose thread on the comforter as the renovated image of how amazing this bedroom could be overlaid the current one. Maybe it would never be mine, but whoever had it next—my hope was for a strong kick-ass girl who didn’t have to deal with crap I had—would appreciate a quiet place to get away from the world.
“Excuse me,” the real estate agent called up the stairs. “Are you almost done up there?”
“Almost,” I said. Then I dialed up Dixie.
“Hey, sugar. My real estate agent told me that you had an appointment to look at the house this morning. Did you get the closure you needed?”
“Not exactly.” I told myself it didn’t matter if she said no, but my dampening palms told another story. “I actually have a proposal for you…”
Chapter Four
Water sprayed from the pipes under the downstairs bathroom sink, getting right in my eyes and soaking my shirt.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I said over and over again, throwing one hand out to block the steady stream blasting my face—big surprise, the water didn’t listen. I twisted the wrench on the part I thought needed tightening as the pipes gave another coughing creak and groan, as if telling me it was all my fault for expecting them to work after years of disuse.
“Oh, you wanna play like that?” I whacked the pipe with the wrench and was rewarded with another gush of water to the face. I scrabbled around on the wet floor, the liquid seeping through the knees of my jeans, and found the shut-off valve behind the toilet. It also complained and resisted doing the one job it had, but I finally managed to stop the flow of water.
Fat droplets clung to the strands of hair that’d come out of my ponytail and then slowly dripped down onto my already damp shirt. I exhausted every swearword I knew as I pushed to my feet and stormed out of the bathroom. Maybe if I let it be for a while, I’d magically know what to do about the leaky pipe and subsequent mess.
So far, the renovation process was going fan-freaking-tastic.
I was wringing out my shirt when a meow caught my attention. I looked down at the sleek black cat with the bright amber eyes. “You again? How the hell do you keep getting in?”
The cat’s eyes narrowed to slits, and I swore she was judging me, like she had been every day since Dixie gave me the green light on my house-flipping idea.
What did I get myself into? I’d promised to not only clean out the place but also help Dixie sell it for a lot more, and in return, she’d reimburse me for what I put into it—which was already adding up quickly—and pay me a cut of the profit, which I’d invest in another property if this turned out to be my calling.
Dixie went for it, and I could hear the tears clogging her throat when she confessed she was overwhelmed by what needed to be done and that she couldn’t thank me enough for giving her a solution to something she’d been stressing over for months. Finally, I’d be able to pay her back for everything she’d done for me. I’d also gotten a giant lump in my throat during our conversation, since apparently I was turning into an emotional, mushy person and was useless to resist it.
Case in point. This cat. Not Dixie’s, not any of the neighbors, either.
“Well?” I asked the cat, because she and I had been talking for a few days now, even though I kept ushering her outside every evening, worried I’d come back to piles of cat poop.
She had the gall to look right back at me and meow like she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Fine. I might’ve brought some cat food, but then you really should find a more permanent residence. This one won’t be empty for very long.”
That was probably wishful thinking, considering I was almost a week into the project and in so far over my head I couldn’t even see the surface anymore. Every single thing I tried to fix ended up more broken. Throwing in the
towel and saying never mind wasn’t an option, either, because in addition to a currently unusable sink, I’d already stripped a significant amount of wallpaper, which didn’t come down as easily as the damn YouTube video told me it would. Not to mention the section of carpet I’d pulled up to see if there was hardwood underneath, just waiting to be polished—nope—and then there was the fact that I was too stubborn to give up. All my life my mom had gone back on her word again and again, and I prided myself on doing what I said I would. That was why I didn’t make promises to guys I couldn’t keep.
I grunted when I squatted down to grab the cat food and the plastic bowl I’d brought from home, well aware that as long as I fed the kitty, she was probably going to keep coming back.
With another grunt, I straightened, my hands going to my lower back.
Thanks to balancing reno stuff during the day and working my closing shift at the bar, I was tired and sore all the time. When Savannah showed up on my doorstep Wednesday night and accused me of skipping our weekly run in the park—which she was extra crazy about with her wedding coming up—I confessed to her what I’d done.
I could still hear her laughter as she’d said, “You’re remodeling an entire house? You still haven’t settled on a paint color for your living room.”
I’d frowned at her, and she obviously read the exhaustion and stress in my features, because then she’d stepped forward and hugged me. “Sorry. I know that house means a lot to you, just like I know you’ll do an amazing job fixing it up.”
That was the nice thing about best friends. They busted your balls now and then, but they also knew when you needed a hug and some reassurance without your having to explain every little thing. Mostly because she already knew most of it. She’d promised to help however she could, but she’d recently started a new session of her 12 Steps to Mr. Right workshop and was balancing a lot of personal clients as well, so I knew she was drowning in work herself.
I could deal with the messy wallpaper and the painting that would need to be done once I finally got every shred of it down. I could also deal with the cat who Houdini’d her way in every night, despite my checking the house over for signs of entry. What I couldn’t deal with was the faulty electricity and how in addition to the pipes making this awful screeching noise like the water had grown attached to them and didn’t want to leave, now they were bursting right open. Then there was the attic. I’d opened the door and taken one step inside, only to spot a web that rivaled the one Frodo got entangled in on The Lord of the Rings. I’d quickly backtracked and jerked the door closed, deciding the monster spider who lived up there could have that space.
I shuddered and swiped at my shoulders, feeling ghostly spider legs crawling across them.
How had I let myself forget about this house’s many problem areas? I’d thought of them as quirks, but I doubted buyers would fondly think of waiting ten minutes for hot water, only to have three-point-five minutes of it, as a quirk.
It’s going to need a new hot water heater.
I wasn’t delusional enough to think that I could install one myself, but when I’d priced them as well as the installation fee, I started wondering if my bank account could take the repairs.
I’ll make it back. And then some.
I glanced down at my renovation cohort. “I don’t suppose you know how to install a water heater?”
The kitty meowed, which I took to mean she didn’t know how, but she knew a witch who could, and then I decided the fumes from the wallpaper remover were eating away my sanity.
Speaking of insane, I’m pretty sure I was beyond delusional when I decided I could do something like this in the first place. I thought of the shows I loved, how they’d flash the horrible before image onscreen and then the magical swipey effect would leave the new and shiny room in its place, making the transformation even more impressive. It always gave me a bit of a contact high.
I wanted that magical after. I wanted the high firsthand.
While I would love for it to be as easy as a magical swipe, I’d learned long ago that simply wishing didn’t do any good, so it was time to get back to work.
Bonus, my clothes were nearly dry. Since I still wasn’t ready to deal with the bathroom—that would probably take Google, YouTube, and some kind of ritualistic chanting involving mostly swearwords—I surveyed the kitchen, wondering whether to resume stripping off the wallpaper in here or the living room.
I frowned at the noise coming from underneath the sink. Oh, no. Not another leaky pipe. I didn’t even use the water in here today.
Cautiously, I approached, registering it was different from the usual complaining pipe noise, more thumping than creaking. I flung open the cupboard and let loose a scream as a mouse darted out.
It skittered across the floor.
“Get it, get it,” I yelled to the cat. She glanced at it, then turned to her food and continued to chow down. “Really?”
Looked like I was going to have to pick up a mouse trap, because my temporary cat was now spoiled on food I’d brought her. She was pretty fat, too, which made me wonder if I wasn’t the only one feeding her.
I went to close the cabinet door but caught movement. In a wad of newspaper, insulation, and other substances I couldn’t quite make out were squirmy, pink, hairless mice. “I so didn’t sign up for this.” I turned to the cat. “You’re not getting any food until you eat those.”
She simply stared back at me, like she knew I’d cave.
I leaned on the counter opposite the mice nest, and as if to spite me, the island creaked under my weight.
Sick of trying to be optimistic, I called Savannah. “So, um, I’m having a meltdown.”
“Oh, no. What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’d be shorter to tell you what’s not wrong when it comes to this house. I’m pretty sure the electricity is going to give out any second, and I’ve got at least one leaky pipe that I made worse instead of better, because that’s the kind of luck and skill I have. The wallpaper won’t come off the walls no matter what I try, so it looks like Freddy Krueger visited and left his mark, and I just found a nest of baby mice. We’re talking the disgusting kind with beady black eyes that look like embryos who need longer in the womb.”
“You’re not really making me want to rush right over,” Savannah said, her voice on the teasing side. “Spoiler alert, I’m not good at dealing with critters.”
“Okay, so I’ll call Linc. How’s he with plumbing and electricity repair?”
“Linc’s out of town this week, and I’m pretty sure both of those things are beyond his skillset anyway. But you know who would be good at knowing exactly what to do? Like so good you’d think he even did it for a living?”
Jackson’s face flashed before my eyes. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about the fact that he’d know what to do and how to fix everything, but I’d called him for help once and that was when lines got crossed and tangled, and I wasn’t going there again. “Don’t say it.”
“Call Jackson.”
I groaned and sagged against the nearest splotchy wall. “No, I got this. I mean, HGTV is a freaking liar who brainwashed me into thinking I could do it, so I just need to lower my expectations and realize I can’t be as fast as a team of people.” I also didn’t have the resources or the experience, but thinking about that might give me a panic attack, so I was going to pretend those problems didn’t exist. Like a grown-up.
“Ivy, come on. I thought you guys kind of made up or whatever.”
“We called a truce for one night, and it was super touch and go.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what exactly happened between you two? It’s always been rocky, but it’s definitely reached a whole new level in the past few months.”
“Nothing happened,” I automatically said, almost wishing it was true—it was the almost that stopped me from calling him more than anything. I couldn’t trust my emotions or my memory reel around him, and I couldn’t put myself in that situation, esp
ecially right now, when I felt so raw and vulnerable about life in general. “We just clash on every level, and I sometimes dream about strangling him with his own self-righteousness. And the feeling is mutual.”
“Mm-hm. It would be easier if you guys could get along at least until after my wedding.”
Another point for not calling him. He and I had two settings—crazy attraction and crazy irritation, and once either of those blew up in our faces, it’d make it harder to get along during the rest of the wedding festivities. Since I couldn’t explain that to Savannah, I simply told her I should get going.
“I’ll be over after my appointments to help however I can,” she said. “Until then, will you at least think about calling Jackson?”
“Fine.” Thought about it and rejected it. I said good-bye and attacked the kitchen wallpaper with renewed fervor.
About thirty minutes in, I peeled away a large section only to find it was covering a significant hole with wires, some of which weren’t connected to anything. I wondered if electricity still flowed through them, but since my hair was naturally crimpy enough and I didn’t think my insides would be improved by a little frying, I stayed clear.
I’ll deal with that later. A lot of things were being put off for the mythical time when I suddenly knew how to fix them, which meant it’d all catch up with me, but I’d also worry about that later. Later was really going to suck.
Chimes rang out, and I froze, wondering if the fumes were making me hear things. When I strained my ears, I heard the scratching of baby mice in their home under the sink, and logic told me that since that was real, I wasn’t, in fact, hearing things.
The several knocks that followed confirmed it. As I exited the kitchen, I checked the time. Savannah said she’d be tied up with work for a couple more hours at least, but maybe someone canceled. Or maybe a neighbor was coming to complain about the noise or tell me I’d catnapped their pet.
As soon as I swung open the door, I knew it was Savannah. Not her in the flesh, but her doing for sure. Her brother stood on the other side of the rickety screen door, scruff in full force, clothes deliciously dirty, toolbox in hand.
