Desperately Seeking Epic

by B. N. Toler

  Pulling her gaze away, she cleared her throat and said, “Good night, Paul.”

  With a nod, I left, careful to walk delicately on the porch so I wouldn’t fall through again. When I climbed in my truck and fired it up, I stared at the house for a moment, still not able to wrap my head around it all. She moved to a new state, started a new job, and bought a house that needed a ton of work. Was this woman afraid of nothing?

  Ashley is smiling at me, while Zane is staring at me from where he stands behind his camera on the tripod. Mills is leaned against the back wall and looks as if he’s so bored he may pass out.

  “Should I keep going?” I ask, unsure. I feel like I’ve been talking for hours. This damn room is becoming claustrophobic.

  “I think that’s enough for today.” I almost let out a huge breath of relief. Closing her notebook, she scoots forward in her chair. “Clara is quite a woman,” she notes.

  “Yeah, she is,” I admit.

  “So, we’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “My turn again, huh? Yeah. Sure thing.”

  We say good-bye and I head out of the room, taking in fresh air. Marcus is in the front, reading the newspaper, waiting for the guys to get back from their last jump of the day. I plop down on the couch beside him, letting my head fall back. He’s quiet for a moment, the paper hiding his face, when in a sultry, deep voice, he says, “Knowing I made her laugh that way . . . it was a thrill.” The paper shakes with his body as he tries not to burst out laughing.

  “You little shit,” I grumble. “You were listening?”

  “You have a way with words, Paul,” he snorts through his laughter, which he no longer tries to hold in.

  “You’re such a dick.”

  The paper is now crumpled in his lap, revealing his bright red face as he laughs so hard he can’t breathe.

  “That’s it,” I growl, wrapping my arm around his head, and locking it.

  “Let me go, you asshole,” he demands, even though he’s laughing.

  I ball up my fist and rub the top of his scalp, giving him a proper noogie. His little hands grip my wrist, trying to free himself, but I’m too strong.

  “Is this giving you a thrill, Paul?” he howls with laughter, mixed with a few grunts.

  “Sure does.” I laugh, too.

  “You better stop or I’m going to punch you in the balls,” he warns. Just before I move to extend my body out of his reach, he swings his hand and hits me right in the family jewels. We both fall to the ground as I clutch my nuts, groaning in pain. We’re both huffing, our age rearing its ugly head. The young men we used to be would’ve popped right up off of the floor and gone at each other again. But now, wrestling feels like a full cardio workout. Marcus is able to stand before me, but he uses the armrest to pull himself up.

  A soft giggle makes our heads snap in its direction. Neena is standing in the hallway with her camera, filming us. Clara stands behind her, smirking, as if she thinks we’re ridiculous. Which we are. Flicking my gaze to Marcus, his hair seems to be standing straight up like he just got out of bed from a night of rough sex. I’m still on the floor, cradling my manhood. This doesn’t look good.

  “Neena,” I gasp. “Would you mind turning that off, princess?”

  She quirks a warning brow, something she definitely learned from her mother. I called her princess. I’m not supposed to do that. At least not in front of other people.

  “I mean, please.”

  She flips the screen closed and clutches it to her chest. “You guys are funny.”

  “They’re something, all right,” Clara murmurs. “You guys are taking her home and cooking dinner, yes?”

  “We will have it ready by the time you get home,” Marcus assures. “Mei-ling is coming over too. We have big plans for tonight.”

  Clara eyes him inquisitively. “Please elaborate.”

  “I can’t.” Marcus winks at Neena. “Paul and Mei-ling have been working on this for a few days.”

  Clara’s dark eyes dart over to mine, a look of uncertainty and excitement mixed in them.

  “You’ll like this,” I assure her. “But Neena will like it more.”

  She bobs her head once in compliance before she kisses the top of Neena’s head. “Good luck with these two knuckleheads.”

  As Clara leaves to be interrogated by Ashley and crew, Neena smiles, and it’s sincere, but something is off. Her usual smile that lights up her whole face isn’t quite there. And now that I’m really looking at her, she’s paler.

  “You okay, hon?” I ask as I roll on my stomach preparing to stand.

  “Just a little tired,” she answers, and I center in on the small dark circles forming under her eyes. No matter how much she sleeps, her skin has paled considerably, making her appear as if she’s hardly sleeping.

  “We don’t have to do what we have planned tonight if you’re not feeling well,” I tell her. Entertainment be damned if my little girl isn’t feeling up to it.

  “I’m fine, Dad,” she replies, raising her voice an octave as if by doing so she will sound peppier.

  “Okay,” I answer uneasily. “Why don’t you sit down for a bit?”

  “The guys should be back any second now. It’s an early day. We’ll be leaving in twenty,” Marcus tells her. She nods and flops down on the couch, sitting cross-legged, flipping her camera lens open again, and watching what she’s just recorded.

  “Get up,” Marcus grunts as he passes by, giving me a hard kick in the ass.

  “Asshole!” I groan after him, earning a little chuckle from Neena.

  “Paul told us about the first time he saw your house,” Ashley chuckles, pushing some of her dark hair behind her ear as she folds her legs beneath her, sitting cross-legged.

  I huff out a little laugh at the thought. “Did he tell you he accidentally fired the gun, too? At a poor cat.”

  She grins. “Yeah, he did. That night seems to have been a pivotal point in the dynamic between you two, at least as far as he’s concerned.”

  I tilt my head in thought. “I think . . . it was the first time we really ever laughed together. Laughter is like the old grandmother in every family,” I note, “it brings everyone together. Even people that hate each other.”

  “Did you really hate Paul?”

  I wince with her question. “Hate is a strong word,” I surmise. “I hated him as a business partner, I guess. As a person . . . he was okay.”

  “Were you attracted to him? I mean, I know physically you were, but . . . otherwise?”

  I exhale loudly, widening my eyes. “Truthfully . . . I was a mess at that time. Thinking about Paul or anyone else that way seemed impossible. I was still very hurt with the loss of my marriage.”

  Her brows perk up. “You still wanted Kurt back?”

  Adjusting in my seat, I answer her. “I wanted my life back. I wanted him back. But at the same time, I really didn’t. I wanted who I thought he was back. Having people ripped from your life is hard.”

  Her brows furrow as if she doesn’t understand. As if she thinks Kurt didn’t deserve any consideration whatsoever from me. And she’s probably right. But I didn’t feel that way back then. “He was my husband. Life was comfortable, familiar. I knew him, or I thought I did, and I felt safe knowing he mostly knew me. He knew how I liked my coffee, how I’m grumpy when I first wake up. He knew how I cried at sappy movies or sad stories no matter how many times I’d seen them. He knew I liked fountain Coke from 7-Eleven with lots of ice—he had my habits down to a T. Once upon a time, he loved me and all my quirks. That’s hard to let go of.”

  “So . . . you didn’t want him back?” She cocks her head to the side in question.

  “I wanted the man I married back. But he’d left me long before then. You’re so young, Ashley,” I explain. “This probably doesn’t make any sense to you. I was grieving. Marriage feels like a living and breathing thing, and when you lose it, it’s like losing a family member. There are all these memories you’re left with, good ones tha
t you can’t really look back on fondly because you know it’s ended. And just like death, once it’s gone . . . really gone, you can’t get it back. My marriage was gone. I wanted it back. But I knew, no matter what, it would never return. Even if he’d come back crawling on his hands and knees, too much had happened. He’d lied and disrespected me too many times; betrayed me too much. And even though I knew that, that still didn’t make it any easier.”

  “How were you coping with the news about Daisy?”

  I let out a long groan. “I wanted to hate her. She had the life I’d wanted. I was so sad, and I wanted him to feel that, too. I wanted him to hurt like he’d hurt me. And I felt like Daisy was keeping him from feeling any pain. She was his distraction. But I didn’t hate her. I refused to. Hating her would make me a smaller person, a petty person.”

  “So how did you do it? Moving away from your job, your friends, and your life. It doesn’t sound like you had a great welcoming committee here.”

  I run my finger along the arm of the chair. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did it get any better?”

  “Over time. It took a few months. I think he started trying harder, but we still butted heads on quite a few things.”

  “Well Paul described the gun incident night as a turning point for him. What was yours?”

  I’d lived in Virginia for a month and a half. I had no friends. My staff hated me. Marcus really hated me. I’d put an end to his shenanigans with our clients and he did not take it well. With Paul, it was day to day. Some days we got along just fine, others, he thought I was a raging bitch and I thought he was an entitled asshole. I sold my shitty car to the junkyard and bought another shitty car that looked way uglier. At that point, I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so the appearance of my vehicle didn’t matter much so long as it ran and got me to work and back home every day. I was more alone than I’d ever felt in my life. But I had my house. My beautiful, shitty house. When I wasn’t at work, I worked on my house. Business was good, thanks to some new methods I’d implemented, and I was finally starting to get a paycheck and since I had no life, my money went to my home.

  With each job; painting walls, replacing windows, and so on, slowly, I felt myself finding peace. It was a Saturday, the first one I’d had off since I moved to town, and I’d planned an “exciting” day of staining cabinets for my kitchen. The weather was unseasonably hot for April in Virginia, or so everyone said. Every window in the house was open, box-shaped fans in them, since I hadn’t had enough money to add central air and heat yet. The oil heat got me through the cold nights, but eventually it would have to go. With my stereo blasting and the fans running, I didn’t hear Paul’s truck pull in, nor did I hear him enter my home. I was standing on my counter, smearing wood stain on the cabinets, when he touched my leg. I nearly fell off of the counter, it scared me so bad.

  “What the hell?” I hissed, my chest rising and falling dramatically as I attempted to catch my breath.

  When he laughed, I couldn’t hear it because the music was too loud. He turned and hit the power button, then I could hear him chuckling.

  “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be doing dives this afternoon.”

  “Well, hello to you, too,” he said dryly.

  “Hi, Paul,” I uttered exaggeratedly. Then, putting a hand on my hip, I asked, “Again. What are you doing here?”

  “The last group canceled today. Their church bus broke down and they couldn’t make it.”

  “Damn,” I sighed. “That sucks.” That was a lot of money we just missed out on.

  “Good news!” He beamed. “The day is not lost. I come bearing gifts. Well, a gift.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. He brought me a gift? What kind of gift would he have brought me, and why?

  “It’s in the back of my truck.” He stared up at me, his dark eyes flicking down for a moment to my legs, before meeting my eyes again. I pretended not to notice. When I didn’t move, he asked, “Would you like to see it?”

  “That depends. What is it?”

  “You have to come outside and see.”

  Rolling my eyes, I bent down and hung my stain rag over the edge of the bucket and climbed down. I hated that he showed up unannounced, for the obvious reasons, like, we weren’t friends. But another reason, which I hated to admit, was I knew I looked like hell. And staying true to Paul James, he looked amazing, as always. I was covered in sweat, no makeup, and my hair was knotted up on the top of my head. I’m pretty sure with the heat and the massive amount of sweating, my deodorant had already worn off since I had applied it that morning. So I probably didn’t smell that great either. He was finding something funny as he watched me, a humored smirk across his face.

  “Something funny?” I sassed.

  “You’re just cute when you’re annoyed.”

  Cute? Why didn’t that word feel quite right? No woman wants to be cute—not really. Cute is for little girls and babies. Women want to be beautiful; sexy. Deciding not to acknowledge it, I followed him outside to his truck, noticing what looked like a table in the back. Dropping the tailgate, he spun around to me with a grin and motioned his hand as if to say, look at this.

  “It’s a table,” I noted. It looked like a nice table, newly built, without any finishing to it. But what was I supposed to think about it?

  “It’s yours,” he said.

  I looked at him like he was nuts. “Mine?”

  “I built it for you.”

  I made an effort to school my expression. Was he serious? “You built this?” I asked, pointing to the table.

  Scratching the back of his neck, he released an awkward chuckle. “You don’t like it?”

  “No,” I quickly but calmly replied. “I’m just . . . confused.”

  He cocked his head, twisting his mouth to the side. He knew what I meant. He knew all things considered, it was weird that he built me, of all people, a table. “You’ve heard I’m kind of a wanderer, right?”

  “Uh . . . yeah,” I answered, severely confused. We were just talking about a table, now we’re talking about traveling?

  “Staying in one place makes me restless. Diving sates my need for adventure, somewhat, but not completely.”

  He looked at me then turned back to his truck, eyeing the table. “I’ve been trying to keep busy, stay distracted. Woodwork is my latest distraction.”

  “I see,” I murmured.

  “I built this same table three other times, but this one . . . this one I had trouble with.”

  “It looks like a nice table,” I offered. “But . . . why are you giving it to me?”

  “Well . . .” he chuckled. “I don’t need it, and I thought maybe you did.”

  “Why’d you build it if you didn’t need it? Why not build a desk or a chair or something?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped a little, annoyed at my questioning. “If you don’t want it just say so.”

  I gritted my teeth, biting the urge to snap back at him. Could he really blame me for being skeptical? Climbing up into the bed of the truck, I ran my hand across the wood. It really was a nice table. I couldn’t really see what he thought was wrong with it except for the rings with dark growth. Some people might not like that. The table was nothing fancy; it was simple. I liked simple. Simple could be elegant. Then I realized I could stain it to match my cabinets. “How much do you want for it?”

  Paul dropped his head as if he was exhausted by me. “Nothing. I’m giving it to you. It’s a gift.”

  I lost my patience. Was this a joke? Was he messing with me? “Why? Why me?”

  He tilted his head to the side as he looked up at me. “Because I didn’t give up on this one. And I like the idea of giving it to someone that won’t give up on it either.”

  My gaze dropped. I didn’t like that he saw this vulnerability in me. I hadn’t realized he was actually listening to me the night he brought me home as I babbled on about not giving up. I must’ve sounded like a nutjob. It was obvious, at lea
st to me anyway, that I was going crazy latching onto a house that I had no ties to with such intense sentimentality. I wondered if he saw it, too. Or was he just taking pity on me?

  “Are you sure?” I asked, my tone not hiding one bit of the uncertainty I was feeling.

  “I wouldn’t have brought it over here if I wasn’t,” he argued.

  I climbed out of the truck and together we pulled the table down, setting it near the porch. “I’m going to grab the wood stain I have in the kitchen. It’ll match the cabinets,” I told him.

  “Wait,” he called as I spun around to go. When I turned back, he was unfolding a pocketknife before extending his arm, handing it to me.

  “What is that for?”

  “To make your mark.”

  I blinked a few times, realizing what he meant.

  “This is yours now. You’ll love it and take care of it.”

  Taking the small knife and rounding the table, I looked for a good place to engrave the wood as I bit my lip in concentration. I decided on a corner. My letters were small and when I blew the wood shavings and dust from it, I smiled a little as I met Paul’s gaze. Then I held the knife out to him.

  “Your turn.”

  He looked stunned. “You want me to mark your table?”

  “You built it,” I answered. “You’re part of this table’s history.”

  Taking the knife, his mouth partly curved upward, as he scouted the surface of the table, looking for the perfect place to engrave. I’d like to tell you he picked a corner, just like me. An area that’s small. Something modest, yet meaningful. But, no. He picked the center of the table.

  Dead center.

  When he finished, he smiled down at his engraving. EPIC.

  “Center of the table?” I questioned dryly. “Very subtle.”

  He laughed as he folded the knife and slipped it back in his pocket. “Life’s too short to be subtle.”

  Bending over, he blew away the dust and ran his hand over it once more. “Besides,” he added with a sideways smirk that told me whatever was about to come out of his mouth would be sarcastic. “I kind of like the idea of you seeing my name there every day and thinking of me.”