by A. L. Woods
Blinding white dots filtered over my vision as the flash went off again, her words etching themselves onto my brain. There was something profound in the statement, the astuteness of her observation, the lack of falter in her cadence, like she had never been more sure of anything in her life despite my having said no fewer than twenty words to her.
“Kitchen?” she asked, not waiting for me to reply. My heart thumped as my stare found the one room in the house that I loved to hate the most.
“This way,” Penelope cooed. I could hear the smile in her voice even though I didn’t see her face. She was loving every minute of this. Raquel’s footsteps were nimble against the hardwood while she made her way into the kitchen. Despite my reticence to venture into the heart of the home, my body followed her like a child chased a star that shot across an inky night sky.
The countertops in the kitchen were black quartz with cream swirls weaved throughout. The oak cabinets were painted a macadamia white with sleek black knobs. Penelope had insisted that prospective buyers would lose their minds over the farmhouse sink, and when Raquel let out an audible purr of approval, I knew why.
I also knew I would give just about anything to hear that sound leave her mouth again, but under much different circumstances. She breezed by me, her fingers running along the lip of the stainless steel sink.
“I’ll be back,” Penelope said, giving her friend’s shoulders a squeeze while simultaneously looking at me, as if she had every intention of ending me as soon as she could.
What else was new?
Raquel took careful steps around the kitchen, stopping only to look out the kitchen window into the yard.
“Penelope’s got good taste,” she murmured, a slight smile playing at her lips. I liked her smile, the thoughtfulness in its appearance, the slow and lazy sprawl, like a cat undulating after a nap. She smiled in a way most people didn’t: with intention, not just for the sake of doing something with her face.
If I just concentrated on her smile, it would distract me from how fucking uncomfortable I felt being in here. I shoved my hands back into the pockets of my suit jacket, watching as she moved around the kitchen, her fingers grazing against every single surface as if she couldn’t believe the opulence of the space, pausing here and there to take a photo.
“Are you ready to properly answer my question now?” She lowered her camera, her fingers now wrapped around the focus ring. She had the kind of luminous eyes that smoldered you like a flame the longer they appraised you.
I kicked my chin out at her in defiance, my gaze tapering. “What was your question?” I remembered her question just fine, but I would have given anything for her to continue to speak at that moment.
She drew her full bottom lip between her teeth, displaying her top row of teeth, which were surprisingly straight save for a canine that seemed to come slightly over the incisor next to it. They were imperfect, an innocuous flaw that meant nothing to me in terms of lessening the gravitational pull I felt beckoning me to her like the negative and positive ends of a magnet, an electrical charge demanding I break the distance between us. I stayed rooted, watching her cheeks grow ruddy when she realized I was staring. Raquel freed her lip from its hold and resumed snapping photos, the flush of her skin dissipating as she busied herself.
I wondered what she was thinking right now…if it was just me drowning in the throes of my attraction, or if she felt it, too. That inexplicable pull, the kind that consumed your every thought and controlled your every breath.
“Why did you decide you wanted to restore homes?” Her voice was stiff, like she decided I had pissed her off by staring her down moments ago. She turned on her heel in my direction, tilting her chin toward the ceiling, exposing the long length of her creamy neck while her eyes scanned the crown molding that trimmed the edges and the pot lights above us.
I hesitated, my mind percolating on the question.
“People are generally quick to give up on things when they can’t see their beauty anymore…and beauty is sorta…”
“Skin deep?” she offered with a tight laugh at the cliché.
“Yeah, sorta,” I finished.
Houses were a lot like humans. With time and the effects of different kinds of people living within its walls, its personality and history changed. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the worse. But when it was the latter, I believed it took a certain kind of person to restore it to its former glory and show that there was still life left to be lived, love to be experienced, and memories to be made.
She lifted the strap of the camera over her head, placing its heavy weight onto the countertop. There was an uncertainty swirling in her eyes, waiting for me to continue.
I didn’t.
No one was privy to the other parts of myself, that gentler side. Not even her.
“Did you always want to work in restorations?”
“No.”
She rephrased her earlier question. “So, what drew you in? Your father pursued commercial contracting jobs previously, no?”
My throat moved, the lump from earlier re-forming. Raquel knew more than she let on, wielding it to her advantage. I would have to be careful.
Penelope burst into the kitchen, her chandelier earrings announcing her presence before she did.
I had never been more grateful to see her before in my life.
“Raquel, did he show you the soaker tub? It’s divine.” She sighed, clasped hands clutched against her chest.
I felt a sigh of relief leave me as the previous question disappeared from the room. I didn’t like thinking about the real reason for my chosen field. It meant confronting the parts of myself I preferred to keep buried, because reminders hurt too much.
A cool breeze floated through the house as I heard the latch on the front door get squeezed.
“Sean!” my kid sister’s squeaky voice called from the front of the house.
“In the kitchen, Trina.” I heard her footsteps moving across the smooth hardwood. She shook the bottle of relief in her hands as she made her approach. “I have your Tylenol.”
Her footsteps faltered when she entered the kitchen, her eyes bouncing from me to Penelope before they finally settled on Raquel, curiosity arching her brow.
My sister’s mid-length hair—which had been green a few weeks ago—was now a brilliant shade of pink that made her honey-brown eyes seem nearly unearthly. If it weren’t for her chameleon-like tendencies, she could have passed as my mother’s doppelgänger. Instead, she had done everything in her power to rebel—or as she put it, be her “true self.” Her septum piercing sparkled under the cool light of the pot lights—its glint the cause of another one of my mother’s gray hairs.
If you had asked me ten years ago if I would have ever worked with this little shithead, my answer would have been no. Trina was, for all intents and purposes, a stereotypical shit disturber. With nearly a decade between us, I was the clichéd older brother who found her painfully taxing despite the fact that I would have taken a bullet for her if it required. I had stepped into my father’s role after he died, forcing her to grow up in the process—sometimes she accepted my unsolicited attempts at parenting her, but more times than not, she told me to shove it up my ass.
She took six steps to the island, sliding the bottle of Tylenol in my direction before mouthing an apology in Penelope’s direction for interrupting this clusterfuck of an interview.
Why did she deserve an apology? This was all her fault.
But sure, Penelope needed an apology.
Trina moved to leave the kitchen, her footsteps tapering off when she got to the archway. Tossing her head over her shoulder, contemplation filled her small features while she gave Raquel a once-over. Her eyes swept over the interloper with appraisal, as if piecing the puzzle together on her own accord.
Do not turn around.
In typical Trina fashion, almost as if she’d read my thoughts, she did the opposite. Spinning on her heel, she grinned in Raquel’s direction.
Raquel moved forward to receive the outstretched hand, a genuine smile curling up the ends of her mouth.
“I’m Katrina Tavares, Sean’s—”
I cleared my throat noisily, interrupting the union. My sister was not going to be the one to touch her first.
I would be.
“Out, Trina.” I pointed to the living room, sending her a look of warning. This was already enough of a circus, and while my sister wasn’t my competition by any means, I didn’t need her leering at me in my most vulnerable state and repeating it at dinner on Sunday to my Ma and sisters when I inadvertently fucked it all up.
Hard fucking pass.
Trina feigned insult, placing a hand gingerly to her chest, harrumphed, and ducked out of the kitchen.
Thank God.
Raquel seemed unruffled by Trina’s abrupt departure. “Why don’t we finish the tour and then sit down to chat.” Again, I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. Her gaze felt feathery light on my skin, a litany of shrill alarms going off in my head warning me not look at her so intently, even if her ass really was the shape of a peach.
She was off limits.
At least, that’s what I kept telling myself the rest of the afternoon.
CHAPTER FOUR
If there was one thing I hated more than writing about charity drives or Mayor Murphy’s philandering, it was being gawked at. Sean Tavares was a voracious gawker with about as much game and stealth as a third grader trying to line their coffers with stolen candy from a Cumby’s—all while looking the clerk dead in the eye.
He wasn’t fooling anyone with his apathetic airs, fitted suit jacket, and false bravado.
He hated me almost instantaneously, and that was fine. I didn’t exactly fit into the setting of his perfect monolithic house, although neither did the cute little pink-haired woman he had dismissed.
I couldn’t figure out how the woman fit into all of this. She didn’t exactly look like your run-of-the-mill construction worker, and Penelope had never mentioned her when she recounted stories of her workday or the class acts she dealt with here.
Sean had looked at the woman with a lifetime of familiarity, had held her stare when he sent her out of the kitchen. He hadn’t bothered with polite platitudes, which left me believing that their relationship wasn’t just boss and employee. They certainly didn’t share any physical similarities, either.
The woman had seemed too comfortable here, but the way she reacted to being dismissed gave me the impression that she was scorned in a way one might be if they were romantic partners.
I guess he liked his women just barely over legal.
Great.
During the rest of our tour, Sean had scowled anytime I pressed him for an answer, anytime I so much as breathed too deeply, or veered farther into a room than he would have liked. My patience hadn’t lasted long. I wasn’t enjoying this any more than he was, but that’s life: We frequently have to endure difficult situations, and that includes having people we don’t really like infiltrating our space. Sometimes those dislikes happened to be a twenty-eight-year old journalist who really only wanted to be here so her best friend could buy her lunch because she was currently living off of cheap instant noodles and coffee.
I had to admit, the house was truly a sight to behold. Creamy white clapboard made up the exterior of the well-fenestrated colonial that was tucked back on the sixty-by-hundred-foot lot. The long, gravel driveway was framed by newly planted maple trees bordered by cherry red mulch that had been laid carefully in a circle around its base.
In its reconstruction, an addition had been built at the rear, bringing the square footage from two thousand to north of four thousand and boasting five bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms. Hardwood floors ran throughout, save for the bathrooms and kitchen, where white porcelain tiles had been laid. The house sported a fusion of styles that married a mid-twentieth-century twist with traditional nineteenth century New England, a love affair I would have never come up with. Penelope, though? Penelope had a vision…an eye for what made things work. Between her creative eye and Sean’s hands, they had created a fucking Picasso with this house that belonged on a postcard or a fridge magnet as a keepsake for a tourist passing through.
This house, with all its unwavering beauty, was the kind of place I had told my younger sister Holly Jane about as she struggled to fall asleep over the never-ending screaming coming from the living room back in our parents’ triple-decker. Some nights, I didn’t even think she slept at all. She just waited with bated breath for their violent fights to kick off…a wayward comment from our ma to set off our father into a rage that would bathe our bedroom in blue and red lights, and the melancholy of a siren to finally carry us off to sleep. Ma liked to fight—she was like a wasp at a picnic; no matter how often you swatted her away, she came back for more. She loved pissing Dad off more than she loved fucking our landlord behind his back every Thursday night while he was working at the packaging plant.
I had grown indifferent to my parents’ standoffs… had learned to ignore the fist-sized holes in the drywall, or the tiny droplets of blood that stained the tired living room carpet like my very life depended on it—and in a way, it had. My sister, unfortunately, internalized that shit until it consumed her very being. I don’t think she ever experienced a full night’s rest in her short seventeen years of life. As a kid, she would scurry from her bed to mine, pulling the sheets back and pressing her thin, clammy body against mine. It would take ages to settle her; she rattled like a snake, her teeth chattering, though she wasn’t cold to the touch. As the fear ripped through her, her head bent to her chest, her arms squeezed tightly around my waist. That all stopped when she realized it was no longer cool to crawl into bed with her older sister, and she turned to other things to help her fall asleep. Things I couldn’t protect her from. My sister didn’t know what safe was, and my only regret was that she never would. I hadn’t been able to give it to her.
This house encapsulated safety with its open space, bordering woods on a street that epitomized the kind of shit that would play back in my memory for many nights after this. A place like this would have changed everything for us. It was everything I had promised her back then but had never been able to deliver to her.
I swallowed the thick lump of emotion that felt like razor blades lining the inside of my throat, blinking back tears that burned behind my lids but would never fall. My mother had a rule about crying: You didn’t do it unless you wanted something to actually cry about. My sister’s death hadn’t been an exception to the rule.
After the tour of the house, Sean had led me into the study on the main floor for the rest of the interview. He shut the doors after I entered, before rounding the desk and settling on an office chair behind a fussy red cherry antique desk while I sat stiffly in a stationary chair on the other side of the desk. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that had been stocked with books, decorative vases, and nondescript trinkets lined the wall behind him. His frame looked too large for the chair he sat in. The tips of his fingers were steepled together in front of his face. His head tilted to the right, eyes trained on the scenery outside.
This morning had been frustrating. He had said nothing as he led me into various rooms around the house—apparently adopting some sort of vow of silence after his…what the hell was I supposed to refer to her as? Girlfriend? Wife? Jailbait?…had left the kitchen.
I’ll admit, inappropriate jealousy had burned in me at her untimely appearance. I was a little ashamed to confess that the only thing that had abated the green-eyed monster was the lack of affection that bloomed in his face at her presence. It wasn’t my concern to understand the dynamics of their relationship, but I wasn’t a blind idiot: Sean was attractive, and if they were together, I was allowed to look at a minimum, even if I didn’t touch. I wasn’t my Ma; I had standards, boundaries…common fucking sens
e.
“Was it your dream to inherit your father’s business?”
The sound that left Sean startled me. It was a growl, the timbre vibrating in his chest loud enough to be perceptible by ear, despite the width of the desk that kept us apart.
“No.”
So far, I had successfully obtained one adverb, a noun, and one somewhat full sentence that I had to help him complete. Tavares was not much of a talker.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I had been expecting when Penelope had called and pitched the idea to me. I had assumed at a minimum that he would have exuded a modicum of interest at a minimum or put in even a dash of effort to answer my questions. I got radio silence. Nothing but that scowl, pinched brows, and his tall frame hunched over with his hands stuffed in his pockets as he silently led me around the house. But I had a job to do, a column to write, a sandwich to eat—and the faster I got outta his hair, the sooner I could stop eye fucking a married man, write my columns, and get along on my way. It was time to get this show on the road.
“Look, if it’s easier, I can just speak to your girlfriend,” I offered uncomfortably, biting my lower lip and twisting my body around in the chair, my eyes searching for his tiny pink-haired partner through the glass-paneled doors that were currently shut behind me in the study.
Or whoever she was.
I didn’t really want to talk to her, truthfully. I didn’t want to put myself through that psychological warfare as I attempted to understand their attraction to one another (he didn’t strike me as the type to be into septum piercings and bright pink hair) or what made her a better partner than me (which I’m sure was many things outside of her outward appearance, but not limited to: being emotionally available, having a personality, viewing life as something worth cherishing, and not having enough baggage to drown the entire Commonwealth in like it was the end of the damn world and not even Noah’s Ark would save them.)
If he obliged me, I would dissect her, and then I would use the same scalpel sans a sanitization routine to anatomize myself. To find all the things that made her good and whole. Then I would almost without doubt, end up in bed with my ex-boyfriend because I wanted to remember what it was like to be wanted again, even just for five minutes, which would result in Penelope getting angry if I told her about it. Really, really, fucking angry. She might not talk to me for five business days before she would, with the reliability of a TV Guide, call me at ten to three on a Saturday afternoon and declare that she was still pissed at me, still hated my poor decision making…but to meet her at O’Malley’s for happy hour. It was one of the things I loved about her—the consistency in our friendship, her dependability, the playful diatribe. I would grow old with my best friend, and nothing, no guy (no matter how big his cock), no job, and no other person, would ever come between that.
