Romantic Renovations

by Blake Allwood

  I didn’t even try to hide the tear that slipped out of my eye and onto my cheek. “I miss him so much it’s sometimes hard to breathe,” I told her.

  She pulled me down to her height and kissed my cheek. “He’ll be home soon, besides he’s with family. You know Bentley won’t let anything happen to him.”

  I nodded as she walked away. Mom was right, but knowing he was safe and not having him with me, those weren’t the same. I missed him, but since there was nothing I could do about it, I took her advice and did what I could to make him proud of what we’d accomplished while he was gone.

  The Victorian house had come out amazingly well. We integrated the old woodwork that Bennett saved back into the main living space, and it gave the building character that would’ve otherwise been lost. I was sure Bennett would be pleased with how it turned out.

  We’d also been able to show Bennett’s design ingenuity in the attic conversion. The space was comfy and cozy, inviting the new owners to snuggle in for a long read or to watch TV. Because Bennett’s personality infiltrated this area, I had to fight my emotions as Emmitt filmed it. The man had learned to take up for himself right here, and as a result, whoever lived here would have an amazing space.

  The final episode was filmed with us pretending like I was showing Bennett the design via a tablet. The staging was beautiful and highlighted all the qualities of the old home.

  Meanwhile, we were close to finished with the duplex remodel as well. Bennett’s side, as we’d all come to think of it, was finished up to the point of the final touches. We all agreed we should wait on him for that. We installed the same cabinets in his kitchen and bathrooms, but the countertops and backsplashes all required his personal taste.

  We also made the executive decision to paint the tired exterior of the duplex. It clearly hadn’t been painted since the 1980s, and desperately needed the upgrade. When we were done, the outside was still ugly, but not quite as bad as it was before the coat of paint; we simply couldn’t fix the architecture… at least not without a lot of money

  The metaphorical shit hit the fan the week after we finished filming the last scenes at the house. The arrests started with the warden of the prison where Bennett’s father was kept. Fifteen policemen were indicted on charges of corruption, and even a judge was implicated in the mess, as were numerous other high-ranking officials.

  When it was all said and done, the city of Seattle was up in arms as one of the biggest scandals to hit this country worked itself out through the news channels.

  I got the phone call in the wee hours of the morning. I answered immediately, although I was still half-asleep thinking maybe it was Bennett.

  “Mr. Les Cooper?” the voice asked over the line.

  “Yes?” annoyed now that I’d answered a phone call from someone who’d called me too early… well the truth is I was more annoyed they weren’t Bennett. “I’m with the King County Police Department, the property at Lake and Spafford has been… damaged. Are you available to come down to the site?”

  “Um… yeah, let me get dressed. What kind of damage?” I asked.

  “You’ll need to see for yourself.” The woman said.

  I hung up and rushed over to the site we had just completed. I called Emmitt and asked him to join me there, not knowing what we would have to do and thinking it might be good to get some footage of the damage for the show.

  When I arrived, my heart fell out of my chest. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside the property. Most of the walls had been exploded outward. The back quarter of the home had collapsed in on itself and all the décor was scattered all around the neighborhood. Several other homes had been damaged as well, but ours was the only one that’d been completely destroyed.

  I collapsed onto the curb with my head in my hands. I hadn’t even noticed Emmitt arriving. He came over and put his arm around my shoulder. “Dude, this is too much,” he said.

  “What’s Bennett going to say?” I asked him as I turned back toward the damage.

  “He’ll be devastated.” Emmitt wasn’t lying. I knew of all of us this was going to hit Bennett the hardest.

  After half an hour, the cop we’d met after Frank had attacked Bennett showed up and began asking me questions.

  For the moment though, it was all I could do to push down my anger and frustration.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” I asked the cop and he shook his head.

  “I’m not sure I know how to answer that. We’ve all been hit hard with the news. Unfortunately, I don’t have any choice, I have to get your statement and I’d rather do that here than down at the station.”

  I glared at him for a moment before Emmitt patted my shoulder and said, “Just answer his questions, Les.”

  I nodded and did as Emmitt asked. Of course, it was all where-was-I-this-evening, could-anyone-verify-my-whereabouts, etc. When he asked about Bennett I stiffened. “Your dirty cop friends are the reason he isn’t here, and I’ll be damned if I tell you anything about him. Arrest me if you need to.”

  The cop’s face fell. “No, there’s no need for that. The FBI are handling Bennett’s case.” The cop sighed and looked between Emmitt and I sadly before he said, “Not all of us were involved with the crap that’s gone down. I’m sorry for all this.” He waved back toward the destroyed home. “I hope Bennett’s safe.”

  “Me too.” I said, and the cop closed his notebook and walked away.

  Despair washed over me, and I was so relieved my parents were with me during this time. I couldn’t imagine what Bennett felt like being alone wherever my cousin had stashed him, I knew he wasn’t with my siblings, although they said they’d seen him, but weren’t allowed to tell me where.

  I thanked my mom and dad repeatedly for encouraging me to finish the last of the filming. It hurt to see the old lady go out like that, just after we’d finished giving her a new breath of life. I kept thinking how devastated Bennett was going to be.

  One week after the explosion, Bentley brought Bennett back to Seattle. Sandra resumed her post as his security detail, saying they had rooted out as much of the corruption as they could, but there was still a significant amount of unease as to whether they’d found it all or not.

  Bennett wasn’t the same. He’d become very introverted and it was clear he’d lost a lot of weight. When I pressured him, he just shook his head and said it’d been a lonely process not having access to his phone or to the projects he’d come to love.

  When we went to the Victorian project to see the cleanup efforts, Bennett just sat in the passenger seat of the car and cried. He didn’t reach for me as he’d done before, nor did he make any sound. His lonely tears indicated a sadness that went deeper than I think anyone else realized.

  The only thing that seemed to bring him out of his despair was the duplex. He walked through the side that had been completed, ran his hands over my mom’s finishes and exclaimed how beautiful they were. When we took him over to the other side, a tear slipped down his cheek.

  “I didn’t think you’d get to this side.”

  It was clear he thought no one cared enough to do anything extra for him. I came over and for the first time since he’d gotten back, put my arm around him.

  My heart all but broke into pieces when he tensed at my touch. All I could do was slowly remove it and tamp down the desire to cry. “You mean a lot to us,” I said, feeling awkward. “You just need to pick out your finishes and we’ll get it ready for you to move in.”

  Bennett smiled and said, “I think I’d like it to be exactly like yours. We can call this the Twin Sister Duplex since it’s been twins its whole existence.”

  My mom smiled and when she pulled him into a hug, he didn’t tense up or pull away. Again, it broke my heart a bit that he didn’t trust me or that he no longer wanted me.

  The network asked that we meet with Emmitt and finalize the last episode of the season, showing what it looked like before the explosion, and the conversation we were supposedly having with
Bennett to feature the rehab.

  Bennett agreed but cried through the entire process, wiping away silent tears as he observed the beauty we had created together but had been destroyed out of spite.

  Emmitt came back a few days later with the film. He had used the emotional parts where Bennett had seen the end product that was now destroyed.

  He was clearly heartbroken as we watched the raw footage, but even he agreed when it was combined with the destruction footage, it showed an incredible process that had ended in tragedy. The viewers would want to know the story, especially now the news had reported that the home had been destroyed after the rehab was done.

  After we finished the duplex, Bennett moved into the bottom floor of his side and gave us access to the upper floors for when my siblings arrived.

  “That’s not why we did this,” I repeatedly told him, “this side should be your home.”

  Bennett just shook his head and walked away. He was impossible to speak to at this point. I needed to get to the bottom of what was going on and the only person I knew would be able to fill me in was my mom’s cousin, Bentley.

  I made the call the next day and Bentley answered almost immediately.

  “Hey, I’m calling ‘cause I noticed that Bennett isn’t himself. What happened while he was out there?” I asked.

  Bentley sighed. “Nothing happened. He pretty much stayed in the apartment, and even when your siblings or I tried to get him to go out, he refused. Les, he’s just depressed. You probably would be too if you’d been through what he has.”

  I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I guess he is. Did he talk to you at all about it?”

  “No, not really. I’d sit with him almost every night for a meal and he would pick at his food. I guess he needs a good therapist but of course while here, I was just trying to keep him alive. Now that he’s back with you, you’ll have to help bring him back out of his shell.”

  I hung up as frustrated as I’d been before. I had planned to take the master suite in my parent’s side of the duplex. But since he’d offered, no, more like demanded that we use his side as well, I changed my mind and decided to use the master suite of his duplex instead. It would be impossible to avoid me if we were both working and living together.

  “Fight me all you want, Bennett Jackson, I’m going to break through that barrier one way or the other.” I promised him, even though he was nowhere near me. I knew I’d do whatever was necessary to make this work. Bennett deserved it. He deserved someone who cared about him enough to fight for him and by God that someone was going to be me!

  Bennett

  I’d been depressed before. First, when my dad had beaten me to the point of hospitalization and admitted he intended to kill me; and again when my grandpa had refused to help us and my Mom and I ended up on the streets. I had planned to go to college and major in business, with the hopes of working for Amazon. But prior to this, the months we lived without a home had been the most depressing time in my life.

  But living in that jail cell of an apartment in Boston, that was the worst time I could remember. Believe it or not, I fantasized about getting back to the streets, back to the ability to see the world instead of the walls that threatened to close in on me.

  Of course, I’d been invited multiple times to go out, and even Les’ siblings had come by, repeatedly trying to get me out; but by the second night of my arrival in Boston, I was too depressed to move.

  My whole life had been shadowed by a bad man who happened to be my father. My grandpa had been a nasty man, but I had enough evidence to know he was good to others…I suspected his hateful behavior was more because he was afraid of his son than because of not wanting me in his life.

  Mom was still in love with my dad. She had remained faithful to him despite his wanting to kill me, and even the years they spent apart while he was incarcerated didn’t make a difference. I’d learned to deal with her betrayal a long time ago, but as I lay in the jail cell apartment, I knew my time of communicating with my mother was over. If there was ever a silver lining to being cooped up without a phone, it was having time away from her.

  I’d always love her, that wasn’t the issue, but it was time to erase the toxic people from my life for good. That included anyone who had contact with my father. Of course, that meant I was alone. As I lay in that apartment, staring at the walls and listening to the television drone on and on about the horrors of our current political system, I realized that I was going to end up just like my grandfather. Old and alone, living in a beautiful home that I’d let run down to crap.

  The thoughts of Les came and went, but I convinced myself his interest in me was just for show. He was a reality TV star. I was the owner of a huge real estate portfolio. He was a better person than Frank, but he was clearly still just using me. It was better to know that…to accept that, now while I could still protect my heart. If I didn’t protect it and I had to deal with an even greater level of depression, I knew I wouldn’t survive it.

  Not that death would be that bad, but there was still a part of me, tiny as it may be, that refused to let my asshole father win and my death is what he always wanted. So, if for no other reason than to spite him, I decided I was going to live!

  When I returned to Seattle and found out what had happened, I couldn’t stop crying about the Victorian project. She was so beautiful. I chose that house as one I’d wanted to refurbish because I’d loved it from the moment I’d laid eyes on it. Frank thought I was silly, but I put it on the list. As a result, she was the one we chose to rehab second.

  I was frustrated with Frank for not bringing the home to the standards I thought it deserved. So when Les joined the project and agreed with me about quality, I was so excited about it…maybe more than I’d even thought at the time.

  I let myself get caught up in the fantasy of things going well, that we’d all be okay now that Les was around. But the explosion, especially after it was all done and filled with beautiful things, was enough to rip what little was left of my heart to shreds.

  I was poison. As long as my father was alive, everything I touched, everything I loved, would be ripped from me. This confirmed to me that even if I was wrong about Les, it would be selfish of me to let him into my life.

  I wasn’t prepared for the duplex. In fact, its completion surprised me. It was beautiful, and even though I knew the Cooper’s reputation for quality was unquestioned in their Boston circles, I hadn’t thought they’d be able to turn the ugly 1980s shell into anything other than a cleaned up ugly shell.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong. The space flowed beautifully and it looked like a million-dollar condo. The twenty-five hundred square feet were so perfectly put together that it caused my tired and sad heart to swell a bit. Had I not felt so horrible inside, I think I might have laughed when I remembered the cartoon of that happened to the Grinch.

  The near completion of the side they wanted me to live in had also shocked me. I hadn’t expected them to take that up on their own initiative and in fact, I’d already planned to move in without rehabbing it. I didn’t need anything that fancy… I sure didn’t deserve it.

  When they handed me the key, I had to resist the urge to cry. I’d become so vulnerable these past few weeks that now I felt emotional when anyone did anything for me.

  I didn’t need or want this much space. Hell, the entire thing was more than I was prepared for anyway. I quickly decided it was best to let them use the upper part of my side for their family. I’d feel much more comfortable living in the secluded yet beautiful lower level mother-in-law suite. What they couldn’t understand was that it would be the nicest apartment I’d ever lived in, and everything I owned had been destroyed in the fire at my old apartment.

  I carried all the things Bentley’s crew had bought for me into the basement bedroom, along with my old laptop that had been stowed in the backseat of my car before I was whisked away to Boston.

  I snuggled into the huge bed I’d ordered onli
ne and had delivered that day, then let the tears flow. The plush bed that felt like heaven was the opposite of the intense deadness I felt inside.

  As I looked around the small studio space, I tried not to let it remind me of the jailhouse apartment in Boston. At least here, I could come and go as I pleased…well, within reason. I could go if Sandra or her worker bees, as I began to think of them, were somewhere in the vicinity.

  That night, when I turned on the oversized TV Les’ dad had installed, my heart almost stopped. The second the screen came to life, I’d seen Frank’s face flash across it.

  I jumped out of bed and rushed to the TV as the police announced on air that they had arrested the man suspected of blowing up the Victorian project. They went on to say he’d previously been my partner on the project and was wanted for multiple counts of corruption as well.

  I sat heavily on the end of the bed. It was a shock to my system to see Frank alive. Bentley had been confident he was dead.

  Anger overwhelmed me as I thought about how incredible the Victorian project had been when it was done. The bitterness bubbled in my stomach as I realized it made perfect sense that Frank was the one who’d destroyed it. He had to have been seriously jealous of Les and I’m sure he hated me or felt like he’d been robbed, because I was taken from him before he could fuck me over.

  The whole thing was so screwed up. I suddenly had an intense desire to be violent. I’d never felt such anger before and it shocked me. I shook my head to get the thoughts out before turning the TV off and laying back on my bed.

  I must have fallen asleep because I startled when I heard a knock on the door.

  I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “Come in!” I yelled.

  Sandra came into the room, with Les right behind her and as she sat on the end of the bed, he stood awkwardly to the side.

  “So, we have news about your… well about the guy you used to work with.”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” the anger beginning to swell inside me again, “I just saw it on the news.”