Something Old (16 page)

She shook her head. “Nah. I don’t want to get involved in your personal life.”

“Come on, Katy. You already are.”

She started to stand, but her foot slipped on the plastic, and he lunged forward and caught her arm, steadying her. Their faces were close, mere inches away, and he whispered. “I hate the word
never.”

When he drew back, she asked, “What?”

“You’ll never forgive me, and I’ll never forget you. And never’s a miserably long time.”

Lil popped back into the room. “Found it.” She hooked her arm under Katy’s coat sleeve. “Let’s hit the shops. See ya later, chump.”

Katy forced a smile for Lil. At the doorway, she hesitated, but Lil went on outside. Katy glanced back at Jake.

He winked.

Hoping to wipe the smirk from his face, she said, “One thing before we go. I was wondering, is your plumber married?” His brows furled. “Very.”

Katy shrugged and started through the doorway. But behind her, the amusement in his voice couldn’t be denied. “Tell Lil the electrician’s single.”

Straightening her shoulders, she didn’t reply.

B
arely able to contain her excitement, Katy grinned over at Lil, whose car was filled with painting supplies. In response, Lil did a little shoulder shimmy. They were both anxious to get started. In a few short weeks, the doddy house renovations had nearly been completed. New purchases were stored in Mr. Landis’s barn. Now came Katy’s favorite part: cleaning up the place and making it livable.

Lil turned the car into the Millers’ drive and honked just as Jake strode out of the doddy house. With a wave, he headed directly to the back of the Blazer. It amazed Katy how those two read each other’s minds. They were more like twins than cousins.

Ever since Katy and Lil’s spat over hiring Jake to renovate the doddy house, Katy had kept her feelings and frustrations over him private, aware that information somehow magically passed between the other two.

Sometimes Katy’s escalating problems seemed overwhelming. She hadn’t told anybody about the ballet tickets either. That problem continued to fester, frustrating her peace. Once she would have shared all her job-related problems with her mom, but now that she was operating in a gray zone, she didn’t think her mom would understand. With time nearing her move into the doddy house, she didn’t want her mom to worry that she was getting pulled into worldly ways.

Katy watched Jake easily tote a five-gallon paint can in each hand—shabby chic yellow for the kitchen and tropical turquoise for the bedroom—jaunting to the doddy house without speaking to her. The sly rat knew how to turn her head, showing off his muscles and ignoring her just the way she wanted him to, all very unfair. Was this something he’d learned at college? How to Win an Old Girlfriend 101?

“Want me to get the white can?” she asked Lil.

“Nah. Too heavy. Let Jake get it. But together we can manage the ladder.” Lil struggled to extract it from the back of her car. Katy caught the end just before it dropped to the ground. They did an awkward, baby-step shuffle all the way inside the house with it. “Bedroom or kitchen?” Lil tossed breathlessly over her shoulder.

“Bedroom.”
Jake can work in the kitchen,
she hoped,
far away from my work area.

Lil nodded as they maneuvered the ladder through the hall. Next they struggled to set it upright in the center of the bedroom, next to the paint cans.

“Whew!” Katy said. She removed her coat, taking in the metallic, new-heater smell. Filled with pride and amazement, she thought,
Our heat from
our
new heating system.
Suddenly she had something to show for her hours of housecleaning. Stoking her feeling of satisfaction, she headed for the new closet. “Wow. Have you seen this, Lil?”

Her friend followed at her heels, then did a slow circle inside the large walk-in. “Um-hm. Shoe racks, shelves, clothes bars. It’s perfect.”

“Which half do you want?” Katy asked, imagining her dark skirts spaced apart in perfect half-inch increments, her long-sleeved blouses classified by colors, sweaters by color, too, in perfectly folded piles on the shelves. With her meager wardrobe, there would be room to spare. She could keep other personal items here, too: some cleaning supplies that she purchased by the gallon, her sweeper bags, her childhood dolls, scrapbooks filled with school papers, and her collection of the
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
No, she’d leave those for her little brothers. But she had a stack of unread Christian novels she’d purchased at the Shekinah Festival in September.

Lil pointed at the far wall, the one more visible from the bedroom. “You’d better take that side since you’re neater. And we can put a dresser on this wall. I’ll take the bottom two drawers.”

“That’s kind. Thanks.” But Lil’s reminder that she wouldn’t be the neatest roommate sent a tremor of foreboding into her future fantasy vision. When they stepped back into the room, Jake had already started masking off the baseboard.

He looked up. His shaggy black curls flipped out under his hat. The brim had been knocked off-kilter, and he didn’t seem aware of how attractive he looked at that moment. Both masculine and boyish. “This wall’s ready to go,” he offered.

“Now it’s your turn to pick. Cut or roll?” Lil asked.

Katy tore her gaze from Jake and stared at Lil, until she could concentrate on the question. It certainly wasn’t a difficult one. In the closet, Lil had chosen first. She had given Katy the best, the higher drawers. So Katy chose the chore she thought Lil would least want. “Cut in.”

Katy pried off the paint lid and stirred the white swirls with a wooden paddle until she had a solid color that resembled a pale tropical sea. Grabbing a tray and brush, she went to the can, and Jake jumped to her assistance.

“Let me lift that for you.” He poured, then placed the can back on the plastic flooring. “Nice color.”

She imagined there would be nights when sleep would fail her for remembering his tight jeans-clad form in the center of their bedroom. He was a nuisance in them. Without thanking him, she took the tray to the wall and knelt, straightening her skirt beneath her and then teasing the color along the top of the stained baseboard. She glanced over, “Yes, I love it.” His eyes darkened, and then he turned away, filling Lil’s tray.

“Me, too,” Lil said. “Reminds me of summer.” After a few minutes, she called, “Whoala. Look at this.”

She’d painted two stripes on the wall with the old green color showing between.

Looking up from her painstakingly straight handiwork, Katy pointed out, “If you don’t do it right, it’s going to look streaked.”

“You think? Okay, if you’re sure stripes wouldn’t be cool?”

“Crooked stripes are not cool. Neither is that green color. We both agreed on that.”

“Your call. Here goes, plain turquoise wall. Love it.” She glanced over at Jake. “We’ll do the kitchen next, if you want to prep it.”

“I can do that, but the closet needs a primer. If I do that first, it might be dry enough for you to paint before you close up the can.”

Lil glanced over at Katy. “How does that sound?”

She might as well give in to the fact that with Megan having to finish a school project, Jake’s help was allowing them to get more work done, even if it kept him in alarmingly close proximity. “Fine.”

Jake tossed her a rakish grin, then disappeared to get the primer.

“He’s behaving, don’t you think?” Lil asked, her gaze hopefully skittering to Katy.

“Probably up to something.”

“Just wants you to believe he’s really sorry…for everything.”

“He has done a good job with the place. Fast, too.”

“And cheap.”

“Cheap isn’t always good,” Katy quipped, thinking of the little outsider he’d dated and giving a different meaning to the word. “In our case it is. Shush. Here he comes.”

Jake trudged back through the room, sporting a gigantic grin and barely missing the upturned paint lid. Then he disappeared in the closet.

Out of sight was good, Katy thought, pulling the ladder next to the wall and balancing herself on the top rung to edge along the ceiling. “How’s work?”

Lil replied, “Anybody can boil pasta and stir sauce. But it’ll pay the rent. The way I figure it, I need to get a good reference and move up to a better restaurant at my first opportunity. Mark my words: I will someday be a top chef.”

Katy climbed down and moved the ladder. “David wants to take me out to dinner the next time we go out. I suggested your restaurant.”

“Tonight?”

“Nope. He’s helping at the church today and has to help his dad do chores afterward.”

“One more date, right?”

“Shh!” Katy hissed, nodding her head toward the closet. Jake appeared as if on cue, and Katy fought back a grin at the globs of paint on his hat and in his hair. His cell phone tight to his ear, he walked through the room.

“How’s babysitting going?” Lil asked.

Katy’s hand paused, unable to shoulder her problem alone any longer. “You’re never going to believe it. Tammy tricked me into accepting tickets to the ballet.”

“How’d she do that?”

Happy to vent for the next five minutes, Katy explained the details.

“I can’t believe she did that, knowing how you feel about dancing,” Lil muttered, wearing a mama-lion-protecting-her-cub expression—endearing to Katy that somebody was at last siding for her, and cute, too, given the turquoise freckles. Like her cousin, Lil was wearing the paint. Lil was much prettier than she realized. “It’s a test.” Lil pushed her hair back with her forearm and some wisps escaped from her ponytail. “She’s trying to break you.”

Then Katy noticed a clip had been holding her hair in place and not the ponytail rubber band. “You cut bangs!”

Lil grinned, pushed more paint into her hair. “Cute, huh?”

“Has your mom seen them?”

Laying down the roller, Lil clamped her hands on her hips, getting paint on her clothes, too. She faced Katy, directing that mother bear attitude to thwart her now. “When are you going to get it? We’ve the same as left home. We’re adults on our own. We can do whatever we please.”

Climbing down off the ladder, Katy felt a rush of fear that one more piece of life was crumbling away. “And what pleases you?” Was Lil going to go crazy wild on her?

“Cutting bangs.”

“What else?”

Jake strode back into the room and, noticing the tension, drew back a step.

Katy shook her head and turned away. “I’m done here. Is the closet ready?”

“Nope, wanna help me prep the kitchen?” Honestly, she didn’t know which cousin was more frustrating. She followed him into the other room, fretting that Lil was going to pull her further into the gray area or even the black.

Jake stepped close, a tape contraption in his hands. “This is a little tricky. Works like this.” As he demonstrated, and they bent over the dispenser, she wanted to reach up and pluck the globs of paint from his black curls. But at least her anger at Lil was easing away. His nearness commanded all of her attention. “Wanna try it?”

“Sure.” She took the contraption then mumbled sulkily, “I think you ruined your hat.”

“What’s a hat compared to a day spent with two lovely ladies?” Then he grinned and, referring to the dispenser, told her, “That’s backward.”

Katy tried to remove the tape that she now had stuck between her fingers. “Uh-oh.”

“No problem.” He took her hand, taking his time removing the twisted ruined tape. Their gazes locked.

“I see your hand has healed.”

She jerked it away. “It’s fine.”

“Here, try again.”

She nodded and leaned across the counter, running the contraption along the wall seam, amazed at how sweet the tape went in place when she did it correctly. Then she got a prickly sensation that he was still watching her and paused. Sure enough, his hand touched her shoulder and then rested at her waist.

“You got it.”

She opened her mouth to reprimand him, but he’d already moved away. Then she heard the sound of tearing tape from across the room.

After that, it went smoothly, the dispenser gliding along seams. They worked at opposite sides of the room, and just when she’d relaxed, his voice whispered, “I miss hanging out with you, like this.”

Her hand flinched. She could smell him, faint sawdust and stronger soap. She redid a crooked strip, not daring to glance at him. “Did you know I’m dating David Miller?”

There was silence, and then he replied, “I heard. Is it serious?”

“Now that would be personal, wouldn’t it?”

“Hey, you brought it up.”

“Only because I want you to back off. Give me some space here. I’m trying to tolerate you, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

Later that evening, Jake opened the back door and stepped into his mom’s kitchen. His grandma Minnie sat at the table, and the sight squeezed his heart with tenderness. He strode over and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Grams.”

“Sit down and see what I made,” she replied.

Jake dropped into a chair and pointed at the picture in a magazine the older woman was viewing. “You made that quilt?”

“Yeah. I made it for my little girl.” As usual since she had developed Alzheimer’s, Grams was living in her past memories, believing that Jake’s mom was still her little girl.