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chapter seven

“I still can’t believe you took the cameras out of the bedroom,” Carmen complained for the third time at the craft services table as they all sat around eating.

“Slater literally films porn. He would’ve done a beautiful job capturing a moment of love between the three of you, and can you imagine the clicks?

The ads? We would’ve made a fortune, not to mention the women’s right aspects.

I mean, think about it! How empowering for the girl to not only get the guy, but get both guys? ”

Carmen sighed, hands clasped like a princess from a cartoon. Meredith rolled her eyes, not for the first time. “We weren’t doing porn for the show. We already gave you unexpected ghosts on top of hoarder hell house, what more do you want?”

“You broke the ghosts,” Jimothy pointed out. “We haven’t seen a single ghost since I found the mirror in the wall that shattered when you guys…” He waved his fork as if searching for a euphemism before saying, “Came.”

“That’s not true!” Meredith pointed out. “The old lady is still here. We’ve seen her like six times since we banged.”

Carmen rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we’re pretty sure she’s going to stay with the house. I think that was the last owner, the agoraphobic hoarder lady who got the house into the state you restored. I don’t think she was actually trapped at all. I think she just chose to hang out here.”

Meredith thought about it, glancing around the now mostly empty garage.

With a new layer of flooring and painted walls, the space didn’t look anything like when they showed up a month ago.

It amazed her what twenty thousand dollars and working herself to the bone—when she couldn’t sneak in the use of a spell, which she did, and often—could do to a house, she thought in amusement.

“That could’ve been me,” she pointed out, waving her own fork before stabbing a shrimp. “I was raised by my grandmother and for years, I never left our house. I was terrified to go anywhere. Agoraphobia runs in my family.”

Bodie snorted. “You like adventure too much, and you’re braver than you give yourself credit for being.”

“Agreed,” said Jeremiah and Jimothy in unison before they glared at each other. For brothers, they sure didn’t care for it when they agreed, which still amused Meredith.

Standing, she brushed her hands off on the peasant style skirt the design team chose for her for the final episode.

“Are you guys almost ready to go in? I think the open house has been going for about an hour now, so if anyone bothered to stick around and wants to talk numbers, it should be our moment.”

Although they all loved the house, they came to the agreement that they would sell the house and take the combination of remaining funds from their auctions and sales of the home’s interior, then put it all into a single fund that they split evenly between them.

“She’s not wrong,” said Bodie, standing. He sighed. “If I’m honest, I’m not looking forward to going back to the real world. I’m going to miss doing things myself. I really did miss being hands on.”

“On Meredith?” quipped Jimothy, which earned him a nudge from Bodie. “No, I get you. Do you have to go back to the way things were? Can’t you make a big change, go a different direction, strike a new path—all the euphemisms?”

Bodie opened his mouth, as if to list the reasons why he couldn’t, but after a second, he closed it again. “You have a point. What are you going to do after?”

“Surprisingly, the James Brothers are retiring from home improvement,” Jeremiah admitted, slinging an arm across Meredith’s shoulders. “I figured it was time for me to settle down and be a house husband.”

Meredith rolled her eyes. “You’d be bored in a week.”

“No, but seriously, I want to work with the community more. I never liked home repair, and I only got into it because I thought it was Jimothy’s dream.

We kept going, both of us stubbornly trying to make the other happy, never realizing neither of us was getting what we wanted or needed out of either the relationship or the show.

” Jeremiah shook his head. “Long story short, he’s starting a new channel about hiking and foraging, and I’m taking some time to figure out what it is I want to do.

Everyone deserves a dream, and mine was to take care of my brother—honorable, but he doesn’t need me for that anymore, right? ”

Jimothy rolled his eyes. “Absolutely do not need that, thanks. But I do love you.”

“You’ll always be my baby brother,” Jeremiah added.

“I’m like a year younger,” Jimothy said, punching his brother.

“Jimbobs,” Bodie said, earning glares from both brothers. “I thought we agreed to go inside and see how the open house is going? Or are you scared?”

Meredith sucked in a breath, shooting him a glance and wondering if he somehow read her mind.

Usually, she didn’t get overly attached to projects.

Maybe it was because she completed so much of the house hands on instead of using her magic, or maybe it was because she slept with two men in the second bedroom, but she felt a strange attachment to the Hoarder Hell House.

Not as attached as the hoarder lady, but still…

They crossed the sidewalk to the back porch—originally, they didn’t even know a sidewalk hid under the weeds in the back yard. They dug it out during the third week, after they cleared off the back porch, which now gleamed with fresh paint and a new door.

“It looks so much better,” Meredith said. “You should feel really proud of what we did here.”

Bodie tugged her into his side in a one-armed hug. “We all should feel proud,” he said. “We did good.”

The living room, formerly dark and overwhelming in smell and debris, stretched in front of Meredith as they entered the house via the back door.

A large stone fireplace crawled up the wall, with inset shelving of the same stone peeking out for them to add a few accent pieces after they scrubbed the rock and redid all the grouting.

Light beamed in through the huge windows, glittering off the chandelier and sending a thousand rainbow prisms dancing around the room.

“Beats dust motes,” Meredith said, remembering her first look at the space.

She followed her competitors—teammates—to the dining room where someone set up triangular celebratory banners and a huge cake waited in the center of a large crowd of people.

“What’s all this?” Bodie asked, glancing around at the faces. Meredith managed to pick a few familiar faces out—the woman from the grocery store, a man from the local gas station, another who worked at the liquor store she frequented in the first days, when the house smelled the worst.

“We’re celebrating the end of the season, your successful remodel, and the sale of the home!” Marshall said, popping a bottle of champagne as he enthusiastically grinned at them with his announcer face.

“Wait,” Meredith said, holding up a hand in surprise. “The house sold? Like, it’s gone? Someone else owns it now?”

She wasn’t sure why, since it was the entire goal, but something in her ached at the idea of it being gone. She couldn’t imagine not being allowed to run her hand down the ornate stairwell or glance out the second story balcony window.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Marshall continued, pouring the wine into flutes and gesturing for staff to pass out more glasses from pre-prepared trays.

“But it is going to be a local museum. They want to use some of the rooms as kind of a community center, where they can hold classes like yoga and stuff, and otherwise…the property will be fully used and a part of the local environment. We couldn’t have come up with a better ending for the series if we plotted it! ”

Marshall laughed, clearly thrilled at the turn of events, but Meredith had to admit she was pleased, too.

After the last owner shut herself up in the house, no one got to enjoy the space.

They set empty, and ghosts filled up the void.

Now living people would fill it with their energy and life again, and Meredith sighed, pleased at the outcome.

“What comes next for you?” Marshall asked, passing her a glass of champagne.

“I’m not sure yet,” she replied, but her gaze strayed to Bodie and Jeremiah, who looked back at her as if they sensed the weight of her gaze.

Something connected them still—like a thread.

If she was honest, she figured their one experience together would be it.

A wild and crazy sexual exploration they would all look back on, remember fondly, maybe admit in secret to their grandkids one day…

She didn’t want it to be a one-time thing, though.

She knew it wasn’t reasonable—a woman couldn’t be in a relationship with two men, especially not two exceptionally masculine men.

As she looked at them, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket.

Better to make a clean break, she decided, and blocked both their numbers.

They wouldn’t notice, not until later, but it would be easier if they didn’t have a big scene to end things.