Page 48 of Mourner for Hire

FORTY

VADA

I sigh loudly as Dominic measures the rectangular hole in the wall. I cleaned up the edges to make for an easy repair, but Dominic being the manly man he is, decided he needed to help, and now he’s spent the last ten minutes measuring.

He glances at me as I lean against the wall. “Is there a problem?”

“I was just thinking?—”

“Great.”

He pushes back his protective glasses, and I think of his actual glasses and how they make my legs feel a little weak. God bless the contacts he wears to keep me from having ever lustful thoughts about him.

“Did you know if you die when wearing contacts, they don’t take them out?”

The measuring tape snaps closed. “That can’t be true.”

“It is.” I shrug and lean back on the counter.

“That’s a fact I did not need to know. Why don’t they take them out?”

I venture a guess. “I guess the coroner wants to make sure you can see in Heaven. ”

“I thought we get new eyes and bodies, and everything is perfect in Heaven,” he counters.

“Ah, well, you don’t get that in Hell so maybe the coroner doesn’t want to chance it for you,” I reason, and a breath of a laugh escapes him.

He studies me for a moment. “Why did you bring that up?”

I clear my throat. “Because you are taking forever .”

“It’s been ten minutes.”

“You aren’t performing surgery, my God.” I’ve found him to be measured and meticulous with very steady hands, but if he doesn’t hurry it on up, I’m going to lose my mind.

His nostrils flare. “Don’t act like a toddler.”

I sigh. “Watching you measure this is like watching cement dry.”

He narrows his eyes at me and slips the pencil underneath his backward hat. “Fine. How would you do it?”

I take the pencil from under his hat, line up the piece of sheetrock, and mark it at the edges of the hole. I shift it and mark it again.

“Measure twice, cut once, Vada.”

I glare at him and measure the sheetrock against the opening again. “Looks good to me.”

“You’re stressing me out.”

I toss my head back and cackle. “I’m efficient. Now, can you mix up the mud while I cut this?”

The tense pulse in his jaw would indicate that letting me have my way is very stressful for him.

“Fine,” he says. “But if you cut that sheetrock and it doesn’t fit, you owe me fifty grand.”

I laugh. “Are you using your mother’s will against me?”

“Yes,” he says, cracking open the tub of sheetrock mud.

“You know I’m going to give the money back to you.”

“That never mattered.” He shrugs, then stares directly at me. “I’m sorry. ”

I wait without prompting him to say more.

He grabs my hands, and I can feel the remnants of sheetrock dust on his calluses. “I’ve been awful to you. I’ve taken out a lot on you. I may not completely trust you yet, but I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did.”

I smile softly. “Are you groveling? Because you could do better.”

He laughs, rough and low. “No, just grieving. And I kind of suck at it.”

I reach up and cup his face, rubbing my thumb over his dimple. “Most people do.”

I watch the stern lines of his face soften with the ache of grief as it passes over his eyes.

The more stressed out Dominic gets over this renovation, the more I realize it isn’t me he hates.

At least, not necessarily. Dominic hates change.

He hates the imbalance of life after loss.

And while some may view a renovation as a symbolic way to start over, Dominic views it as me erasing his mother.

Just as the realization kicks in, I glance out the kitchen window and see Annabelle peering in with soft eyes. She clutches her chest and then outlines an air-heart with her index fingers.

“No!” I mouth, shooing her with my hand while Dominic’s back is turned.

“What?” she mouths back, her body doing full-blown charades. “You’re doing great!” She shoots me two thumbs up.

“Go!” I continue to mouth-shout while pointing in the direction of anywhere else.

She rolls her eyes and starts to drift away, and I sigh, hands on my hips.

Dominic looks at me. “You okay?”

“What?” I ask, flustered and wiping my brow. “Oh, me? I’m fine. I’m just…”

He moves slowly, setting the tub of mud on the counter.

I think quickly, clapping my hands together. “I have an idea!”

“You do?” He’s still skeptical, nervousness pulling at his expression .

“Yes, let’s make it interesting. If I cut this—” I hold up the box cutter. “—and it doesn’t fit, I have to run out into the ocean… No wetsuit.”

“The water is freezing, Vada.”

“I know. That’s what makes it… dangerous.” I add the last word with a stupid waggle of my eyebrows that makes him chuckle.

“And if you do cut it correctly, what happens?”

“You have to run out in the ocean.”

“You have to cut it correctly on the first try,” he specifies.

I shoot out my hand. “Deal.”

After using a box cutter to slice through the sheetrock where I marked it with pencil, I break it down the seam, until I have a rectangular-shaped piece of sheetrock.

“Moment of truth,” I sing, holding up the piece. It’s no more than forty inches by twenty inches. “An ass-shaped piece of sheetrock.”

The right side of his mouth curls up, almost a grin. “That’s generous.”

I hold it up and examine it. “Really? I think my ass is about this size.”

He steps closer. “Your ass isn’t rectangular.”

I suck in air, and my heart stops for an entire beat.

His words and proximity eat up all my composure, and the memory of my ass—said ass—in his hands last night sparks a fire in my belly.

I remember his anger when he saw the missing wallpaper.

I remember how he threw a hand on the wall, a dramatic lament about wallpaper and new paint.

And how his fist slammed through it instead.

The shock. The bitterness. The sadness. The ache. The kiss.

God, the kiss.

“Well.” I let out a loose breath that tumbles over my throat. “Anyway, moment of truth.”

I repeat the phrase and line the piece of sheetrock up against the hole, slipping it in along the edges .

“Like a glove,” I stand back, triumphant, and grab the drill and drywall screws.

“That was lucky.”

“It was not.” I drill in the first screw.

“You just guessed,” he argues.

“No, I didn’t. I measured using common sense.” And another screw.

“It was chaotic.”

And a third screw. “It was efficient.”

I reach for the drywall tape and cover the seams as he huffs out a breath, restraining another smile.

I wait for him to laugh and quip and call me funny or right.

I wait a full five seconds for him to drop his guard.

I hope he does, at least. I want this pensive asshole of a personality to crack and for the man I met a year ago to reveal himself.

Then I realize, maybe he’s not in there.

Maybe in the months since we’ve seen each other, a new version of the good-natured man with an apron, heavy-handed pour, and dimples for days disappeared.

Still, he doesn’t speak. Instead, he takes the spackle and dips it into the wet mud, scooping out a baseball-sized amount and slapping it on the wall. It splatters like a paintball all over the wall and all over my dress.

My jaw drops, and I wipe the mud that has landed on my forehead. “Really?”

“You want chaos, Vada? Let’s go crazy.” He whacks another splat of mud on the wall.

I shake my head. “You aren’t even putting it in the right spot.”

“Really? Then show me how it’s done.”

I don’t think he means for me to talk him through it , but it feels that way, and still, my thighs clench together without permission.

He offers the spatula to me, and I take it, spreading the mud from the globs on the drywall to the taped seams. When one side is done, I think better of what I’m doing and tap his nose with the wet spatula. He freezes, jaw set .

“Dominic the mud-nosed reindeer,” I sing as he dips his index and middle finger in the mud.

I know it’s coming, and I don’t back away. I welcome it.

Surprising me, he smears a streak over my forehead. “Simba.”

I crack, laughing as I dip my own fingers in the mud and put streaks under his eyes like a football player. “We will be perfect! In every aspect of the game. You miss a pass, you run a mile.”

He smiles and nods like he’s impressed. “Remember The Titans?”

I grin. “Love that movie.”

“I don’t care if you like each other or not, but you will respect each other.”

I stare at him, the truce he’s asked for rushing to the forefront of my brain.

“Fitting—” I start, but he gently slaps a mud-soaked hand on my face, most definitely leaving a handprint.

My jaw drops in shock at the audacity.

“Oh. You’re gonna get it!” I shriek, muddying him up wherever I can.

He restrains my wrists, then lets me overpower him so I can run mud in his hair. Another hand slides up his forearm, just as he smears mud over my collarbones.

He’s laughing.

I’m screaming.

Joy echoes in the cottage.

A voice in the distance calls like a breeze, “ Just as it should be.”

We don’t stop. It’s a frenzied fight until we’re both covered in drywall mud from the hardware store. I don’t know who surrenders first, but all at once, we sit back, covered in sage-colored mud, laughing with tears leaking out of our eyes.

We pause, breathless.

“I ruined your dress,” he says, raking his eyes over me.

I look down at the blue linen. “You sure did.”

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

“No, you won’t,” I say, standing. I reach out a hand to help pull him up. Though it’s more of a gesture, he could pull me down before I even think about holding my ground. “But you will go jump in the ocean with me.”

“With you? I lost.”

I shrug. “Well, I’m not going to get in the hot tub covered in mud, and we both know these pipes wouldn’t fare well with drywall mud seeping through them.”

He meets me at the door, swinging it open. “Wait,” he says, retrieving something out of the toolbox on the floor. A hammer. With four thwacks, the nail that ripped my arm open yesterday is back in the doorway opening. “Done.”