Page 12 of Structure of Love
Two people waited by the front door, one of them being Melissa, a real estate agent I’d crossed paths with many times. She was a good sort, easy to work alongside, so I was happy to see her.
Standing beside her, to my surprise, was Logan.
Wait. Wait a damn minute. I knew Logan worked at Blackbird, but did he actuallyown it?
My first impression of Logan had been of a thoughtful man who just so happened to be sexy as fuck. I didn’t know what it was about long hair and tattoos, but apparently I was a sucker for the bad boy look. His hair flowed past his shoulders, an almost dirty blond color, and he had a neatly trimmed beard of the same shade. I liked the look of him, the way he moved, the casually defined muscle decorated with gorgeous art I could see peeking out of shirtsleeves.
Throw this man on a motorcycle and I’d be on my knees sucking cock before the date ended. I definitely had a type. I had also stopped dating said type. All they did was talk sports and motorcycles, tended to work dead-end jobs, and were only good for sex.
Majority of the reason I’d stopped dating was because the kind of guy I was attracted to looks-wise never panned out well for me. I wanted an actual partner, not a boy toy.
Holy hell, if this man owned a bar at his age, he was in a whole different league. The help he’d given with Cooper, not to mention such sound advice, told me this man had his head on straight.
Shit, knowing my luck, he was straight as an arrow. Asher got a gay-for-you situation. Was it too much to hope it would happen for me, too? Pretty please? I’d make the appropriatesacrifices to the gay dating gods if someone told me what they were.
“Hello again.” Logan’s smile made my knees go weak. His smile held a bit of mischief, and had I mentioned I was a sucker for the bad boy type? Plus his brown eyes had flecks of green to them in this lighting, and I could stare into those for a while, no problem. “What’s the opposite of long time no see? Short time, did see?”
I laughed and extended a hand. “Thanks again for the other night. Let me properly introduce myself this time. Gage Banachek, structural engineer with Gay 4 Renovations. This is my colleague, Cohen Woods, our contractor.”
This man’s hand was all calluses and strength, and I felt a fantasy building in my head of having those hands on me. Down. Down, boy. Do not go there, not when you’re in a professional meeting.
Logan and Cohen shook hands.
“Melissa, I know. Hi, Melissa.”
“Hi,” she said while smiling. “So, honestly, when Logan told me what he wanted to do with the building, I suggested you guys. I can’t think of better hands to place him in. You tell him the right words, we’ll close the deal today.”
“Hopefully I can say the right words, then. Now, from the intake I saw, you’re wanting to open up this whole bottom level into one big room, the exception being bathrooms in the back. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“And the second story, you want to half open so you’ve got a party room upstairs, but the other half will be office and storage, also correct?”
Logan nodded. “Also correct. I know this building has gone through many lives, but I’m hoping a lot of what I’m seeing were just additions and not structural.”
“You may be right, but that’s what I’m here for. Melissa, can you open the door for us?”
“It’s open, we were just waiting on you two.”
Melissa led the way inside. The building had sat empty for a few years now—and smelled that way—but it was mostly clean. Dusty, which was to be expected. There wasn’t any furniture left inside, at least. Not much to clear out, which made demolition easier, for sure, and something I knew Cohen took note of.
I could tell the space had been renovated into apartments. There was a tiny foyer in the front, with stairs to my immediate left leading upstairs. Someone had put a dropped ceiling in this area, and I started praying. Maybe I could do this the easy way?
I opened the foyer door to look inside and found a narrow hallway beyond it that went about five feet in, just enough for two doors on the inside, facing each other. Then an interior wall I felt sure the two apartments had shared. And that dropped ceiling, still in place.
“Cohen.” I gestured for the stepladder. “I want to pop out one of these tiles and look around.”
“Sure.” He handed the stepladder to me even as he said to Logan, “These walls here look pretty surface level to me. They were clearly added on later, as this tile under our feet looks like the best of the fifties, and I’ll bet it runs under the wall.”
Looked that way to me, too, but I was most interested in how the beams ran. I opened the stepladder and climbed up, popping a ceiling tile out of the way as I went, then carefully eased up so my head could go past the tiles, my flashlight coming into play.
My survey only took a second and I cackled evilly. “Everyone, I have excellent news. The downstairs was originally one big room.”
Melissa cheered while Logan demanded, “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely sure. The beams run in the right direction, and there’s no framing for interior walls to this level. In fact, someone added walls later, and they’re not tied into the joists at all. Cohen’s right, those interior walls were added much later. We can knock all of this down and not touch the structure of the building whatsoever. Also, from what I can see from here, the beams are solid. I don’t see dry rot, damage, nothing. I want to do a full inspection of the beams once everything is down, make sure nothing needs to be shored up, but it’s looking great from here.”
“Music to my ears.”