Tom groan-sighs. “She’s stressing me out. No. Her landlord is stressing me out. There’s someone you can go beat up for me.”
Tom’s mom, Fiona, is a sweet, spacey lady who always seems to be amid some kind of low-level crisis. She’s a pot permanently simmering, and if Tom takes his eye off her too long the smoke detector goes off. I’d like to say this was a recent thing, but he’s been trying to take care of her his whole life. I sometimes wonder what Tom’s dad must have been like. I’ve never met him, and I don’t think Tom has either. He must be big and handsome. And a total piece of shit, obviously.
“Can’t she move out?” I ask.
“She found a pregnant cat last year and couldn’t bear to rehome the kittens. They’re all black and white. I have no idea how she tells them apart.” He rubs the heel of his palm on his eyes. “Her landlord told me she could have one cat. She hasn’t filled him in yet that one has become six. Her hot water is playing up, and he’s not returning my calls.”
“Buy six cats, get the seventh cat free?” I point up at Diana’s bed.
“Don’t even think about it. The next place I carry her boxes into is gonna be the last house she ever has to live in. I can’t move her again. I don’t have it in me. A picket fence is what I promised her.” Tom looks ten years older in an instant.
At this rate, a picket fence paling will be my tombstone. “Is that what you’re saving for?”
He speaks like he hasn’t heard me in the crystal-quiet room. “The guys keep asking where you are. Well, Alex mainly. Your puppy dog doesn’t know what to do with himself.” His eyes sharpen on mine, watching for my reaction.
Every atom in my body knows that Tom wants to see indifference. I look back at my computer and shrug. “Little turd has gotten lonely without me kicking his ass, huh?”
“He told me things are fun with you around. He’s going to get the wrong idea if you keep leaning on him. He doesn’t know what you’re like.”
“I don’t lean,” I retort, then I remember my shoulder pressing on something warm. Me and Alex leaning together watching an excavator being unloaded out front. “Oh, I did lean a bit.”
“He worships you.” Tom has affection in his voice as he glances up at the house. “He reminds me so much of myself at that age.”
“Worshipping me?” I accidentally defy Jamie’s direct order and immediately gloss over it. “Well, that’s cute. The one I really want to worship me is that old bastard Colin. I want him to kiss my boots by the end of this.”
“Should I be jealous?” Tom answers his phone. “Hi. Yes, drop them around. Before four.” He hangs up. This is what our conversations are like lately. Everything is interrupted by that goddamn phone. I don’t know how he’s keeping it together.
“Jealous or not, it has nothing to do with me.”
“I forgot, I did come in here to yell at you. Who were they?” Tom means the girls who left twenty minutes ago. “You can’t just let people walk through a building site.”
“They were models.” I click through the images. “I just did a shoot for Truly. Funny, Tom. Last time we had a proper exchange, I got the impression that you needed me to stay out of your hair. And yet, here you are.”
“This is my site and you’re doing a photo shoot in the middle of it.” Tom leans sideways to look at the computer. He’s lip-pursed Mr. Perfect. “You should have told me. There’s safety issues with people on-site who aren’t inducted. If they hurt themselves—”
“Okay, I screwed up again. Don’t get grouchy, or I might not give you your present.”
“A present?” Behind me, the computer chair squeaks.
“Do you deserve one?” I’m stalling, because I don’t know how he’ll receive this tiny olive branch. It’s been made abundantly clear that he doesn’t need or want my help.
“I had to get a dead rat out of the wall cavity in the kitchen. I do deserve a present.”
“Dead rats are Alex’s job. You’re a boss now.” I click through my photo files, trying to feign nonchalance. “You’re sitting on your present. I made you a desk. I noticed it’s getting harder for you to work inside.”
This is my way of apologizing for putting a coffee ring on a fairly important report for the county. “And that apple crate down there is for Patty.”
Tom swivels and looks at the desk again. It’s just the old kitchen table, a lamp, and a jar of pens, but he runs his hands on the tabletop in a lustful way. “I was just about to start working out of my car.” He flips the lamp on. “Thanks, Darce.”
“I’m not trying to lure you in here for any nefarious purpose.” Ugh, why did I say that? I swivel around on my stool in a way that probably looks ominous.
Tom ignores my blunder. “Oh, I’m lured all right.” He gets up and leaves, appearing again with his laptop and a bulging folder. Business cards flutter mothlike in his wake. “There is no way I’m passing up a desk.”
He leaves a second time, returning with an armful of samples: tiles, carpets, laminates. Patty hops into her new bed and watches Tom, her big bug eyes lit with their usual worship.
I’m right there with you, Patty. I think I could sit here and watch him for hours, stacking bathroom tiles with that serious tilt to his head. He always was like this: a tidy boy with a straight spine and a neat desk.
Scratch that. Fast-forward things.
I could sit here and watch this gorgeous man forever, the glints in his hair and those big careful hands. The lamplight pools in those brown eyes and turns them to honey. He breathes, even and easy, under the lead-gray weight of my stare, and makes three piles of paperwork.
He finds the old trash can under his desk with the toe of his shoe and smiles to himself.
“You thought of everything, Darcy Barrett,” he says to me without looking over, and I realize he has always been aware of my staring, dazzled by the light shining through him. He’s probably felt this stare for most of his life. I am intensely grateful for how he’s erasing that one moment of insanity in the kitchen.