Page 13 of When in December
I cut her off with a hand, her eyes flying this way and that, as if I were a flight attendant directing her attention on where to land. “Do what you need to do.”
She didn’t move. In fact, the moment I started speaking, her eyes drew back to my other hand, still clutching the knot on my towel.
What? Did she want a show?
“Then you can get out,” I said. “As you can see, I’m not prepared to receive visitors.”
“Oh.” She shifted on her feet. “Okay. Of course. I just need to look at a few more spots around the home. It’s a nice house. I have lots of plans. It’s going to be great. We want to enhance …” Drifting off, she still seemed unsure.
Then, she walked toward me.
What is she doing?I flinched back.
She pointed behind me. “I, uh, planned on peeking in the bedrooms, if that’s okay? I want to make sure that things are on track and the photographs received were accurate.”
I waved a hand for her to go on. “Fine.”
Her eyes glanced back down at the towel still around my waist once more.
Was she shitting me?
“The faster you move, the faster I can get dressed, homemaker.”
“I’m not a homemaker,” she immediately corrected. “I’m a designer.”
“You said you made houses homes, didn’t you?” I raised an eyebrow.
A hint of glare at me crossed over her face. Before it went too far, she dipped her head as she walked down the hall, writing something down as she went.
“What are you writing?”
“Notes,” she explained meekly. “The living room was supposed to be finished. Both bathrooms were supposed to be completely done by now too.”
I grunted. “Neither of them are.”
“Can I see the second one?”
Huffing, I extended a hand toward my room across from the guest bedroom that used to be mine when I’d grown up here—or at least finished growing up in high school.
The homemaker clenched her jaw when she looked at the new tiles that were half finished in the new walk-in shower off the main bedroom. I had noticed, but hadn’t cared to look into it much. The sink, too, was a mess aside from the faucet which looked somewhat more ornate compared to what I would’ve expected from Sarah. She was all about bland beige minimalism and whatever was in style.
The homemaker moved back through my room, careful to step over the strewn blankets and clothes still half unpacked from my issued duffel and backpack without a word. I didn’t apologize for it. Wouldn’t. This was my space, and at this point, those two pieces of luggage were all that belonged to me.
Other than the mostly empty house we stood in.
A box of old books was all that was left stuffed into the corner of the closet. The old classics I’d had to read for school were stacked inside with my grandmother’s historical romance with bent edges and spines so creased that you could barely read the titles.
“Well-loved books,” my grandmother liked to call the used copies she picked up at library sales.
She had at least three or four dozen small books stacked inside the box. Some of them I remembered reading when I ran out of other material. The two of us had been in a constant loop of fifty-cent thrift paperbacks and library books until I’d enlisted. Nights had been for warm dinners and reading by the fireplace.
What else was there to do in the middle of nowhere with no cable television?
“Okay, well, um, I think I mainly have what I was looking for today. I mean, I wanted to start on …” She clicked her tablet offand tucked her stylus into the palm of her hand. “But I guess that all can wait. I’ll make some calls about the bathrooms. And the living room. And everything else. I already have a lot of ideas I think will turn out great so long as the crew keeps on schedule.”
“Crew?” I cut in.
I didn’t just have to deal with her, but other people now?