Friends & Fortune Cookies: A Sudden Falls Romance (4 page)

“The electric is supposed to be turned on today. Not sure what time, though,” I told Alex.

He grunted in response.

The den was off to the left through a door, and the living room opened up to the foyer on the right. Ratty, stained carpet in the color resembling split-pea soup covered the floor except where it had been torn up by what appeared to be a dog digging near the door. I pulled at the corner of the carpet, and a great section lost contact with the floor.

“Wood underneath,” I said, bending down to inspect. “Looks like oak.”

He came over and nodded. It wasn’t enthusiasm, but it beat a grunt.

Alex led the way through the dining room, only to stop before he hit the kitchen to inspect the built-in plate rails. Pulling his multitool off his belt, he leaned over to the tall, wide baseboards and scratched the corner with the small knife. He straightened with a more positive expression. “Only a couple of layers of paint. We should be able to strip and re-stain these.”

I started breathing again. This was doable if Alex was on-board. If not? This project was doomed. I realized at that moment that breathing deeply wasn’t a great idea. The air had stopped smelling of stagnant room and took on a decidedly different and less agreeable aroma.

Alex discovered the problem about the same time my nose did. “Oh God. There’s sewage coming out of the wall!” He choked, burying his nose in the elbow of his sleeve as he made his way around the mess on the floor in the middle of the kitchen.

I was afraid I’d lost him at that. “Think about the before/after pictures.” I pulled out my phone and snapped a couple to prove the point. I was almost thankful for my stuffed-up sinuses. I’m sure the smell was worse than what I was getting.

The kitchen floorboards were shot thanks to the rain of raw sewage. However, when I ignored the smell for a second, I noticed the room was big enough for a giant island and there was an area for an eat-in nook at the back that I could almost picture filled with a family. Suddenly that family morphed into a dark, curly-haired wife with matching cherubic girl who looked remarkably like Gracie at age seven. I shook my head to rid the unusual thought.

It’s not like I was unaware Gracie and I had been alternately fighting and entertaining a certain attraction since somewhere around our sophomore year of high school. But, with one rather significant exception, we’d never acted on it.

And I didn’t even usually think about it. Mostly because it was one of my bigger fuckups, and I try to not make a habit of dwelling on those.

I started hoping this house wouldn’t end up being one of those things I deliberately had to avoid dwelling on.

Alex flicked open one of the cabinet doors, and the whole thing fell to the floor. He looked at me with a great deal of suspicion. “Are you sure you can afford to get this place done in time? It’s going to take the entire staff and probably some freelancers... and I can already tell you there’s going to be overtime. A lot of it.”

That was definitely one of my fears, but I refused to admit it to him. If I showed the smallest bit of hesitation, I was pretty sure Alex would bail. “I’ve barely spent a dime in seven years. Don’t worry about the money.”

We stepped out of the kitchen into the main hallway where a family room sat at the back of the house. “What do you think about a game-and-music room?” I asked. “Your wife still have that friend at the piano place? Can’t you see a baby grand right here?”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” Alex asked.

“Probably.”

We headed upstairs, gingerly testing each step and praying they didn’t give under our weight.

The second floor had baseboard heaters in every room that probably hadn’t worked since the mid-seventies. We immediately agreed to turn the fifth bedroom into a master bath with a giant walk-in closet between them. An interesting bedroom featured the turret at the front of the house. A window seat, canopy bed, and some subtle feminine touches would turn this into a little girl’s dream bedroom, and I thought of the fictitious girl from the breakfast nook and started to wonder what was going on in my head.

“You okay, cuz?” Alex asked.

“Yup.”
Just watching the dollar signs accumulate.
I had liquidated every penny of every asset I had, with the exception of my truck and Uncle Tommy’s bike. And I suspected it would take every one of those pennies to make this happen.

“This place is better than I thought it would be,” Alex admitted finally. Then he flipped on the light switch, and there was a mini-explosion in the fixture.

“Let’s not make any statements like that, again, shall we?” I turned the light back off. “It seems to be tempting fate. But at least we know the electricity is now on.”

We wandered up the stairs into the attic, which was one of the more interesting set of rooms in the house—all connected with sloped walls and small windows where dust motes danced in the air. I started to imagine a younger boy with blond curls that skewed a little red—as did mine in the winter when I wasn’t in the sun—building forts or playing Cowboys and Indians. I was blessedly (or annoyingly) interrupted from my reverie by the sound of disintegrating plaster and wood as Alex’s foot dropped through the floor and into the second-story ceiling.

He yelled something like “Aigh! ShittityBrickity!”

“Are you hurt?” I stepped slowing toward him, testing my weight on each portion of the floor so we didn’t both end up trapped.

“Not yet, but if the rest of the floorboards go, the drop to the basement’s gonna hurt like hell.”

I helped him carefully extract his boot.

He had an ugly scratch on the inside of his calf, but otherwise, was none the worse for wear. “Let’s get Jim Sammonds in here and see what’s structurally sound and what’s not before anyone else gets injured.”

“He’ll be here around ten,” Alex said.

Alex was on the ball, and I wondered again how the business had suffered so badly. He was so good at what he did. I needed to get into the books and dreaded bringing up that conversation.

Yes, I technically owned half the company, but I had been a completely silent, hands-off partner for the past two years. If the situation were reversed, I’d be pissed if Alex came in and tried to take over. I had to find a delicate way to handle this, and delicate wasn’t exactly my forte.

We made our way back downstairs before we could find anything else to risk our necks on. We didn’t have to wait long for Jim. He pulled up in a battered red Ford F-250.

Jim was a structural engineer and building inspector that Uncle Tommy had used since the mid-seventies. I remembered him from when I worked for Tommy during high school. Jim was past traditional retirement age but didn’t look that much different than he had ten years ago. Maybe a little grayer at the temples, with a few more crow’s-feet. He greeted us with a big grin. “Boys, Tommy would be so proud of what you’re doing here.”

“Give us the rundown, Jim. We need to get started tomorrow and to make sure we’re not going to run into too many surprises.”

The end result was that the kitchen was going to have to be gutted to fix the fallout from the leaking sewage pipes. New electric would need to be run throughout the house, and the floor in the attic would need to be replaced. A good portion of the plumbing had already been converted to copper, so that was one very expensive repair we wouldn’t have to make, thank God!

One joist in the basement showed signs of water damage. Fortunately, there wasn’t any termite damage, which for a house of this age seemed somewhat miraculous.

The roof was a goner, and no amount of paint was going to restore the wood siding.

Alex and I took a notepad and went room by room totaling up supplies we’d need and tasks to be done. The dollars signs continued to spin up, and I started to wonder if I’d made a giant mistake.

Chapter 7 — Grace

“Internet dating helps you with specificity. You can get hooked up, tied up, spanked, and even covered in caramel by a tall, straight, red-haired, Lutheran, professional, over-forty farmer.”
~ Luddite in Love: A Cautionary Tale of Dating in the Modern Age,
Grace Mendoza

By mid-afternoon, I still hadn’t gotten over being completely freaked out at the idea of jumping back into the dating pool, though I had worked myself around to the decision that I would
not
be “dating” for real. I could approach this like research for any other story or column.

I pulled open my laptop’s browser and did a search for “dating websites”.

What I found was kind of depressing. Having never online dated before, I kind of assumed there’d be just a few sites, like ones advertised on TV. But there were pages and pages of search results for dating sites catering to every demographic imaginable including African American, Asian, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, under thirty, over forty, over fifty, gay, straight, professionals, and—my personal favorite—
farmers.

Some sites promised long-lasting, meaningful relationships, while others promised more dates than any other site. Still others were for those seeking a sugar daddy (or wishing to be one), and a few that promised to simply get you “hooked up” before nightfall, regardless of your marital status.

My phone rang as I’d clicked into a site that I regretted immediately. One that promised not only to have me connected by nightfall, but also tied up and slathered in butter.

Er...
No!

I clicked my browser window closed and grabbed the phone, flipping it open before I even saw who was calling.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Gracie.”

“Oh. Hey, Joe.” I probably should have checked before grabbing the phone, still feeling a little weird after yesterday’s sexually charged conversation over fortune cookies. Actually, it hadn’t only been the fortune cookies. The whole evening had been filled with strangely intimate vibes.

“You sound weird?” He said that like it was a question. But then, he also sounded weird. Kind of like he had a cold.

I wasn’t about to share that he’d interrupted my trolling of websites that promoted casual sex. “It’s a long story.”

“An interesting one?”

“Time will tell.” Before he got hold of that statement and ran with it, I diverted him. “What can I do for you?”

“Dinner. Tonight.”

“We had dinner last night.”

I wasn’t sure I was ready to return to our old “besties” relationship. I also wasn’t sure I was entirely ready to forgive him for running away last year, either. And the more time I spent with him, the less mad I was. Somehow, this seemed like a bad thing.

“We need to make up for lost time. Without our patronage, Zen may completely fold.”

Dammit. I could hear the grin in his voice. He definitely knew how to be charming. And I was clearly still susceptible to that charm.

“What if I have plans?”

“Then you would have said, ‘Joe, I have plans’.”

He was right. I sighed. “What time?” We settled on a plan, and I hung up. Somehow, my afternoon of Internet dating research was a little less horrifying knowing that I had fun dinner plans. And that concerned me a great deal.

#

“You okay?” I asked, slipping into the seat across from Joe. He’d been unusually quiet since picking me up.

“Yeah. We got the keys to the house today. It’s... well, it’s bad. And we only have six weeks to make miracles happen.”

“What happens in six weeks?”

“That’s
Rehab-a-rama
.” He shrugged. “And then I’ve got to get back to my job in Denver.”

And that was a reminder I desperately needed. Joe would be leaving. Joe always left.

“Can you do it?” I asked as if I didn’t feel like I’d gotten punched in the stomach.

“I don’t have a choice. We have to.” He took a sip from the water glass Fifi had left on the table. “How was your day?”

“My boss humiliated me during a staff meeting and then stuck me with an assignment that will either be awful or life-altering.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Life altering?” Was that a hint of mocking in his tone?

Suddenly, everything felt, well... normal. Maybe too normal. But Joe’s purpose in life seemed to be keeping me from taking myself too seriously.

“Eight columns and sixteen blogs about the new age of dating, emphasis on personal experience, not interviews.” I shuddered. “Which basically means I will be checking out every Internet dating, speed dating, personal introduction-slash-dinner party service in the greater tri-state area, only to share the most intimate moments with the readers of the Cincinnati Community Press papers. And it’s possible the
Cincinnati Enquirer
will pick them up as well.”

Joe sat up straight, and I couldn’t quite read the intensity in his eyes. “Can’t you turn it down?”

“I suppose I could, but these articles are my ticket to a major promotion.”

“That’s great, Gracie. What’s the promotion?”

“My column could be syndicated.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“Well, yeah. Of course. Besides, it’s just...
dating.
” I didn’t hide my shudder.

Joe didn’t comment. In fact, he stared off into space.

“Joe?”

“What happened with Mike?”

“Holy abrupt segue, Batman,” I didn’t want to add another difficult topic to tonight’s repertoire.

A corner of his mouth tilted up for a second. “I didn’t know. I’ve spent the last year thinking you were married.”

“You left.” I tried not to make it sound like an accusation, but I’m pretty sure I failed.

“I did. It’s one hundred percent my fault that I didn’t know. And I’m sorry. I would have been here for you.”

His willingness to accept the entirety of the blame convinced me to give him the details. “Short answer? A girl saw something she wanted and took it. He had last-minute cold feet about getting married, took what was offered, and thought it was...
Destiny.
”

“He’s an idiot. And a weasel.”

“You were definitely right about that,” I admitted. “I hate that word now.”

“Weasel?”

“Destiny.” I swallowed hard. “Do you know how many times a day people sling that word around? Every time I hear it, I kind of want to claw my ears out. Even now, when I wouldn’t take him back if he were the last man on earth.”