“My room.”
He glances over his shoulder at me. “It’s a bed with stacks of books piled on the floor. Where is your dresser? Your curtains?Perhaps a rug to keep your feet warm when you first pop out of bed?”
“Don’t need them.”
“What the hell do you do with your money?” he asks with a shake of his head.
“Invest. Save. I don’t know. Buy books.”
“How about some shelves, huh? That might be nice. Look at these stacks and stacks of books. Don’t you think they would want a place to live? What kind of bookworm are you?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. They’re fine as is. Stop stalling.” I walk over to my bed and strip the sheets off as well as the blankets and pillows while Posey studies my stacks and stacks of books.
“This might work.” He picks up a thick black book with no dust jacket. I hate them and always Terracycle them when I get the book. “What is this? A thriller? Doesn’t matter, it will go with the living room aesthetic.” He takes off, and I clench my jaw, keeping my mouth shut so I don’t fly off on him.
I’ve been close with Posey for a while now, and you wouldn’t think that our personalities would mix well. He’s kind of out there, odd at times, and a fucking monster while playing hockey. He’s also an instigator but with a heart. Hard to explain him. He’s all over the place, like right now, thinking he’s some sort of God’s gift to interior design. Funnily enough, he reminds me a lot of my brother Holden. He was the same way. Outgoing, always instigating shenanigans—something that used to get on our older brother’s nerves—but had a fucking heart of gold.
Levi Posey might drive me nuts, and I might want to murder him at times, but it’s almost as if Holden has pushed us closer.
Fuck, if Holden were still here, he’d be laughing his ass off in the corner, enjoying every second of my scrambling. He would egg Posey on. And he’d definitely be waiting off to the side, watching this entire circus unfold.
“The candle is set.” Posey walks back into the room, dusting off his hands.
“Well, thank God for that.”
“I also took Sherman out of his water because the dirt was saturated. His new home is on the console table behind your couch for better light. Which by the way, you have a console table, but you don’t have bookshelves? Make that make sense.”
“Just help me with this mattress.”
Posey grabs one end and tugs it toward him, grunting in the process. “Why the hell is this so heavy? Do you sleep on concrete as well?”
“It’s a custom mattress for my lower back. Use your fucking muscles.”
“I am,” he grunts as he tugs it across the floor while I push. “I was expecting something lightweight.”
“Well, it’s not, so keep tugging.”
“Are we going straight to the other room, or do you want to make a pit stop and move half of the bed so we can move the bottom and place it in the room first?” Why does he have to make things so complicated? I swear to God, when you work with Posey, you need to be prepared for an extra step in everything you do, including talking about it.
“Just move it to the other bedroom.”
Together, we drag the mattress into the living room.
“Are you sure? Because if we do this properly, we could unravel the bed and put it back without being clumsy about it. We could be efficient.” He tugs; I push. “And are we really clumsy people? Or are we efficient motherfuckers?”
“Does it fucking matter?” I push hard on the mattress with my shoulder, scooting it a good two feet.
“Whoa, man,” Posey says. “You almost knocked me over.”
I shove again, sending him to stumble backward and hit the console table behind the couch.
“Ah,” he yells. “You almost made me knock over Sherman.”
“Grip the mattress and keep moving.” I push again.
“I am, but you’re being aggressive.”
“Because we have like forty minutes until she’s here, and you want to steam the goddamn curtains and talk about efficiency. Just get it the fuck done.”
