I stayed away the past few days, after that moment in the woodshop. I was too close to kissing her, finally getting my hands on her waist and drawing her body up against mine.
Fuck — the only thing I wanted was to gather her up in my arms and carry her back into my cabin. Take everything off and really look at her, show her how good I could be to her.
The look on her face when she saw my creations, that look of— what? Surprise? Or admiration? It shouldn’t have been such a turn-on, but it was. Lacey looked at me and saw an artist, and that shit made me hard.
I’ve never really stopped being a dork.
Now, I avert my eyes, her little two-piece pajama set not doing a lot to help the wholewanting to get her nakedsituation. It’snothing but a cropped spaghetti-strapped tank top and shorts that barely cover her ass.
I realize that, in the midst of all this, I’ve never stopped to ask if she has a boyfriend back in the city. Rather than throwing cold water over the situation, the idea of another man getting to see her like this, walking around so comfortably and with so much skin on display, makes me irritable.
“Good morning!” she says, and I grumble back a response, not wanting to let on to the fact that I’ve done nothing but think about her for the past few days.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” she says, following me into the house and leaning on her elbow as I set my toolbox down. The cabin is in a state of disarray — several rooms with just their first coat of paint, fixtures pulled down for replacing, some of the trim removed, leaving bare and rough-edged drywall exposed. “What about doing a pink in one of these rooms?”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “You think the renters are going to like that?”
Sometimes, I slip and let myself forget about the fact that this is going to be a rental property. Now, I make a point to remind both of us.
With her fucking finger on my lips, there was part of me that thought it was undeniable. I mean, she stared up at me in the workshop, practically begging me to pick her up, set her on the counter, and step between her legs, kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.
After that, I couldn’t use the workbench without thinking about what it would have been like to dig my fingertips into her thighs, lean into her, even?—
“What if it gives it, like, personality?” Lacey suggests, drawing me out of my thoughts. Can she see it on my face, how often I think about her? It’s like putting away half a dessert in the fridge and doing nothing but thinking about the moment you’re going to get it out again.
I say nothing to that, and she continues to chat as we get things ready for another coat of paint throughout the house. As we go, I’ve been fixing minor things — boards that have come slightly loose, a light in the bathroom that burned out. Each time I do, Lacey insists that I show her what I’m doing or talk her through it instead.
We start on the next coat of paint for the study. I do the edge work, carefully working along the light switches and outlets, and Lacey does the broad strokes, filling in the middle, since she sometimes spaces out and gets overzealous with the paint.
The two of us have our rhythm now, which is mostly just Lacey chatting while I listen. Her voice soothes me, lulls me into a sense of comfort I only usually feel with Dona purring on my lap, or in rare moments in the workshop. Being with Lacey makes me feel completely inside my body in a way that few other things do.
Then, without warning, she breaks that rhythm with a gasp loud enough that I think she might have electrocuted herself again. I startle and accidentally drag my brush up onto the windowsill, turning to look at her in alarm.
“I’ve got it!” she says, pointing the roller at me, and I thank my past self for having the good sense to use a drop cloth.
“Got what?” I ask, equal parts amused and still startled from the gasp.
“How to pay you back!” She drops the roller in the paint and comes over to me. Too close. Close like she was in the woodshop. Close enough that I’m already starting to lose control of myself, starting to think about kissing her again.
Light filters in through the window, glancing off the hair pulled free from her ponytail, copper waves framing her face. Her freckles are like constellations I want to map, tiny dots I want to connect with my fingers, my lips.
Then I register what she said. “What are you talking about?”
“For all the help, the furniture, everything.”
I want to interrupt her. To tell her that she doesn’t have to pay me back. That it should be obvious why I’m doing all this, even though I know she’s leaving. Even though I know there’s no chance of this time turning into anything more for us.
Lacey is the kind of woman it would be easy to fall in love with.
That realization bolts through me just as she says, “I can help you build a website.”
“A website?” I ask, confused. But she barrels through, clearly too caught up in whatever she’s thinking to register the bewilderment on my face.
“And we can start a few social media accounts, market the pieces. People would love to see the work you do!”
“Lacey…”
“If you do process videos, you could even go viral! I know some girls at Gaia who could help with the marketing stuff, and I can bust out my HTML?—”
