When she steps out of the car, she looks every bit as beautiful as I remember from high school. Her long blonde hair falls down around her shoulders as she puts her designer shoe onto the dirt driveway and struggles to keep her heel from sinking into the ground. Then she marches right toward me and I set my tools down on the front step to greet her. Before I can even open my mouth to say hello, she’s already talking.
“Why are you here?” she barks at me as she looks around at the tools on the step and the disarray of repair projects that the old house shamelessly flaunts. “Are you here to fix things?”
Wait, does she not remember me?
Granted, we had only dated for a couple months during our senior year of high school, and I was a lot less buff back then, but it hasn’t beenthatmany years. Surely, she knows who I am.
“Yeah,” I say without greeting her either. “I’m working on repairs to the house.”
“Well you can leave now,” she says, acting as if she owns the place. Which, I guess technically she does, in part at least.
Her attitude immediately puts me on edge. If I remember her, she should remember me. I know she is some big-city hotshot now, but that doesn’t erase all of the things that happened before she moved to Manhattan. She broke my heart when she ran out of town right after graduation, but we didn’t part on bad terms. In fact, we really liked each other. It was just that she had dreams of grandeur and my plans to stay here to farm and build were apparently beneath her. Even so, I still frequently asked her mom how Ava was doing in the city. Her mom would always smile, and pour me a glass of tea, and tell me all about whatever Ava’s latest endeavor in the design world was. I don’t know much about design, so most of it was lost on me. But I still liked hearing about Ava.
I’m starting to think that my memories and daydreams of her are more appealing than the actual her though, because the woman standing before me seems a lot like she has turned into a pretentious snot who assumes that I am the handyman. She’s going to be pretty damn surprised when she finds out that I am actually the co-owner of her childhood home.
“Actually,” I say as I wipe my dirty hands on the front of my jeans and notice her eyes catch as she looks down at my pants. “I’m not quite finished working on things here for the day, so I’m going to hang around a little bit longer.”
Ava gives me an indignant huff and then walks back to her car to grab her bag. I pick my tools back up to continue working on the loose handrail on the front steps, as she swooshes past me and disappears into the house. I feel like I’ve just been inside one of those hurricane chambers, the kind they have at zoos and science museums that you can step inside and close the door and feel the hurricane force winds for a few seconds. Short of the messy hair and the loud gusts; I kind of feel like Ava is the hurricane.
I spend the rest of the afternoon finishing up the handrail. It’s still a little loose because I brought the wrong sized screws, so I’ll need to remember to tighten it down again. I really have no idea what to make of the whole thing with Ava, so I decide to just go inside the house and tell her the situation so she knows what she’s dealing with here. Maybe now that she’s gone inside, she’s had a chance to unwind a bit and isn’t quite such a force to be reckoned with. It doesn’t take me long to find out that’s not the case.
“Do you just come and go without knocking or anything?” she asks with a sharp voice.
“Uh,yes, usually,” I answer.
I guess she thinks I’m trying to be a pain in the ass because she rolls her eyes at me, but I was just being honest. Since I have keys to the house and started working on the repairs this morning before she even arrived, I see no reason to knock on any door that’s not a bedroom or bathroom.
“Okay, well look,” she says with no shortage of condescending tone. “I’ll take things from here. I appreciate whatever you’ve done so far and will pay you for your time and efforts. You can tell whoever hired you that I’ll take care of the rest of the things here.”
“No one hired me,” I laugh.
“Then why are you working on my house?” she asks with her brow wrinkled in confusion.
“Because it’smyhouse too,” I say.
I can’t even begin to describe the look on Ava’s face. I guess I would start with the worddisgruntled.
3
Ava
Even though she isn’t here with me, I am a little bit mad at my mother. Yes, I’m sad and mad that she’s gone, but now I’m also angry to find out that she borrowed a large sum of money from Trevor’s dad, instead of just coming to ask me for help. I’m pretty sure my jaw is still hanging open at his proclamation that after the passing of both our parents now,heis now co-owner of my childhood home. This is a complete and utter mess. How am I supposed to wrap this up quickly and get back to my life in the city if I don’t have control over how to take care of everything in Mom’s estate,includingthe house?
I am also mad at Trevor. Not only for being the one to break this news to me, but for not even remembering who I was at first glance. For god sake, we dated each other our senior year of high school. How could he not remember me? I tell myself that it’s fine and that two can play at this game. I can just as easily pretend not to remember him. I almost called him by name when I stepped out of the car, but I wanted to see if he remembered me first, which obviously he didn’t. Granted, it did take me a second or two to realize it was him. He’d always been attractive, but in high school he was thin and gangly, more of a skater-type body than the hulking, muscular man that he is now. I don’t know what happened to him, but everything about him is massively built; and I do meaneverything. When he wiped his dirty hands on his pants, I just happened to glance down toward his movement and couldn’t help but notice the huge bulge in the crotch of his pants. It is nearly impossible for me to keep my eyes off of how hot and buff he is now. I try not to let myself get distracted, but I am awash with several different emotions at once; angry at the fact that I have to share this whole process with someone, still upset about the loss of my mother, and now ridiculously turned-on by my old high school boyfriend who I essentially bailed on as soon as I graduated and made a run for the city. I don’t know which emotion to give precedence to first.
“I’m sorry that it’s a shock to you,” Trevor says as I try to now close my mouth, which has been hanging open for at least a few seconds. “I figured it would and that’s why I got right started with the repairs this morning. I didn’t expect you to arrive so soon and was hoping that I’d been a bit further along in the fixing-up of things.”
“Why?” I ask, still confused about what he’s doing here.
“Because I assumed that you’d prefer to sell the house and split the profits so that you could get back to your life in the city. Am I wrong about that?”
For a second, I don’t answer. My hesitation isn’t because I wasn’t intending to sell the house; of course I came here with the intention of selling the house. As much as I had fond memories inside this house, I obviously couldn’t keep it, nor did I want to. My life wasn’t here anymore. I came here with every intention of selling it. But for some reason, now that he says it out loud, it makes ma kind of sad and nostalgic for my childhood and for my mother.
Trevor stood there waiting for me to answer.
“Of course I want to sell it,” I say quickly as I try to shake myself from whatever trip down memory lane I was getting lost on. “I don’t want to stay here a moment longer than necessary.”
This time, it seems like it is my words that are makinghimsad. Trevor always did like this puny town, although for the life of me, I could never figure out why. I mean, sure, it was quaint, especially during certain times of the year like autumn when all the leaves turned to golds and smoldering reds, but the cute things about the town weren’t enough to make it worthwhile to stay here. I wonder what he does here, and what he’sbeendoing since high school. I guess since we are both acting like we don’t remember each other; I can’t really just come out and ask that question. I kind of had a bunch of questions that I wanted to ask Trevor, but I was feeling too tired and flustered to ask any of them right now.
