He harrumphed. “I want you to have a vacation. For the love of God, Ineedyou to have a vacation. Everyone who knows you does.” He leaned against my truck, far too comfortable for a man standing on an active job site in canvas shoes. “When’s the trip even for?”
I didn’t answer.
“Mark.”
“I haven’t looked at the dates.”
“You haven’t looked at the dates?” He repeated it slowly, the way Ineeda Phalis had repeated everything I’d said the night before, as though each word was a small gift I kept handing him without realizing it. “You won a free week in paradise and you haven’t so much as opened the envelope?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve been awake doing sums about drywall.” He was right, which was infuriating, and he knew he was right, which made it worse. “Give me the envelope.”
“It’s in the truck.”
“Give me the envelope, Mark.”
I shoved him aside, stuck my body halfway through the open window, and retrieved the unopened envelope from the passenger’s seat where I’d tossed it the night before.
He snatched it out of my hand and tore into it with the enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas, unfolding the glossy packet inside and scanning it while I pretended to care about a stack of two-by-fours.
“Oh, this is gorgeous,” he said after a moment. “This is genuinely gorgeous. Look at the water on it. It’s the color of mouthwash. Flights included, transfers included, all your meals, all your drinks.” He flipped a page, and his eyebrows rose. “And here’s the kicker: it’s open-ended. You can book any weekyou like over the next three months.Three months, Mark. There goes every excuse you were about to manufacture, because somewhere in the next quarter year there is one single week where the world will survive without you.”
That landed differently than he expected, I think, because I didn’t argue.
The three-month window was both a problem and a gift. There was no good week in it, but there was no bad week I could point at either. There were no inspections or clients or crises I could hold up as a shield, because whatever I named, he’d just tell me to pick a different week. The open-ended date didn’t give me room; it took away the wall I usually braced myself against.
It also gave me a deadline.
I have never in my life missed a deadline.
“You’re quiet,” Finn said, his eyes narrowing.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s never a good thing. You’re thinking quietly makes me nervous. Think out loud so I can supervise.”
I turned from the boards I’d been pretending to inspect and looked at him properly. At six-three and somewhere north of two hundred and forty pounds, I tended to do a fair bit of looking down at people. Most stepped back. Finn never had. He was anarrow, freckled thing a full head shorter than me. From the first week we’d known each other, he’d squared up to me like we were the same size, which was probably the entire reason we’d lasted as friends.
“You’d come as what?” I said. “A chaperone?”
“More like a safety blanket . . . or a human off switch. Call it whatever lets your pride survive the trip.” He grinned. “And I get a free holiday out of it, which I’ll not pretend I’m above. I’ve been bartending at that miserable chain for too long, and the closest I’ve come to the sea is the lobster tank by the hostess stand. I’ve earned a glimpse at a beach through all my suffering.”
“It’s not a sad solo thing if you’re there,” I said, mostly to myself, testing the shape of it.
“It’s not a sad anything if I’m there. It’s two mates on a beach, which is a normal thing that normal people do.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder, or as near to it as he could reach without a running start. “You’re not booking a tragedy. You’re booking a Tuesday that happens to be tropical.”
I should explain something about how I’m built, because otherwise none of what came next will make much sense. I’m not a man who relaxes. I’ve never been able to point to the use in it. My father worked himself into an early grave laying tile across three counties. The lesson I took from that, fairly or not,was that work was the thing. It’s not a thing. It’sthething. Work was the proof you existed, and everything else was what you did with scraps of free time.
I started Delgado Construction with a borrowed truck and a reputation for showing up. I’d spent every year since making sure nobody could ever say I didn’t. I showed up so hard there was nothing left of me to be anywhere else. So, if you’ve ever wondered why a friendly enough man in his late thirties spent most Friday nights with exactly one friend, that’s most of your answer right there.
The rest of the answer is that I’m big and have a beard going salt-and-pepper while the rest of me insists it’s still young. Men take one look at my size and the gray in my beard and decide I’m older and meaner than I really am. By the time they figure out I’m neither, they’re usually already with someone smaller and less alarming.
The guys who liked a strong, brooding type were either too freaky or too flighty for my taste. At least, that had been my limited experience. The good guys, like Finn, wanted . . . well, they wanted something else—someone else.
Over the years, I’d made a sort of peace with it all.
Work didn’t care what my face did to people.
