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  Riley handed me his half-finished beer, confusing me. But before I could ask why, he looked me in the eye and said, “Jess, I’ve got no business judging anyone. But I can offer you some advice if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure.” Though my palms started to sweat anticipating what he might say.

  “Never ask someone to tell you who you are. You tell them.”

  The irony was, I had thought I was doing that when I’d come to college, but I realized Riley was right. My message of who I was wasn’t clear to anyone, not even to me. A hot taste of dissatisfaction filled my mouth. “Yeah, I get that. But it’s not so easy with my dad.”

  “I’m sure it’s not. But you’re on your own now, right?”

  I nodded and took a sip of the beer. “I’m drinking this.”

  “That’s why I gave it to you. And if you want to offer me advice right back, here’s your chance. I opened the door.”

  He leaned on the kitchen counter, crossing his ankles and his arms, a sly smile on his face. I wondered what he thought I would say. He certainly looked like he thought I was predictable. It was hard to study him, because I didn’t understand my reaction to him. Annoyance was still there, simmering under the surface, wanting to smack his arrogance off his face, but there were more complex feelings there now as well. An odd sort of kinship, attraction, definitely, and maybe something that if the thought didn’t make me want to throw up a little, tender.

  It was that last one that prompted me to say, “Yes. I do have some advice. Use sunscreen on your face tomorrow. You don’t want to end up losing half your nose at forty from melanoma.”

  First his eyes widened in surprise, then he laughed, even as his finger came up to stroke over the red skin on his nose. “I didn’t see that one coming. Thanks, Mom. I’m going to go take a shower.” On his way out of the kitchen, he casually tapped the paint sample on the far left. “I like this one the best.”

  That simple gesture made me feel a little gooey inside. So after he went to bed, I put my odor-free sunscreen bottle on the counter in the bathroom with a note that said Safety First <3.

  Chapter Five

  A small part of me expected a smart-ass comment back in response to my note, but I didn’t get one. Was I disappointed? Yeah, I’m not going to lie. If Riley couldn’t predict me, I couldn’t predict him either.

  But I had enough to keep me busy. I searched online for step-by-step instructions on how to paint a room, and I made a supply list. I decided to take the bus back to the hardware store, which made me a little—okay, a lot—nervous, but I couldn’t ask Robin to drive me again, and Riley had taken his car to work. I didn’t want to wait to get started because now that I had a green light from Riley, I was excited about the Mann kitchen makeover. I wanted to do it immediately, if not sooner.

  So putting my wallet in my backpack, I slung it over my shoulders, putting the change for the bus in one pocket, my phone with the bus routes pulled up on it in the other. Keeping an eye out for gangbanging tweens, I walked down the street to catch the 10:55 bus. It was sweaty-balls hot again. My T-shirt was already sticking to my ribs. By the time I climbed on the bus, the back of my neck was wet and I was thinking maybe it was time to buy myself a crappy car. This was a suckfest.

  But once I got to the store, ignoring the stares of two scruffy guys in the parking lot and one belligerent and overweight store greeter, I actually enjoyed myself. It was challenging to figure out what to buy all by myself instead of just having things miraculously appear they way they did back home. If my mother wanted the house redecorated, she hired someone. If my father needed his suits dry-cleaned, he put them on the front step and someone came and picked them up and then two days later they reappeared. Our housekeeper did all the grocery shopping, and the lawn service mowed the grass.

  This was me studying labels and prices and finding the best deal on paint brushes, and it was stupidly liberating. My whole life my mother had been complimenting me for being pretty, but having decent genetics was no compliment to me—it was a pat on her own back to birthing what she considered a beautiful child. I wanted to get credit for something I had done, something I had control over, an achievement, not for being born with blond hair.

  “What’s the difference between regular brushes and foam brushes?” I asked a clerk, a man in his fifties who looked friendly and helpful but not creepy. He didn’t smile too big or stare at my chest, so I felt comfortable approaching him.

  “What are you painting?” he asked. “Foam tends to be for small areas, for stenciling, or for picture frames and things like that.”

  “Oh. I’m painting a whole kitchen. Well, I’m going to attempt to paint a whole kitchen.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he assured me. “But go with a brush to cut in the edges and a roller for the rest.” He walked me to the shelf and pointed out each item.

  Feeling ridiculously proud of myself, I trudged back to Riley’s with a gallon of gray paint in my hands, the rest of the supplies in my backpack. Going in through the kitchen door, I spread out everything on the table like I had been jewelry and makeup shopping. I wanted to see it all. Hugging myself in anticipation of a twenty-four-hour transformation to awesome, I planned out the next day’s shopping trip. I would knock out the painting today, then first thing tomorrow I would be able to accessory shop, which would be the real fun.

  Three hours later, when I had to quit and take a shower for work, I realized I was an idiot. This was going to take me a week, not one afternoon. After wiping down all the baseboards per Internet instructions, I had only managed to tape off half the room. I hadn’t even cracked open the can of paint yet.

  Going in to the bathroom, I stripped to shower the smell of loser off of me, feeling defeated. I had a text from Bill on my phone, a much-delayed response to the text I had sent yesterday.

  Want to hang out tonight?

  Did I? The answer was not really. But what else was I going to do? Come back here and search for the air freshener while Riley slept?

  Sure.

  Then I put my phone down on the counter, suddenly feeling weird that I was texting Bill while I was naked in Riley’s bathroom. Which made no sense whatsoever.

  But after only grabbing a late-night coffee with Bill and listening to an acoustic guitar player at a local coffee shop for an hour, I yawned and begged off, claiming I had to work early the next day. I had no idea why I did it. But sitting there, my leg bouncing, my work shirt still smelling faintly of barbecue sauce, the front door to the shop propped open to let in the night breeze, I just wanted to go back to Riley’s. I wanted to measure the wall space and look up the best stores to buy cheap glassware and ashtrays. If smoking had to happen, it should be done in style. I had told Robin I wanted the art piece in yellow and royal blue, and I texted her a link to the font I liked.

  “Are you okay?” Bill asked as he drove me back, being a good sport about leaving at midnight. “You seem . . . edgy.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Is it because of what I said the other day? I’m sorry, I was just stressed about exams and I shouldn’t have just blurted all that shit out like that.” As he pulled up in front of the house, he put the car in park and gave me an earnest look, pushing his glasses up his nose.

  Sighing, and not sure why, I hated this sudden moodiness that had taken me over. “No, it’s cool. It was a lot for me to ask.” Funny though how I had never expected him to say no. I didn’t want to think that I used sex to control, but there it was in black and white. I had expected that the enticement of nightly sex for a week would have had Bill agreeing without hesitation, his tongue hanging out.

  It made me feel like shit.

  “This doesn’t look like a very good neighborhood,” Bill said, glancing around. “Are you sure you’re okay here?”

  Bill and Nathan’s apartment wasn’t exactly in a glam zip code but I didn’t bother to point that out. “Yes. Riley’s here. Thanks for the ride. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I started
to open the door, but Bill touched my shoulder. “Jess.”

  “Yes?” Somehow I had a feeling I wasn’t going to want to hear what he had to say.

  But he just shook his head. “Never mind.”

  My first reaction was to press, but then I decided I had been given a free pass. Whatever he was thinking I wasn’t going to like it. So I got out before he could change his mind and walked up the gravel drive, deciding to try the front door since the lights were clearly still on in the house. I wondered why Riley was still awake.

  The answer was obvious immediately. When I pushed open the front door, the smell of fresh paint overwhelmed me. Amazed, I went into the kitchen, which was ablaze with light and the sound of metal music cranking loud from Riley’s phone. He had painted three of the four walls already. The hard ones. The ones with the cabinets and the one with the back door and the window, the ones that required all that taping, which I had saved for last. Only he hadn’t used tape. He had obviously just freehand painted the edges. It was impressive. The only wall remaining was the completely blank one and he was already tackling it with the roller, gray spreading in front of my eyes as I moved into the room.

  The color looked amazing, but not quite as amazing as him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, stunned. “You didn’t have to do this. This was my idea. I didn’t really mean you had to do the painting, too. I just wanted some help hanging some art.”

  But he shrugged, the muscles in his arm bulging as he rolled efficiently. “Couldn’t sleep. And I have this thing where I can’t sit on my ass and watch a girl laboring on my behalf. It makes me feel like a dick.”

  Touched beyond anything that was smart or emotionally healthy, I said, “The color looks great, don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t look like ass,” was his assessment.

  I frowned, and he glanced back at me and grinned. “Fine. It looks nice. But that’s as gushy as I get, princess.”

  Impulsively, I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind and hugged him, my breasts pressing into his back. “Thank you.”

  He stiffened, then said, “Alright, calm down or I’m going to drop this roller.”

  Letting go quickly, because I liked the way my body felt against his too much, I said, “Can I help?”

  “Take the brush and paint that last corner. Just go up and down the seam. You don’t need a lot of paint.”

  “Okay.” I took the brush that was laying in the paint tray, and I dipped and carefully lifted it. It dripped on the floor. “Shit.” I wiped the floor with my finger.

  “Use a hand towel. They’re basically rags anyway.”

  They were. Replacing them was already in my mental budget. I grabbed a dingy towel off the counter and cleaned my finger. Then I bit my lip as I jammed the brush in the corner and dragged it up and down, feeling an absurd amount of pleasure from covering the filthy white.

  “I’m not as helpless as I look,” I told him, because I wanted him to understand I was capable, just, well, sheltered. “I just don’t have a lot of practical life experience.”

  “Now there’s something I never would have guessed.”

  “Ha ha.” I dipped the brush again, being more careful not to overload it and let it drip this time. “I think the only times I’ve had to do anything that could be considered manual labor were when I was being punished.”

  “You get punished a lot?”

  “Of course. It’s impossible to be perfect.” I carefully went up on my tiptoes to reach as far as I could. “And despite the Christian concept that God makes no mistakes in our creation, my father has very specific guidelines for what makes a good person.”

  I pulled a kitchen chair across the floor to stand on. I couldn’t quite reach the corner.

  “You the rebel daughter?”

  “No. I tried really hard to please him, actually. I’m not even sarcastic with him.”

  Riley laughed. “Now that I find hard to believe.”

  “It’s true.” I finished my corner and shifted the chair back out of the way. “But it’s like walking on eggshells, you know?”

  “Trust me, I know that feeling.” Riley was moving closer and closer to me as he brought the roller to meet the corner I had just painted and finish off the wall. “My mother usually ignored us, which were the best days. Other days she cried and needed reassurance, or she was sick from the drugs. The worst days were the ones where she was violent or strung out. It was like holding your breath all the time, waiting for the next big explosion.”

  His eyes shifted from the wall to me as he covered the last bit of white, his right arm paused. I felt trapped in the corner, his body warm, the light harsh, paint fumes intense. But all I could think about was him. The way his lips moved when he spoke, the rich coffee color of his eyes, and the shadow of his beard.

  “That sounds like a terrible way to grow up,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t trying to compare.” I felt whiny in comparison, even though I had just been trying to explain why I didn’t know how to do anything particularly useful.

  “I know. Don’t be so fucking sensitive.” He switched the roller to his left hand and nudged me with his right shoulder. “We’re just sharing, Jess. Talking about our feelings. Getting to know each other now that we’re roomies and painting pals.”

  The stupid way he was looking at me, his goofy expression as unlike him as his words, made me laugh. “Dumbass.”

  I stepped back and surveyed the room. “Awesome paint job, though. I can’t believe how fast you did this. You know, they sell gallons of mess-up paint that someone asked for but then didn’t want for like eight dollars a gallon. We could totally paint the living room, too.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I asked, smiling at him with what I hoped was charming enthusiasm. I wasn’t surprised he’d said no. I was expecting it, and mostly I just said it to annoy him.

  “I don’t need a reason. Just no. And clean this paint tray and the brush in the basement sink.”

  Blech. That sounded unfortunate. “Clean them how?”

  “With water,” he said slowly and clearly, like he was speaking to a moron, making a mock scrubbing gesture. He shook his head. “God help us.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him.

  Moving with a dexterity I didn’t know was possible, his hand shot out and he actually caught my tongue between his fingers.

  “Heth!” I said, trying to say hey, but without a freely movable tongue it came out garbled. Laughing, I swatted at his arm and tried to pull back.

  “Shit, watch out!” he said, eyes going wide in amusement, his hand whipping behind my head.

  “What?” I spun around and saw that his hand was the only thing preventing the entire back of my hair from touching wet paint. “Oh, crap!” I hadn’t realized how close to the wall I was.

  When I stepped forward, he pulled his hand back and showed me that his knuckles were covered in gray paint. “Way to go.”

  “Sorry.” Then I ruined the apology by giggling.

  “Think it’s funny?”

  I nodded. “Just a little.”

  Riley took his wet knuckle and reached out toward me, a gleam in his eye. I couldn’t back up and when I tried to dart to the side, he blocked me. Then before I realized what he was doing, he had smeared wet paint on my upper lip like a mustache. I sputtered. He laughed.

  “Damn, now that is funny.”

  I could only imagine how not sexy I looked. Still holding the brush in my hand I brought it up to his chest and painted an X on it. In the middle of my action, he realized what I was doing and grabbed my wrist so that the second line squiggled awkwardly off the side of his shirt. I laughed. “You made it worse.”

  “I like this shirt!” he protested, glancing down at it.

  “Are you joking? That shirt is a white undershirt from Walmart. Or actually, it was white at one time. Now it’s the color of a tea bag.”

  “You’re exaggerating.” He looked up and studied me, very serious. “
Jessica?”

  “Yes?”

  “I mustache you a question.”

  My lip twitched. “Let me mullet over.”

  We both lost it. He pulled out his phone. “We need a picture of this.”

  Did I want to preserve a picture of me with a painted gray mustache? Not necessarily. But I did want a picture of me with Riley, and I did want to see what I looked like. There were certainly more embarrassing pics of me floating around the Internet—hello, why do all friends insist on posting pictures with your eyes closed?

  “You can’t tag me,” I told him.

  “You don’t look that bad.”

  “It’s not that. I’m supposed to be in West Virginia, remember?”

  He grinned. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Come here, sinner. Wait, give me a matching ’stache first.”

  Riley stood stock-still while I artistically swooped the paintbrush over his face. “This is hard, because you have legit stubble.” I was also aware of just how close to me he was standing. How close my mouth was to his.

  He looked unaffected though. “Your life is so hard.”

  Just for that, I gave him a handlebar mustache, painting curls at the ends with a flourish. “You look amazing.”

  “Alright, pose with me. No duck face. I hate duck face. I will pop your lips with a pin if you do duck face.”

  “Tell me how you really feel.”

  Riley threw his arm around me and held up the phone with the other. I leaned against his shoulder, and gave a serious Hercule Poirot stare, one eyebrow raised, a finger pretending to twirl my paint mustache. Riley snapped and we looked at it. I looked evil. He looked adorably cute, grinning with his dimples flashing, looking every inch of a guy despite the gray paint.

  Seeing us together did something weird to me. I sucked in a breath, heart pounding, and I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding louder than I intended.

  “I’m Riley Mann, and I approve this message,” he said. He didn’t seem to notice I was acting like a freak.