Page 32 of Trophy
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you never clean up a little?”
He gave her a rueful look. “Only when I have to. Sorry. I know it’s a little…”
“It’s a lot.” She giggled again. “I don’t understand. The outside of your house is perfect.”
“I like yard work. I hate housework.” He pushed a hand through his thick hair, clearly torn between amusement and embarrassment. “We can go over to your place if you’d rather.”
“Oh no. You have a much better TV. Just clear some stuff off the couch so we can sit down. Can I get us something to drink?”
“Sure. There’s beer. Or water. Those are your choices.”
Allison snorted with amusement again as she braved the kitchen to get two beers out of his large refrigerator. There wasn’t much else, just some bottled water, some butter, and an ancient jar of pickles. No wonder he ate out all the time.
He’d moved the piles of newspapers, books, and file folders off the couch and was brushing off what was likely crumbs when she returned to join him.
“What do you want to watch?” he asked, picking up the remote and clicking on the TV.
“Oh, I don’t know. Anything but sports.”
“Great. Those are the only channels I know.”
She laughed again, feeling giddy for absolutely no reason. She had no idea why seeing his messy house would endear him to her, but it did. It made him feel more accessible. More like her. “Well, flip until we find something good.”
They eventually found reruns of a sitcom that both of them liked well enough, so Rob left the TV on that channel. “You were going to tell me what classes you were taking.”
“Oh. Right.”
So she told him about the classes she was looking at and the classes she’d already taken, and what majors she was considering and how she really wanted there to be a degree in jewelry making.
“You like to make jewelry?”
“Yeah.” She flicked her earrings, which were loops of pretty silver and pink beads. “All the jewelry I wear I made.”
“Really?” He learned forward, peering at her ears. “Those look really good. You wear all kinds of fancy stuff, don’t you?”
She understood this question to be a compliment. “I’ve been doing it for years now. When I first got married, I was really bored, so I took this workshop on jewelry making. I enjoyed it so much I kept doing it, and then I would give what I made to my friends, and they’d all love it, so that’s when I decided I wanted to do it as a business.”
“Why don’t you?” His eyes still looked kind of heavy, like he wasn’t quite recovered from earlier, but he also appeared genuinely interested in what she was saying.
“It takes a lot more money than I have.” She sighed. “I used to hope Arthur would fund me. I even made up a business plan and everything to prove that I knew what I was getting into. But he refused. He said it was throwing money away and that he didn’t want his wife in a ‘service industry’ anyway.”
“Asshole,” Rob muttered.
Allison reached over to pat his thigh. “A lot of people have dreams like that. Usually those dreams don’t come true. There’s no reason to assume mine would.”
“Well, there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t. How much money do you need?”
“Way too much.”
Rob’s brow furrowed the way it did when he was thinking hard. “Maybe you could start small, then. We have a lot of craft fairs and little knickknack stores around here. Maybe you could sell some of your stuff there. It would be something, anyway. Maybe a piece of the dream is better than nothing.”
She stared at him, suddenly hit with a revelation that should have been obvious but was only now coming to her. College wasn’t the only first step she could take. She could do something with her jewelry too. Right now. There was no reason she had to wait..
He blinked. “What? Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” She felt a little choked up. “No, you didn’t.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
