Page 37 of This Is How It Started
“What’s up?” Brooke’s in her scottie dog pajamas again.
She puts on a fresh pot of coffee, which I should’ve done the minute I drained the old pot. I’m a crappy houseguest as well as a crappy real estate agent.
“Campbell wants to look at a house.” I turn my laptop so she can see the pictures I have on my screen.
She looks over my shoulder. “Nice.”
“Really?” Because it’s not. But if anyone can save it, Campbell can.
“Sure.” She reaches in the drawer on the other side of the center island and puts a pair of glasses on before pulling the monitor closer and examining the house. “It’s a little run-down, but Campbell’s a carpenter, right?”
“Yep.” I’m surprised she remembers. I don’t think she’s met Campbell more than twice. Three times max.
Her glasses slip down on the bridge of her nose as she reads the property details, then does a double take. “Holy shit, the price is fantastic.” She turns to me. “You better hurry.”
She’s right. I dash off a text to Campbell, and twenty minutes later, I’m running down the driveway in the rain to get inside his truck.
“Thanks for picking me up.” So far, my driving phobia is a well-kept secret. Anyway, it’ll be easier as far as parking to go in one car. “Is Jess meeting us there?”
“Nope. She got caught up at work. But you made it sound pretty urgent that we look at it now, so you’ve got me.” He grins, showing off a pair of dimples. Those dimples used to turn me inside out.
For some reason, they make me flash on my sixteenth birthday. Campbell took me to Arturo’s, and in a red Naugahyde banquette in the back of the restaurant, he slipped a promise ring on my finger, making us official. The ring, an eighteen-karat-gold band with a rainbow of gemstones, must’ve cost Campbell two years’ worth of lawn-mowing money. Little did he know he already had me with those dimples. Still, I’ve kept the ring all these years stashed in the back of my jewelry box.
We find parking right in front of the house, wouldn’t you know it? The Craftsman is wedged between two contemporaries that look like twin space stations. Who knows what they were before? Dolores Heights’ architecture is all over the map. I’m sure Josh would’ve loved these gleaming glass-and-steel monstrosities. Me, not so much. I’ve always been drawn to vintage. The painted ladies in Alamo Square, the Spreckels Mansion on Washington, anything Julia Morgan. It’s probably because I grew up in a Queen Anne where you could smell the history. And I mean that in a good way.
I much prefer the Craftsman, though it’s tiny and in need of lots of tender loving care. The grass is grown over in what passes for a front yard, the paint is the color of baby poop, and any charm it once had has been stripped away, starting with the columns on the front porch. Who knows if it’s even structurally sound?
I glance over at Campbell to see his reaction to the place, but he’s looking at me. His green eyes are filled...with something. Longing. Grief. I tell myself I’m wrong. How can it be? His life is so full. Here he is looking at a house, at his future. And just like that, that damned Frank Sinatra song pops into my head.
I’ve got the world on a string, sittin’ on a rainbow...
I open the door and climb down from his truck, hoping that a little damp air will make it stop.
Campbell comes over to my side. “Come ’ere,” he says and doesn’t wait for me to walk into his open arms. He just pulls me in and wraps me in a hug so warm and tight that I want to stay burrowed in his chest for a thousand years.
It’s the first time since Josh died that anyone has held me. Until now I didn’t realize how much I needed that kind of human contact. And Campbell is like memory foam, everything about him is familiar, and my body instantly comes to life. For a moment, I revel in it. But there’s a niggling at the back of my head that it’s wrong. It’s Campbell, not Josie or Adam or Hannah or even my mom. He’s Jessica’s now. And I’m Josh’s, always and forever.
I slowly pull away. “You ready to take a walk on the wild side?”
He chuckles and glances at the house over my head. “It’s a real piece of shit, isn’t it?”
“Yep.” I fuss with the lockbox until it finally opens, realizing how rusty I am. “But possibly a jewel in the rough.”
We go in, and I’m immediately hit with the smell of something dead.
“Don’t look,” Campbell says and shields my eyes.
And with that, it doesn’t take hyperosmia to know what the stink is.
Campbell takes me by the shoulders, turns me around, and walks me outside. “I’ll take care of it.” He is well acquainted with my fear of rodents. Live, dead, cartoon characters. It doesn’t matter. I loathe them all.
It’s merely misting now, and that horrible odor is replaced with the smell of fresh rain and newly tarred streets. This block of Liberty is really quite pretty with its mature trees. I spy a porta potty down the street, which means there’s construction going on. Not great for quality of life, but gentrification is good for property values. And don’t I sound like bougie scum?
Campbell leans out the door, gives me a thumbs-up, and beckons me back inside. I don’t even want to know what he did with Mickey Mouse or, given the stench, Rizzo the Rat.
We stand in the living room, taking it all in.
“The floor’s not level.” It’s even worse than in the photographs.
