Page 16 of Bone to Pick
When I returned with the handsaw, he was standing with his feet braced and his arms crossed.
“Theo,” he said slowly, like the word was still unfamiliar and he was testing it out.
“Yes?” I snapped, turned on despite myself.
“I have a wager for you. If, after an hour, I’ve removed more of this tree with the handsaw than you have with the chainsaw, will you admit that I know what I’m doing and let me use the chainsaw to finish getting the branches off?”
We both knew my chainsaw was never going to cut into the tree itself. The trunk circumference was way too large for the size chainsaw I had. Until we could get professional help up here, the tree wasn’t moving. But if we could strip all the branches off and make it easier to access, the pros would be able to make a much quicker job of it.
“What do I get when I win?” I asked. Clearly, the man with the chainsaw would win. It was a no-brainer.
“I’ll cook you dinner.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, already put stew fixings in the Crock-Pot.”
“I’ll do the dishes.”
“Already did that, too.”
He exhaled a white cloud into the cold air. “Fine. What do you suggest? It hardly matters since I’m going to school you with this thing.” He waved the handsaw in the air.
I thought about it for a long moment. What did I want from Porter Sunday? Lots of things, most of them highly inadvisable.
“If I win, I want you to let me critique the last essay you did for Professor Burton’s class,” I blurted, surprising myself as much as him.
Porter’s lips thinned. “Um,no. I’m doing just fine in Burton’s class, thanks, so I don’t need your… help. And letting you point out all the ways I’m lacking isn’t my idea of a good time.”
“You’re doing fine in Professor Burton’s class because this is literally his last semester as a professor, and he’s been half-checked-out since August,” I retorted.
This was mostly an educated guess based on Jim Burton’s behavior in other areas. I’d certainly never done anything as unprofessional as asking him to show me Porter’s work. But judging by Porter’s frown, my guess wasn’t far off the mark… or else he’d been wondering the same thing.
“I would like to explain to you what I wanted to explain last semester. I want you to listen to me now the way you didn’t listen then. Those are my terms. That’s the prize I want.”
“Fine,” he gritted out. “It doesn’t really matter because I’m not losing. We start now.”
We spent the next hour busting our asses, trying to one-up each other as if I wasn’t older and more sedentary and he wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous with a muscular fit body and a really compelling facility with… ahem,tools.
About half an hour into our challenge, he’d worked up enough heat to strip off his borrowed jacket and push up the sleeves on the hoodie I’d lent him… which was short enough to remind me he was wearing sweatpants with no underwear. I would have called him out for trying to deliberately distract me, but I didn’t think he was doing anything deliberately. The man was just sex on legs.
If I hadn’t been so determined to win, I might have given up and just sat to watch him. But I wanted my do-over, damn it.
When my chainsaw finally sputtered and died, we were neck and neck—which felt like a win, even though Porter had been doing the job by hand while I had not. I spun toward the shed for more gas, and Porter began laughing.
“Good luck finding gas. The container in there is empty. How do you think I knew for sure I could win?”
I didn’t bother responding, only hid my grin as I went past the shed to the thirty-gallon fuel tank tucked safely away from the buildings. After filling the chainsaw’s tank up, I returned and winked at Porter.
“Never assume, Mr. Sunday. It makes an ass out of you and me.”
ChapterFive
PORTER
We were both soaking wet and covered in a mix of snow and sweat from hours working on the world’s largest downed tree. Stacks of brushy branches formed messy piles around the edges of the driveway, and the remaining trunk lay naked and forbidding, a long, heavy reminder that regardless of all our hard work, we weren’t getting out of here anytime soon.
Because of the loud buzz of the chainsaw, we hadn’t been able to carry on a conversation while we worked, which was probably for the best. Instead, we’d worked side by side in what became… well, not companionable silence, exactly, since it was more competitive than companionable and definitely not quiet. But the interlude had begun with me truly angry, in a way I rarely was, and had ended as more of a teasing challenge.
There was something about physical labor, especially outdoors, that was always soothing. It reminded me of all the times growing up on the orchard that my brothers and I had busted our asses trimming trees, harvesting apples, and generally hauling debris until our muscles ached and our stomachs cried out for a giant meal.
