Page 111 of Mourner for Hire
She rolls her eyes and starts to drift away, and I sigh, hands on my hips.
Dominic looks at me. “You okay?”
“What?” I ask, flustered and wiping my brow. “Oh, me? I’m fine. I’m just…”
He moves slowly, setting the tub of mud on the counter.
I think quickly, clapping my hands together. “I have an idea!”
“You do?” He’s still skeptical, nervousness pulling at his expression.
“Yes, let’s make it interesting. If I cut this—” I hold up the box cutter. “—and it doesn’t fit, I have to run out into the ocean… No wetsuit.”
“The water is freezing, Vada.”
“I know. That’s what makes it… dangerous.” I add the last word with a stupid waggle of my eyebrows that makes him chuckle.
“And if you do cut it correctly, what happens?”
“You have to run out in the ocean.”
“You have to cut it correctly on the first try,” he specifies.
I shoot out my hand. “Deal.”
After using a box cutter to slice through the sheetrock where I marked it with pencil, I break it down the seam, until I have a rectangular-shaped piece of sheetrock.
“Moment of truth,” I sing, holding up the piece. It’s no more than forty inches by twenty inches. “An ass-shaped piece of sheetrock.”
The right side of his mouth curls up, almost a grin. “That’s generous.”
I hold it up and examine it. “Really? I think my ass is about this size.”
He steps closer. “Your ass isn’t rectangular.”
I suck in air, and my heart stops for an entire beat. His words and proximity eat up all my composure, and the memory of my ass—said ass—in his hands last night sparks a fire in my belly. I remember his anger when he saw the missing wallpaper. I remember how he threw a hand on the wall, a dramatic lament about wallpaper and new paint. And how his fist slammed through it instead. The shock. The bitterness. The sadness. The ache. The kiss.
God, the kiss.
“Well.” I let out a loose breath that tumbles over my throat. “Anyway, moment of truth.”
I repeat the phrase and line the piece of sheetrock up against the hole, slipping it in along the edges.
“Like a glove,” I stand back, triumphant, and grab the drill and drywall screws.
“That was lucky.”
“It was not.” I drill in the first screw.
“You just guessed,” he argues.
“No, I didn’t. I measured using common sense.” And another screw.
“It was chaotic.”
And a third screw. “It was efficient.”
I reach for the drywall tape and cover the seams as he huffs out a breath, restraining another smile.
