Page 28 of V is for Valentine
“Eight. It shouldn’t take long.”
“I’ll be ready to talk by then.”
“You seem to do okay by seven,” he pointed out—the time she’d arrived the two previous days.
She fixed him with a deadly stare, suggesting a predator about to attack. “You’re playing with fire, Danny.”
“Right. I’ll just head upstairs.”
He balanced the rolls of paper tape on the lid of the five-gallon bucket of compound, then picked up the mud tray which held the various widths of joint knives and the trowel with his other hand. “See you in a couple hours,” he said cheerfully.
“Yep.”
Danny shot one last look in Felicity’s direction as he started up the creaking stairs. She was staring into space, as if wondering where to start, but after he reached the second floor and snapped on the lights, he heard her go into action, the joint knives clattering as she rummaged through them. A blast of music followed, and he smiled as he recognized the popular tune from their high school days. She skipped it and brought up a more recent song.
Not in a nostalgic mood.
He pried open the bucket of joint compound and filled his tray, then moved the ladder into position to start taping the top joints. First, he applied a layer of compound over the wallboard seams, then pressed the tape into the wet mud. After that, he skimmed another coat of mud over the top in two strokes. Later, after sanding, he’d feather on the final coats which would render the seam invisible. It was exacting work and there were a lot of seams to be done, but thankfully, Pete—or Zach—had already completed nearly half of the upstairs offices, giving them a fighting chance of getting the interior prepped for painting on schedule. If Felicity’s sisters showed up to spackle the screw holes tomorrow, it’d be a massive help.
Half an hour before he was due to meet the window repair crew at his warehouse, the stairs creaked as Felicity came to the second floor. He paused, trowel in the air, as she topped the staircase.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You’re never home when I go to bed. How do you function the next day?”
“I guess I’m used to running on fumes.”
“It’ll catch up with you.”
“I know. I’ve crashed before.”
“Have you?”
“Yes.” He ran his blade down the seam. “It’s why I changed careers.”
“I’ve yet to burn out professionally.”
“Because you appear to have set healthy boundaries.” He glanced at her. “No offense, but that surprises me, given the all-or-nothing attitude I’ve come to expect from you.”
“Life is a little different than a water balloon fight,” she said with a half-smile before lifting her coffee to her lips. She never seemed to run out of the stuff.
“Yet at times eerily similar.”
Her eyes crinkled with amusement. Felicity was now officially awake.
She pushed a few strands of hair off her forehead. “I admit that I started my career gung ho, putting in crazy hours when no one else was.” She met his gaze ruefully. “Acting exactly how you would expect me to act. However, I had a wise mentor who convinced me that killing myself wouldn’t help the company or me. And she pointed out that companies take advantage. They’ll milk you for all you’re willing to give, and lot of them don’t reward you for it. They simply come to expect it.” She leaned her shoulder against the wall. “Did you experience that?”
“No. I was part of a tech startup right out of college. My partner and I burned the candle at both ends for a couple of years. It paid off.”
“But not enough to stick with it?”
“Let’s just say I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. So I didn’t. After that…I don’t know…I started seeing the world differently. I decided to leave California and come back to Idaho and make my life here.” His phone chimed and he put down his trowel. “I have to leave.”
“Right. I just wanted to see where you were so I could calculate our progress.”
He’d covered a good amount of ground over the past few hours. Enough that he felt okay about leaving for an hour. He used his trowel to scrape the excess joint compound from the tray back into the bucket, which he sealed.
