Page 6 of Love It or List It
“Hmm.”He studied Joe for a moment, eyes mirthful.“What would you know about getting into trouble, Mr.Punctuality?”
Joe held up his hands.“Hey, I’m sorry I was a dick.I am not a great wait-around-er.But in full disclosure, at least half the time I got sent to the principal’s office it was because of chronic lateness.”
Austin gasped theatrically, palm pressed to his chest.“Ahypocrite?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“That’s a shame.”He shook his head.“Are you a hypocrite who’s free this weekend?”
Joe’s heart thumped too hard in his chest.Was this—Austin wasn’t asking him outnow, was he?After Joe had been a complete hot-and-cold-running disaster?
“To check out our house?”Austin finished, eyebrows raised.“I work Saturdays—hazard of the job, everybody else has it off so that’s when they bring in the car to get fixed up—but I close on Sunday.”
Right.Yes.The house.Duh.Joe took a moment to shake off his disorientation.“Um, let me just—” He pulled out his phone to demonstrate, opened the weather app when Austin nodded.There was a late hurricane system moving up from the Gulf, and it was still on schedule to drop buckets of rain on Southern Ontario on Sunday.Not a good work day.The jobs Joe had lined up for the week would have to wait to start until Monday.“Sunday works.”
Austin smiled again.Joe told himself several things that even the kids would call harsh, because sure it had been over a year since he and Paul broke up, but that didn’t mean Joe needed to react like a hot guy had never smiled at him before.This was embarrassing.
“Great,” Austin said.“It’s a date.”
Chapter Two
AUSTIN ALMOSTmissed the driveway, the rain was coming down so hard.At the last safe moment he spotted the little green metal numbered sign—implemented to help emergency services find rural addresses—next to the slash of gravel, and hit the brakes.The car slowed enough to make the turn without ending up in the ditch, and Austin pulled into the long, curved driveway.
Even on a clear day, you couldn’t see the house from the road.It was blocked by a tall stand of cedars.After all the Sundays Austin had spent out here having lunch with DeeDee, he should’ve recognized he was almost on top of the place, but sometimes it snuck up on him.Today he was blaming the rain.Everything looked different in the rain, and he hadn’t been out here since the early days of summer.
The pole barn came into view first—a long flat gray building with three single-car doors, trimmed in red.To its right was another garage, this one white-sided and attached to the house via a sort of enclosed breezeway—a drafty hallway with many large windows and little insulation—that had to be an addition.Austin didn’t think hundred-year-old brick two-story farmhouses usually had attached garages, but he hadn’t asked DeeDee much about the house’s history either.
He wished he had the garage opener.It would be nice to park out of the wet, and the slate-gray October sky promised nothing but misery for the next several hours.But he didn’t, so he parked as close to the house as he could without being on the patio and settled in to wait for Joe.
The whole thing was still weird.Austin never expected to own a house.He was proud of himself for pulling together the funds to buy the garage and had spent six weeks more or less squatting in it while he outfitted the space above it with a kitchen and bathroom he acquired piece by piece from the Habitat ReStore downtown.It was ugly as fuck, sure, but it was his.In a couple years he figured he’d renovate and get some better appliances and bathroom fixtures that were white instead of their current eighties mixtape of style.
He could move that timetable up significantly if he had the proceeds from half a house to work with.
Or, said a tiny voice in the back of his head,you could keep it.
He squashed that thought viciously as headlights illuminated the garage and a shiny green pickup pulled in next to him.
Austin couldn’t keep this house himself.He didn’t have the money to buy Joe out.He could barely afford the mortgage payments on the garage.So the only way he could keep the house was if Joe wanted to keep it too.And who’d want to keep a house with a complete stranger?
Joe parked the truck.White lettering on the side read Romano Tree and Landscape Service.Austin wondered idly how much equipment he had and whether he already had an agreement with a mechanic.
Before he could reach for the door handle, Joe rolled down his window and gestured for him to do the same.
Austin wrinkled his nose at the raindrops spattering against the sill of his car.
Joe quirked up one side of his mouth in a wry half smile.“At least we won’t have to wonder if the roof leaks, I guess.”
Jesus.Austin hoped not.
He didn’t know what to make of Joe Romano.At first he’d taken him for a jerk, what with his snarky remark about Austin’s punctuality or lack thereof.Then he thought he was a homophobe, the way he’d reacted to Austin’s jokinghouse husbandremark.And then the guy turned around and started flirting.Austin couldn’t figure it out.Maybe he was trying to win Austin over only to screw him on the home thing.
Austin was leaning toward a different explanation: he was just kind of a disaster.
Speaking of disasters.
They both ran for the front porch, and after they stood a moment to shake the rain off themselves, Joe took out his key and unlocked the door into a house worthy of reality-TV intervention.
Well, shit.
