Page 53 of Overtime Positions
Travis nodded once, jaw ticking. “I want her to trust us. Enough to tell us at least.”
“She will.”
“When?”
I looked down at my boot and shrugged, “When she stops waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
He grunted, “Then maybe it’s time we showed her we’re not going anywhere. And that this is more than just a nighttime thing.”
We didn’t tellher we were coming.
Travis called me first thing in the morning and said, “You busy?”
“Why?”
I wasn’t, but I never volunteered for his shenanigans without giving him a hard time first.
“Frankie’s house needs shit.”
That was it. That was the whole plan.
He picked me up with his truck bed full of tools and an energy drink already in hand for me. I didn’t ask how he knew what size lightbulbs to buy, or why he had new hinges without ever stepping foot in her house to know what was wrong with it.
Truth was, houses were his love language, and working on them with his bare hands was his passion.
And she deserved a house that didn’t reflect how hard life had turned out for her.
Mrs. Blake gave us a spare key the second I flashed her a smile and told her what we were up to. At first, she glared at me like she’d heard rumors about what we were doing with her precious daughter in the dark of night. But then she relaxed her shoulders and gave me one of her warm, affectionate gazes.
She supported the idea of us in her daughter’s life, even if she didn’t understand the dynamic exactly.
We let ourselves into Frankie’s quaint little rental house next door to her mom’s through the back, and we both took it all in, seeing her place on the inside for the first time.
The kids were at school; the place was silent. Frankie was starting a shift at the rink cafe.
And the house? Yeah, it needed us.
The back doorknob spun in my hand like a roulette wheel.
Half the lights in the kitchen had burned out, some could be easily fixed by replacing the bulbs, while behind the box, some had fried electrical wires.
The bathroom towel rack fell off the second Travis leaned on it. He caught it midair and glared at me with anI told you solook.
“Add it to the list,” I offered, taking a mental inventory of what needed to get done and in what order.
“Nah,” He said, tossing me screws as he pulled his drill out like a weapon, “We’ll do it. All of it.”
And we did.
We moved through her house as if we belonged there, tightening screws, swapping bulbs, testing windows, patching the loose step at the bottom of the stairs before it could send one of the kids flying.
Even through all the repairs and the obvious things that were broken, the thing I saw the most inside her four walls was love. There was so much damn warmth and love, literally beaming off every wall and surface in the photos, kids' art, and homemade trinkets.
Frankie loved her kids and gave them the very best she could, which was more than enough in reality. But Frankie herself deserved more.
And that was where we were going to take over.
We didn’t talk while we worked, but it wasn’t quiet either. There was a rhythm to it, something easy between two best friends with decades of history. It felt like we weren’t just fixing her house, but we were staking our claim.
