Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Then I knock, and the door swings wide as if someone’s been waiting on the other side, breath held.
It’s my daughter, in shorts and a t-shirt with a sad sloth on it. Her hair is up, and she grabs my arm the second she sees me, as if she’s afraid I’ll escape back down the stairs.
“Dad! You actually came!” She laughs, tugging me through the door into a wall of air that smells like microwave popcorn and Pantene shampoo.
“Here I am,” I say, lifting the toolbox in my free hand as a peace offering. “At your service, milady.”
She ignores the joke. “We’re all in the living room. Come say hi.”
She’s matured since freshman year, both emotionally and physically; there’s a confidence to the way she moves, the way she doesn’t let go of my sleeve until we’re through the tiny entry hall and into the main room.
The place is a mess, but the happy kind. A couch that must have taken three lives to drag up the stairs is slouched under a blanket with holes in it. Picture frames—most of them still empty—are lined up like dominoes along the baseboard, waiting for someone ambitious to hang them. The coffee table is a door on cinder blocks, scattered with half a deck of cards, a bowl of popcorn, the glittery stubs of a manicure party.
Andie is there, of course.
She’s cross-legged on the floor, a battered MacBook open on the rug in front of her, laughing at something Kayleigh says. Her hair is up in a messy knot, strands falling in front of her face. She’s in leggings and a sweatshirt with the sleeves somewhat shredded, and when she sees me, her smile flickers—but only for half a heartbeat. She recovers instantly, lifting a beer bottle in greeting, her lips twisted in a perfect, polite “Oh, hello, Mr. Moreland.”
“Ladies,” I say, giving them the old head-nod, the one I use in boardrooms and faculty lounges.
They chorus back: “Hi, Thomas,” “Hey, Mr. Moreland,” “Can you pass me a soda, please?”—the last from Mary Kate, who’s trying to get popcorn from the bowl to her mouth without spilling it all down her shirt.
I set the toolbox down with a deliberate clank and hand the woman a soda. “Where are these shelves, anyway?”
Stella grins, all teeth. “Rescue us from our own incompetence, O savior.”
Kayleigh, stretched out on the couch with her feet up says, “You’re the only dad who ever actually fixes shit. My father just Venmos me and tells me to call the landlord.”
I look at her and shrug. “That’s because I’m a control freak. And I don’t trust landlords.”
The whole time, my gaze keeps sliding back to Andie. She keeps her eyes on the laptop, but I see the way her fingers tense around the neck of the bottle, how her shoulders set a fraction straighter when I enter the room.
I can’t help myself. I stare at her—at the curve of her back, at the way the leggings cling to her ass—because just twelve hours ago, I had that ass in my hands, and she was moaning my name, and now I’m supposed to pretend I barely know her, that she’s just another coed, just my daughter’s best friend.
It’s fucking agony.
I force myself to look away. Stella is standing by the window, motioning at the blank stretch of wall above the radiator. “Here,” she says. “I want the big shelf, so we can do plants. Then another over the TV, for the speaker.”
I nod, squint at the space as if it’s a puzzle only I can solve. “Do you have the brackets? Anchors? Did you buy the shelves, or am I supposed to improvise with plywood?”
Simone laughs. “We bought them at IKEA and left them in the car because they were so heavy. Like, all the boxes. We’re hopeless.”
I look to Stella, who shrugs. “I was going to get them after the beer. I have a system.”
I can’t help but smile. “Of course you do.”
While Stella and Mary Kate run down to the car to get the shelves, the rest of us are left in the room, the silence suddenly bigger than before. Kayleigh changes the music on her phone, dialing up something slow and lush—Frank Ocean, maybe?—and the low notes fill up the corners of the room.
Andie is the first to speak, her voice soft but not uncertain. “You don’t have to do this, you know. The mounting and drilling. I’m pretty sure we could bribe the super to come by and help us.”
I meet her eyes, and I let the smile hang there for a second too long. “I like to see things done right.”
She looks away, cheeks pink. “Of course.”
Kayleigh catches this, and for a second, I think she’s going to say something. Instead, she just grabs the beer from the table and hands it to me. “You want a cold one, Thomas?”