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Since I had been working on turning my life around the last couple of years, I’d discovered I enjoyed working on houses in need of renovation. After two years of indecision, procrastination, and occasional work, I’d recently sold my first home.
So, yeah, while I enjoyed doing it, I wasn’t any good at it. If I’d been out to flip houses to make a profit, I would have been bankrupt a while ago. Fortunately, I had the trust fund and big boy job that allowed me to think of buying and fixing up half-million-dollar houses as a hobby and the cushion to catch me if I screwed up.
After selling my last place, I immediately bought a new one, which was more aesthetically displeasing than I’d believed possible. But, as my realtor kept telling me, it had good bones. If it took me another two years to scrape away the layers of wallpaper covering those bones, I wouldn’t be shocked…or disappointed.
Nick Garcia walked into my living room while I was doing just that. The layer I’d just uncovered had yellow rubber ducks printed on it. I wondered what the people who’d made the decision to not only purchase but painstakingly hang this wallpaper had been smoking.
And if they were willing to share.
Nope, nope. None of that, asshole.
I paused scraping to wipe the sweat from my forehead and look up at Nick. “Nice of you to knock.”
He gestured toward the front door leaning beside the doorway. “I thought knocking would be superfluous, but I can go back and try again.”
“For someone I just did a pretty fucking big favor for, you’re being awfully sassy.”
He bent down to pat me on the shoulder. “I appreciate you, man. That’s why I swung by to see if I could lend a hand for a couple hours.”
I didn’t usually accept help. It defeated the purpose of the project. But I’d bitten off more than I could chew for the day. I was supposed to be sanding the front door—hence why it was off the frame—but my squirrel brain had decided it imperative to target the rubber ducks instead.
“You know how to sand?” I asked.
He cocked his head at the hand sander beside the door. “Yeah, I think I can figure it out.”
“Cool. The goal is to go slow and get down to the wood.”
He nodded. “I’ll be careful.” He rapped his knuckles on the door. “Solid piece.”
“That’s why I want to keep it. Just need it not to be orange.”
He snorted a laugh. “I feel that.”
Nick got to work with the sander, and I went back to scraping wallpaper, headphones on, music playing to drown out all the noise he was making.
I’d known Nick since high school. We’d been in the same friend group. I hadn’t really stayed in contact with many people from school. In the ten years since graduation, I’d seen him here and there, but we hadn’t been buddies who’d work on houses together, that was for sure.
Last year, after hearing about Peak Strategies, the business firm I’d opened with my friend, Saoirse Rossi, he’d gotten in touch and hired me to draw out a business plan for High Bar, from the logo down to his hours of operation. Spending that amount of time together had renewed something like a friendship.
Not high school level, but was anything ever as intense as it was when you were a teen about to burst into adulthood with fever dreams and an idealized vision for the future?
A couple hours passed quickly. Nick had gotten the paint off one side of the door and rehung it for me. Knowing myself, I would’ve forgotten to and woken up with wildlife roaming my living room.
To thank him for keeping me safe from raccoons and mountain lions, I ordered a pizza. We ate it on the back deck, looking over a fenced-in backyard that would be some family’s dream one day. It was the one part of the house that didn’t need to be stripped down and rebuilt. I just had to make the inside as nice to lure them in.
“Nice back here,” Nick remarked.
“Yep. The primary selling point.”
“Not the good bones?” He chuckled, tipping a bottle of water to his mouth.
“I have no vision when it comes to my own projects. I need something pretty to catch my eye. The deck and yard did that. I’m pretty sure my realtor would have claimed a cinder block prison had good bones if I’d seemed interested.”
“Hey, cinder blocks are sturdy building material.”
“I’ll let you know next time I see a prison for sale on Zillow.”
Reaching over, he backhanded my bicep. “Shut up, Aldrich, and tell me about my bar. How did everyone behave in my absence?”
