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“Just go get hosed off and I’ll have this cleaned up before you get home tonight. I promise.”
He didn’t reply. Not with words. He sighed and adjusted his towel so it was wrapped more securely around his waist. What did Nikki expect? For him to get fully nude in front of Zara Lorna in the backyard while she hosed him down?
If you’d asked him yesterday what his worst nightmare was, he would never have come up with that scenario. And yet there it was.
He picked his way carefully through the construction of the old house and headed towards the back door.
Nikki had always worked on it, trying to fix it up. But after she got married last year and then immediately got pregnant, her motivation seemed to go into hyperdrive. She wanted to finish the house. Either for herself or to sell it, she hadn’t decided.
He knew him having to move out was fast approaching. He hadn’t realized it was happening today.
Not that she would make him leave. But he couldn’t take it anymore.
The stress of living in a place that was chaotic and unpredictable? No. He needed his home to be his. He needed quiet and peace and not walls collapsing and nearly killing him.
“Where is good?” he asked, stopping in the soft green grass of the backyard.
At least their fence was tall enough that no neighbors could see.
At least it was a warm spring and not a frigid Chicago winter.
At least he had very little shame left to his name.
“Right there is fine,” Zara said from somewhere behind him. “I’m just getting…the thing.” She grunted and puffed as she labored to get the hose where she wanted it.
He was not going to help.
He was never helping her again.
Once.
He’d helped her once and even that had been too much.
ZARA
“Brace yourself.”
It was the only warning she gave before she sprayed his face with cold water.
She did not enjoy how he gasped and shivered and growled.
She took no pleasure in his discomfort. Nor did she think it was funny to see him covered in plaster, including his glasses.
That would be rude.
If she’d have known he was naked on the other side of the wall, she wouldnothave hit it even harder with the sledgehammer.
Nope. No way.
Because she didn’t wish horrible things on anyone.
Not on people she disliked such as her ex, or the press that seemed to judge her (incorrectly) for every little decision she made. But especially not on people she liked.
Even if they had ghosted her and never once returned a text.
As comical as it was to see a grown man looking like a powdered donut, she really hadn’t meant to do any harm.
She’d just been trying to get some feelings out with a sledgehammer at the suggestion of one of her best friends.
