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“Check on him?” “What’s wrong?” Asa and Zara asked at the same time.
Nikki made a face. “I don’t know. He’s…in his head maybe? He’s avoiding me and Johnny but he might talk to one of you.”
Asa nodded like he understood. He probably did. He was way more intuitive than Zara had known in the beginning.
“Sometimes it’s hard to be honest with people who know you best,” Asa said, his focus on his food.
Zara and Nikki exchanged a look and she could swear they were both thinking the same thing.
André caught them having their silent conversation and he hid his smirk behind his glass.
Amber hollered and threw her teething ring across the table. It landed in the potato salad.
Something warm and welcome flooded through Zara’s veins. It was new and soft and felt an awful lot like home.
She knew her life would always come with a very obvious caveat. But these people, here, in that moment? They accepted her and spoke to her like a friend. Like she was part of their family. Part of something peaceful and solid.
She hoped she never made any of them ever regret it.
Zara had never felt so stupid.
Painting was not easy. At least not for her.
Bless everyone at that table who’d heard her say, “how hard could it be?” and had not immediately started laughing at her.
First, Asa had had to show her how to tape everything. That in and of itself was a major task. How was the tape not sticky enough to stay where she wanted it to go and yet so sticky that ifit came within inches of her body it stuck to her clothes? It felt like imaginary physics.
And then there were the drop cloths and the different brushes and rollers and pans. She nodded along to all of his patient instructions but she had no idea what he’d said. She recognized most of the words he’d spoken but the order they were in made no sense to her.
And then he’d left her to start on her own—giving her the simple task of rolling paint onto the wall—while he’d gone to do the trim on the other side of the room.
She’d started out so innocently eager. Thrilled to be out of the house, to be doing something helpful, to be withpeople.
But there was something wrong with her roller. It wasn’t putting paint on the wall like it was supposed to. And why was it so streaky? And runny? Was the paint broken? Could that be a thing?
Maybe she wasn’t strong enough.
She pressed harder on the roller as it moved over the wall. That looked even worse.
Was shetoostrong?
“How’s it going over here?” Asa’s voice came up behind her.
Zara swallowed and stepped back from her work. She didn’t look at Asa as he silently observed the streaky, runny mess she’d created.
He didn’t speak for so long she assumed he was trying to find a nice way of telling her she should just go home and stop making things harder.
Asa hummed softly, deep in his throat. His warm hand closed around hers as he carefully took the roller from her.
Using thorough and controlled movements he covered her streaks and patches, making the wall look completely different.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling like shit.
He squatted to add more paint to the roller and glanced at her over his shoulder. “What for?”
She made a face and gestured to the wall. It seemed pretty obvious to her. “For sucking.”
His mouth flattened and he stood back up. “Don’t be sorry for not knowing how to do something you’ve never done.” He handed the roller back to her.
