Sweet

here?”

Bill and Nathan’s apartment wasn’t exactly in a glam zip code but I didn’t bother to point that out. “Yes. Riley’s here. Thanks for the ride. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I started to open the door, but Bill touched my shoulder. “Jess.”

“Yes?” Somehow I had a feeling I wasn’t going to want to hear what he had to say.

But he just shook his head. “Never mind.”

My first reaction was to press, but then I decided I had been given a free pass. Whatever he was thinking I wasn’t going to like it. So I got out before he could change his mind and walked up the gravel drive, deciding to try the front door since the lights were clearly still on in the house. I wondered why Riley was still awake.

The answer was obvious immediately. When I pushed open the front door, the smell of fresh paint overwhelmed me. Amazed, I went into the kitchen, which was ablaze with light and the sound of metal music cranking loud from Riley’s phone. He had painted three of the four walls already. The hard ones. The ones with the cabinets and the one with the back door and the window, the ones that required all that taping, which I had saved for last. Only he hadn’t used tape. He had obviously just freehand painted the edges. It was impressive. The only wall remaining was the completely blank one and he was already tackling it with the roller, gray spreading in front of my eyes as I moved into the room.

The color looked amazing, but not quite as amazing as him.

“What are you doing?” I asked, stunned. “You didn’t have to do this. This was my idea. I didn’t really mean you had to do the painting, too. I just wanted some help hanging some art.”

But he shrugged, the muscles in his arm bulging as he rolled efficiently. “Couldn’t sleep. And I have this thing where I can’t sit on my ass and watch a girl laboring on my behalf. It makes me feel like a dick.”

Touched beyond anything that was smart or emotionally healthy, I said, “The color looks great, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t look like ass,” was his assessment.

I frowned, and he glanced back at me and grinned. “Fine. It looks nice. But that’s as gushy as I get, princess.”

Impulsively, I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind and hugged him, my breasts pressing into his back. “Thank you.”

He stiffened, then said, “Alright, calm down or I’m going to drop this roller.”

Letting go quickly, because I liked the way my body felt against his too much, I said, “Can I help?”

“Take the brush and paint that last corner. Just go up and down the seam. You don’t need a lot of paint.”

“Okay.” I took the brush that was laying in the paint tray, and I dipped and carefully lifted it. It dripped on the floor. “Shit.” I wiped the floor with my finger.

“Use a hand towel. They’re basically rags anyway.”

They were. Replacing them was already in my mental budget. I grabbed a dingy towel off the counter and cleaned my finger. Then I bit my lip as I jammed the brush in the corner and dragged it up and down, feeling an absurd amount of pleasure from covering the filthy white.

“I’m not as helpless as I look,” I told him, because I wanted him to understand I was capable, just, well, sheltered. “I just don’t have a lot of practical life experience.”

“Now there’s something I never would have guessed.”

“Ha ha.” I dipped the brush again, being more careful not to overload it and let it drip this time. “I think the only times I’ve had to do anything that could be considered manual labor were when I was being punished.”

“You get punished a lot?”

“Of course. It’s impossible to be perfect.” I carefully went up on my tiptoes to reach as far as I could. “And despite the Christian concept that God makes no mistakes in our creation, my father has very specific guidelines for what makes a good person.”

I pulled a kitchen chair across the floor to stand on. I couldn’t quite reach the corner.

“You the rebel daughter?”

“No. I tried really hard to please him, actually. I’m not even sarcastic with him.”

Riley laughed. “Now that I find hard to believe.”

“It’s true.” I finished my corner and shifted the chair back out of the way. “But it’s like walking on eggshells, you know?”

“Trust me, I know that feeling.” Riley was moving closer and closer to me as he brought the roller to meet the corner I had just painted and finish off the wall. “My mother usually ignored us, which were the best days. Other days she cried and needed reassurance, or she was sick from the drugs. The worst days were the ones where she was violent or strung out. It was like holding your breath all the time, waiting for the next big explosion.”

His eyes shifted from the wall to me as he covered the last bit of white, his right arm paused. I felt trapped in the corner, his body warm, the light harsh, paint fumes intense. But all I could think about was him. The way his lips moved when he spoke, the rich coffee color of his eyes, and the shadow of his beard.

“That sounds like a terrible way to grow up,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t trying to compare.” I felt whiny in comparison, even though I had just been trying to explain why I didn’t know how to do anything particularly useful.

“I know. Don’t be so fucking sensitive.” He switched the roller to his left hand and nudged me with his right shoulder. “We’re just sharing, Jess. Talking about our feelings. Getting to know each other now that we’re roomies and painting pals.”

The stupid way he was looking at me, his goofy expression as unlike him as his words, made me laugh. “Dumbass.”

I stepped back and surveyed the room. “Awesome paint job, though. I can’t believe how fast you did this. You know, they sell gallons of mess-up paint that someone asked for but then didn’t want for like eight dollars a gallon. We could totally paint the living room, too.”

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked, smiling at him with what I hoped was charming enthusiasm. I wasn’t surprised he’d said no. I was expecting it, and mostly I just said it to annoy him.

“I don’t need a reason. Just no. And clean this paint tray and the brush in the basement sink.”

Blech. That sounded unfortunate. “Clean them how?”

“With water,” he said slowly and clearly, like he was speaking to a moron, making a mock scrubbing gesture. He shook his head. “God help us.”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

Moving with a dexterity I didn’t know was possible, his hand shot out and he actually caught my tongue between his fingers.

“Heth!” I said, trying to say hey, but without a freely movable tongue it came out garbled. Laughing, I swatted at his arm and tried to pull back.

“Shit, watch out!” he said, eyes going wide in amusement, his hand whipping behind my head.

“What?” I spun around and saw that his hand was the only thing preventing the entire back of my hair from touching wet paint. “Oh, crap!” I hadn’t realized how close to the wall I was.

When I stepped forward, he pulled his hand back and showed me that his knuckles were covered in gray paint. “Way to go.”

“Sorry.” Then I ruined the apology by giggling.

“Think it’s funny?”

I nodded. “Just a little.”

Riley took his wet knuckle and reached out toward me, a gleam in his eye. I couldn’t back up and when I tried to dart to the side, he blocked me. Then before I realized what he was doing, he had smeared wet paint on my upper lip like a mustache. I sputtered. He laughed.

“Damn, now that is funny.”

I could only imagine how not sexy I looked. Still holding the brush in my hand I brought it up to his chest and painted an X on it. In the middle of my action, he realized what I was doing and grabbed my wrist so that the second line squiggled awkwardly off the side of his shirt. I laughed. “You made it worse.”