Love in the Time of Serial Killers(47)

“But if they’re going to repaint anyway,” I’d said, “why bother?”

“You’re going to need all the help you can get,” she’d said in a voice tinged with mild annoyance. Sometimes she made it hard to forget that she’d only agreed to take the house on as a favor because she’d known my dad. As far as I knew, she’d take her six percent no matter what, so “favor” seemed to be stretching it.

“I mean, I planned to clean the walls—”

“Unless you’re planning to do something about the tile in the guest bathroom and the kitchen cabinets,” she said, “I’d recommend painting at the very least.”

There was clearly no point in arguing. After we hung up, I stood in the bathroom, trying to figure out what was wrong with the tile. It was old, sure, but I’d cleaned the grout with a toothbrush and thought it looked pretty good.

The kitchen cabinets were another story. They were a horrible fake wood laminate that may have been original to the 1978 build. Nobody would want to Instagram themselves cooking in front of those bad boys.

And once I was actually buying the paint, there were so many choices. Polished Pearl and Pale Palomino and Smooth Silk and other alliterative options. I thought about choosing one called Shoelace, just to be passive-aggressive, but went with Linen White. At least it sounded classy.

I was carrying in my second round of bags from the hardware store when Sam pulled up in his truck. Neutral professional was back, which meant he must be coming from teaching another lesson. If I wasn’t careful, I’d start to develop a khaki pants fetish.

“You painting?” he called from his driveway.

Apparently the roller extension under my arm was a dead giveaway. “Yup.”

“Are Conner and Shani coming by to help?”

“Shani has a shift at the hospital,” I said, “and Conner offered, but he’s still laid up with his fractured wrist. Painting doesn’t seem like the best idea—for him or the walls.”

He stood there for a moment, bouncing his keys in his hand. “Cool,” he said finally. “I’ll be over in a sec.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t have to—”

But he had already disappeared inside his house. Fuck. This was the opposite of what I’d resolved to do. At least I hadn’t explicitly asked him for his assistance. So it shouldn’t really count, right?

I’d only gotten the baseboards around one wall lined with bright blue tape when I heard the knock at the door, and yelled for Sam to come on in.

“Why,” I said without bothering to look up, “does nobody tell you how long the prep work takes? This is like a math problem from hell. What is the perimeter of this room and how many times can you tape the perimeter before you want to die? And the answer, apparently, is zero point two times.”

“Tell you what.” Sam started yanking up the tape I’d already laid down, and I gave an involuntary yelp of indignation. “Let me handle the trim. You can work on the rest with the roller. Sound good?”

I glanced up, intending to give him a piece of my mind for the way he’d taken over, the way he’d undone the little bit of work I’d managed to do so far. But instead I was shocked into silence. I’d seen him barefoot in the middle of the night; I’d seen him wearing his bland uniform to go teach kids how to play “Come as You Are” or whatever the equivalent was in this century.

I hadn’t expected this.

“Are you wearing coveralls?”

He looked down at himself. “Yeah.”

“With your name on them?”

He tapped the patch on his chest, embroidered with a red cursive Sam. “You’re just jealous you don’t have personalized painting clothes.”

A little bit. I was in a Pet Sematary tank top, the armholes cut wide enough that you could see the sides of my bra underneath, and jean shorts. I had not expected anyone else to come by, much less Sam, so I hadn’t cared how I looked. Now the outfit felt skimpy. I checked which bra I was wearing under the guise of wiping my arm across my forehead. At least it was one of my good ones—neon purple and trimmed with lace.

Sam poured the paint into a tray for me, and a Solo cup, for him, and immediately got to work. It didn’t take me long to realize why Sam had taken off the tape. He was good. Like, perfectly straight line, no drips, every movement methodical, good.

I should’ve started painting myself, but I couldn’t look away. It was mesmerizing, watching him work. He had one knee propped up, his arm holding the cup of paint draped across it, while he angled himself to paint a stripe of Linen White at the bottom of the wall.

“You’re a ringer,” I said.

“Sorry?”

I gestured toward the job he was doing, even though he was looking at the wall and not at me. “You’re really good at that. Is this something else you do on the side?”

Finally, he seemed to make a mistake, a single drip of paint sliding down onto the baseboard. He wiped it away with his thumb, then wiped his thumb on the leg of his coveralls. “I used to,” he said. “A-Plus Painters, the summer after high school and then on weekends and breaks my first two years of college.”

“And they let you keep your coveralls?” There were a few smears of color here and there on the navy fabric, I noticed, but not as much as I might’ve expected from a professional painter. Or maybe that was all the paint-splattered pandas on Lisa Frank stationery giving me the wrong idea.