Shuffle, Repeat(18)
The rest of our drive is silent. Oliver doesn’t start our playlist and I don’t ask him to. When we crunch over the gravel into my driveway, Cash’s truck is parked ahead of us and Cash himself is just trotting down the front steps. He waves an arm and I assume he’s saying hello, but then he does it again and I realize he wants us to come over. “Who’s that?” Oliver asks.
“My mom’s contractor and not-boyfriend.”
I introduce Cash and Oliver to each other, and Cash asks if Oliver can give him a hand with something. “I thought my guys would still be here, but they already took off for the weekend.” He jerks a thumb toward his truck. “It takes two people to unload a generator.”
“At least,” Oliver agrees, and follows him toward his truck, stripping off his jacket.
I recognize that in this scenario my role is to watch for loose gravel in their path and hold the front door open, but with that recognition comes realization: Oliver is going to get a firsthand sighting of my house’s messy, unfinished interior.
“Maybe you can just leave it on the porch,” I say.
“Nah, we’ll bring it in.” Cash climbs into the truck bed. He slides a big box to the edge before hopping out and bracing himself alongside Oliver. “Ready?”
“Ready,” says Oliver, and they lift.
I scamper to the porch and swing the door open, watching them move toward me. Even though I know it’s cliché, even though I know it’s superficial and ridiculous, my eyes are magnetically drawn to Oliver’s arms. It’s not that I’m one of those girls who’s swoony-la-la-la about muscles, but when the muscles are doing all kinds of bulgy, strainy things against a tight shirt, one can’t help but notice.
I’m cerebral. Not dead.
Cash and Oliver edge past me into the house, occasionally grunting and saying things like “watch it” and “almost there.” I’m hoping they’ll set it down in the entryway and get out, but Cash wants it in Mom’s studio, so of course they have to go all the way through, walking past a stack of wall sconces and avoiding various tools scattered around.
“I’ll tell my boys to clean up their mess better when they vacate the premises,” says Cash, and I am re-horrified by the fact that he is talking about the mess in my house, my premises, and Oliver is right here to witness all the grimy glory of my life. After all, this is a boy who lives in one of the pristine mansions at Flaggstone Lakes, who has two parents sleeping in the same bed every night.
My mom, on the other hand, trades paintings for vegetables and pottery for woodworking. Dad is an actor-slash-waiter in New York. I’m a senior who doesn’t know how to drive, and we live in a house that is currently one giant art project. It’s not exactly a bastion of normality and I’m not exactly thrilled to have Oliver in the middle of it.
Yet in the middle of it is exactly where Oliver is. Once he and Cash have the generator settled in the built-in unit where it’s going to live, he’s back in the entryway, looking around. All I can see is the mess, and all I can smell are wood shavings, so I give Oliver my brightest smile. “Thanks so much!” I chirp in my best imitation of Ainsley. “Have a great weekend!”
I sweep the front door open, but Oliver doesn’t walk through it. In fact, I’m not sure he even hears me. He’s running his hand over the storage bench, touching the heavy iron hooks installed above it to hold our bags and purses. “Did you make this?” he asks Cash.
“Yeah. It’s nice, right?”
“Gorgeous. Is that antique beadboard?”
“Antique” is a nicer thing to say than “old” or “crap someone else threw out.”
“Salvaged it from a place we were demoing down in Clinton.”
“Salvaged.” Try “trash-picked.”
“Awesome,” says Oliver.
“Thanks,” says Cash, clearly pleased. I, however, am the opposite of pleased, especially when Cash points toward the opening leading to the rest of the house. “Want to see what we did with the banisters?”
“I’m sure Oliver has to go home.” I say it hastily, but again I’m too late, because Oliver is already following Cash around the corner.
Crap.
By the time Mom gets home half an hour later, Cash and Oliver have embarked on a bromance that runs deep and hard and true and is based entirely on their shared appreciation of home renovation. They have argued the visual merits of stone penny tile versus ceramic. They’ve waxed poetic about cabinetry and crown molding. They’ve done everything except choose baby names together, and I’m no longer certain either one is even aware of my presence.
Which is maybe a good thing, because when I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror, I appear to be wearing a fright wig. Neither Cash nor Oliver notices when I run upstairs to yank my hair into a ponytail and change into a clingy gray sweater with blue cuffs. Might as well look decent if we’re going to have visitors at the house.
Mom is delighted to see Oliver. She tells him he’s gotten so tall—which he seems to enjoy—and also reminds him that she used to change his diapers, which I definitely do not enjoy. The entire thing is super weird, and it only gets weirder when I’m trying to subtly urge Oliver toward the front door and he stops to browse a row of Mom’s books lined up in the family room. “Sandburg,” he says. “Neruda. Rilke. Your mom has good taste.”