The Homewreckers(99)

Trae was kneeling on the floor, attacking the baseboards with the putty knife and hammer. “You don’t follow the grain of the wood?”

“Not at first. There’s ninety years of old varnish on these floors. I’ll do the diagonal passes first, then I’ll go back and go with and against the horizontal grain of the planks, then I’ll go back and do it again with a finer grain of sandpaper, until I get all the way down to bare wood.”

“This is gonna take all night,” Trae groused, sitting back on his heels. “I still don’t get why you don’t just let your subs do these floors.”

“There isn’t time,” Hattie repeated. “My guys can be working on something else Cass and I don’t have the skills to do, like finish carpentry. But anybody with a little muscle can sand floors. It just takes time, and willpower. Tonight, I’ve got both.”

Two hours later, Hattie was making the next to last pass on the dining room floor when the sander suddenly stopped. She whipped around and saw Trae, standing a few feet from the wall, having unplugged the power cord.

“Hey!”

“Hey yourself,” he said, shouting to make himself heard over the Spice Girls. “It’s almost nine. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yeah, actually, I guess I am kinda starved. What did you have in mind?”

He turned the radio volume down.“What I had in mind was a quiet dinner in a white tablecloth restaurant downtown with a jazz pianist playing in the lounge. Maybe some pre-dinner cocktails, sea bass or poached snapper, a nice bottle of wine…”

“Too late now,” Hattie said. “Would you settle for pizza and beer?”

He let out an exaggerated sigh. “Lighthouse or Huc-a-Poos?”

“Surprise me.”



* * *



When Trae returned he had a large flat box and a brown paper sack that clanked as he walked. “Let’s eat out on the porch,” he suggested. “I’d like to get the taste of sawdust out of my mouth, if it’s okay with you.”

He spread the pizza box on the makeshift sawhorse table the carpenters had used earlier in the day, laying out paper plates and napkins. Then he lifted a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne from the paper sack, followed by a pair of paper-wrapped glass flutes. Tiny beads of condensation had already formed on the chilled bottle.

“Champagne? With pizza?” Hattie raised a bemused eyebrow.

“Trust me.” Trae walked off the porch and returned with a small cooler of ice he’d borrowed from the craft services tent. With practiced ease, he uncorked the champagne, poured some into each flute, and shoved the bottle into the cooler full of half-melted ice.

He took his phone from his pocket and scrolled through the apps until he came to the one he wanted, tapping an icon. The mellow tone of a saxophone floated out into the thick night air.

“Nice,” Hattie commented. He handed a glass to Hattie, then divvied up the pizza, placing a slice on each paper plate.

“Dinner is served,” he said. He sat down on the top step of the porch and patted a spot beside him. “Be my guest.”

She took a cautious sip of the champagne, and smacked her lips in appreciation. “Gotta tell you, I’ve never had champagne this nice. I usually go for the $9.99-a-bottle stuff.”

Trae laughed. “Stick with me, kid. I’ll teach you to appreciate all the finer things in life.”

He took a bite of pizza and raised an eyebrow. “This is actually half-decent pizza.”

“For Tybee.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he admitted.



* * *



Hattie tried to pace herself, but the champagne was cold and fizzy and delicious and the pizza—well, the pizza was hot and cheesy and greasy, and the combination somehow worked.

She sighed and leaned back on her elbows. “Thanks, Trae. That was great. I guess I can never go back to the cheap stuff after this.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “That’s the general idea.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, standing up. “Time to get back to work.”

Trae groaned as he stood up and stretched. “I don’t know how you have the energy to keep going. We’ve been at this for hours.”

“We’re almost there,” she said, sounding peppier than she actually felt.



* * *



An hour and a half later, Hattie switched off the drum sander.

“We’re done?” Trae asked.

“Sort of. I’ve got to get in the corners and edges with the other sander, but that won’t take that long. I can knock it out first thing in the morning.”

Without a word, Trae walked out to the porch and brought back the champagne bottle and flutes. “Time for a nightcap.” He fiddled with the radio dial, which was still blasting raucous ’90s hard rock, switching stations until he found one that claimed to be “the soul of the eighties.”

“Much better.” He poured her a glass of champagne and then one for himself.

She sipped the champagne slowly, allowing the bubbles to filter up through her nose.

“Oh, oh,” Trae said, pointing to the radio, which was playing a song she vaguely recognized.

“What?”