Nalini
I smile and barely stop myself from leaning in. I don’t need to be seen making out in the middle of my future office space.
Not that it’s not a tempting idea.
I clear my throat and step back, my palm resting on his chest for a moment too long.
“Yeah, well, it was definitely better than sitting in quiet panic in the dark by myself.” I tip my chin, glancing at his wrists. “How are the tattoos?”
He offers his wrists for inspection. The dark Latin letters are no longer angry and lined with red. “Healing.”
I run my fingers over the letters, not missing the raised flesh of a scar beneath my touch and the way he flinches when I find them. “Have you figured it out yet? Where you’re going?”
Half of me doesn’t expect him to answer. It’s a deeply personal question that shouldn’t be asked in the broad light of day without the shadows to help hide things we’re uncomfortable with.
He offers a lopsided half-smile that’s more of a self-effacing smirk. “Not really. But I’ll let you know if I figure it out.”
The door swings open, pouring in light and disturbing the dust. A large man who looks like he belongs in a biker bar somewhere near either a prison or outside of Fort Bragg walks in as if he owns the place.
His size isn’t diminished by the bright turquoise T-shirt he’s wearing that sports the logo of some marina in Florida. If anything, it takes a confident man to sport that color.
“You must be Nalini.” He strides across the space and offers his hand. “I’m Bruce. I see you met Caleb?”
My hand is swallowed in his massive fist and I grip back tightly. I’m used to big guys like him. Some realize their own strength and adjust their grips accordingly. Others are insecure man-boys and try to show how much of a man they are by their grip.
Bruce is the former, because his grip is firm but not crushing.
It’s telling. And for once, it’s telling a good thing.
Some of the campus administrators I dealt with through the train wreck of the process of getting the yoga center on campus were crushingly insecure. They never realize a handshake is a dead giveaway.
“We’ve met before.”
“Good. I’m working with Rossi Construction and Caleb’s working with me and we’re working with you. We’re here to help with manual labor as well as keep you on track and under budget.”
“I think Sam Rossi might be my favorite person in the entire world,” I mumble.
“He’s a great kid.”
I smile because I don’t think of Sam as a kid but Bruce clearly does. We’re a generation apart. I wonder how different we look to him.
Does he see us destroying the world, as so many stupid think-pieces lament? If he does, he hides it well.
“Caleb is going to walk you through the schedule. I just got called for a busted pipe emergency over on another project. Let me know if there’s any issues with the timeline or anything at all with the way we’ve got things mapped out.”
Caleb looks as surprised as I am by the pronouncement but Bruce ignores his expression as he hands me his card. “This is my personal cell. Any issues Caleb can’t handle, call me. But I’m confident you won’t need to. He’s our representative on the ground.”
Caleb clears his throat. “Really? I can’t even spell ‘representative’,” he says dryly.
“Well, I guess it’s time you break out that fancy cell phone and figure it out. This is basic Project Management 101.”
He slaps the folder he’s been holding against Caleb’s chest, forcing Caleb to either grab it or let it fall.
He grabs the file and Bruce leaves as quickly as he entered. “Is that dude always that intense?” I ask.
“Pretty much.” He still looks like he’s in shock and I’m trying to figure out why, other than that the job just got thrust on him.
“How’d you meet him?”
“He sort of dragged my ass out of an alley and forced his way into my life. He’s apparently part of my stay sober plan whether I want him to be or not.” He’s moving beyond shocked, slowly, to something else that might be irritation. It was easier to read him in the dark when it was just us, than it is to watch a thousand emotions play over his face in the middle of the morning. “He’s a retired sergeant major.”
I nod. “That explains a lot.”
Caleb sighs and opens the file. “Well, here goes nothing.” He hands me a copy of the project schedule. “I guess this is the part where I’m going to pretend to know what I’m doing,” he says, reading the sheet in front of him. “First order of business is we need to get this space cleaned out. Then we need to send in the lead paint removal team. While they’re working up here, we can brace the floors and get that”—he motions to the hole in the floor—“repaired. Which, between us girls, I’m pretty happy to let someone else do.”
I smile over my shoulder at his “us girls” comment as I walk over to a windowsill and lay my copy of the schedule down next to my files. “I think we can do this. How long does it take concrete stain to dry?”
He reads over the notes Bruce has given him. “According to the time estimate, it’s done at night so we don’t track all over it. Rinse in the morning. Is this the design for the entryway?” He tugs a sheet of paper out of the folder, showing the mandala design in deep gold-stained concrete.
“Yeah. Sam Rossi designed it.”
“This Sam Rossi you keep mentioning sounds very different from the Sam I knew in the Army. This one sounds dreamy.”
“Cute.” I grin.
“Sarcasm is my superpower.” He glances over at me, watching me intently.
“He couldn’t have been that much different in the Army.” I’ve known Sam for years and Caleb’s comment strikes me as…off.
“He wasn’t, personality wise. I just never really thought of him as drawing flowers and shit while designing building projects. He was our assistant operations officer and he was much more focused on applying a boot to my fourth point of contact.” He clears his throat, his face flushing. “That may be how the story of the unicorn porn got started on a porta potty wall.” He rubs the back of his neck and looks down at the file.
I try not to laugh out loud. “I was wondering what you two were talking about. Nice.”
He flips a page in the folder, still not looking up at me. “I’m actually still learning how to be not an asshole so I’ve been avoiding things that involve—”
“People?”
He finally glances up. “Yeah.”
“So does Bruce just always hand you things you’ve never done before and say go?”
He makes that noise again. “Yeah. I mean, he doesn’t believe in a lot of hand-holding. And he reminds me a lot of my old brigade commander, who believed you get the most out of people by demanding more than they thought possible.”
“Are you really doing this?” It’s interesting; I’ve watched him take the folder from Bruce and step into a contractor role without even flinching. As though it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He shrugs. “Bruce has threatened to hunt me down and kill me if I don’t stay sober. And keeping me busy is apparently a good way of keeping me sober. And so seeing how I’m not quite ready to slip off this mortal coil just yet, I’m inclined to do what he says.”
I smile easily. I can recognize the sentiment far too well from dealing with some of the senior NCOs I’ve met in the Army. Sandpapery but doing it out of genuine love of soldiers. “Well, that’s one form of motivation, I guess.”
He glances down at the paperwork then back up at me. “And if I get to keep my hands busy around you…well, I think that’s a pretty good use of my time.”
* * *
Caleb
She laughs. “Wow, you know how to make a girl feel special.”
I like the sound of it. Deep and throaty and husky, like she’s done it a million times before.
I wish laughing wasn’t such a foreign feeling for me. I wish I knew how to be completely fucking normal around her. Around anyone.
“It’s my specialty,” I mumble, letting the space grow between us. I focus on the paperwork in front of me, then close the folder and glance around at her space. “So I guess the first order of business is to clear everything out so we can get the lead paint removal team in here. They’re scheduled for Saturday.”
I look around at the boxes stacked to the ceiling. At the tables and bins and remains of potting soil. “It looks like a lot, but tearing down is always easier than building up,” she says. “The rest of my crew will be here in an hour or so but we can get started pulling everything out of here. I had no idea there was this much stuff left over.”
“This looks like a lot more than just a pot-growing business.” I pull my work gloves out of my back pocket. “The dumpster was being dropped off as I was walking in, so we can start sorting the trash from the things we can salvage.”
She nods and pulls on her own gloves. “I guess we’ll need to sort through everything and make sure that anything salvageable is, well, salvaged. I can resell it at auction or something.”
I glance at my watch. It’s just past seven a.m. and I’ve been up since three, unable to fall back to sleep. I wonder if this is going to help me sleep. I’ve done bigger projects with Bruce before but nothing like this. Nothing that actually mattered whether I screwed it up or not. “So you want to get started or do you want to wait for help?”
She shoots me a funny look. “Oh, definitely get started. Deadlines give me anxiety.”
I’m not sure what to say about that. She seems so blasé about some things, tense and tight about others.
I look away, over at a nearby pile of tables—some look like old barn wood, others like they’re pieced together from plastic and plywood.
“I wonder if Bruce would want the old wood for his…what did you call it? Maker Space?”
I frown and glance back at her. “That’s the second time that you’ve said what I’m thinking.”
Her expression softens and one side of her lip edges higher. “It happens to me all the time. I guess I’m used to it.”
“It doesn’t freak you out?” I follow her to a pile of boxes and she pulls a box cutter from her back pocket. I find myself wondering what else she has in those pockets.
“Not really. I guess it’s not so jarring when you believe we’re all connected at a deep level and sometimes those connections are easier.” She slices at the ancient dusty tape in front of her, lifting the edges.
“That’s a very Jungian perspective.” I grab a broken pallet, lifting it to one shoulder. My bones protest when it connects hard but it’s a good kind of pain. It feels good to just feel.
“Or it’s a very Hindu way of looking at things. Jung pulled from Hindu philosophy when he was developing his theory of the collective unconscious.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s only in the modern West that people are focused on individuals so heavily.” She lifts out a bundle of baggies, held together by a rubber band. “What the hell am I going to do with all of these?”
“Sell them on eBay?”
She makes a noise as I take the first load of garbage out to the dumpster. The box of baggies goes on a flatbed trailer to be taken to storage. We work in silence for a while, moving trash outside in massive black contractor bags.
I lean one of the metal tables against the wall. “You’ve got a retail space planned, right?”
“Yeah?”
“You could repurpose these into shelves.”
She steps close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her. She tucks a strand of hair out of her face. “Can you do that?”
She glances over at me and for the first time, I notice tiny flecks of gold in the deep brown of her eyes. “Yeah. I’m discovering all kinds of talents now that I’m sober. Shelves are easy.”
She smiles and damn if I don’t notice her eyes drop to my mouth as I’m speaking. I don’t step away. Being so close to her, it’s a compulsion. A need I never knew I was missing.
Or maybe I always knew and that’s why I drank.
I lick my bottom lip. I’m so fucking afraid of screwing this up. That maybe I’m misreading the situation and she’s just being polite.
It’s an easy thing to lean closer, slowly, so slowly. Giving her every chance to say no, to walk away. To put a barrier between us—a barrier I’m apparently desperately incapable of respecting.
And then she is there. Her lips brush against mine. Soft. Teasing. Just a whisper of a sensation.
Until she surrounds me, her gloved palm wrapping slowly around the back of my neck, drawing me closer. It’s so damn easy to nudge her lips apart, to drink from her slowly. To savor the sensation of our breath mingling together, the slide of her tongue against mine.
“This could get complicated,” I whisper when I’m certain I can breathe again.
Her lips move against mine. “It already is.”
“I think I’m okay with complicated.”
Now she smiles and I can feel it in the depths of my soul. “Me, too.”
I’m here. In the moment. Tasting. Drinking. Feasting on her every touch, every sensation.
I’m lost in her.