The Co-op

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DEACON

It’s the smell of bacon that lures me awake, followed by a rustling. I squint open one eye and find LaRynn sitting cross-legged on my bed, holding a grease-mottled paper bag aloft. She gives it another shake.

“Breakfast burrito from the taco truck?” she says.

There’s only one taco truck that parks behind the arcade lot during summer, and it doesn’t have a name. It’s known only as the taco truck. It is also my kryptonite. I wonder if this is something she remembers, or if it’s purely a coincidence.

“Thank you,” I rasp, my voice half muffled by this insanely squishy pillow. Something else occurs to me. “How’d I get in my bed?”

“I have no idea, actually,” LaRynn says. “Remember how I sleep like the dead? I popped open an eyelid at five A.M. and came face-to-face with that mop on your head.”

“Sorry,” I say. Shit, I spent the night with her in a bed and don’t remember it? I don’t know that we ever did that when we were younger, even.

“You might be more sorry in a bit,” she says, deftly plucking the burrito from the bag and thrusting it out to me. “I’m ready to go through the budget this morning.”

What a day to have a hangover. I grunt. “Hot sauce?” I beg, just as she slides off the bed and sashays out of my room.

“I’m not that cruel. It’s in the bag.”

“Okay, but why not? Why couldn’t I get my own bathroom first?” LaRynn asks. And I have to take a beat and remind myself that her tone is simply curious, so I don’t need to automatically jump down her throat about it. She’s not asking in order to whine or to imply that she thinks I’m wrong. She’s merely inquiring.

“Well, first, because we have to figure out what’s actually wrong with the plumbing before we add anything in that department. And tile and all the finishing things need to come later or they’ll inevitably get damaged by all the other stuff we gotta do along the way.”

We’ve talked out our options, including if we can afford to turn the upstairs back into two units, and it seems that we can’t.

She turns in her seat and bends a long leg, bringing a knee up to rest her chin on it. I can just make out the edge of the birthmark peeking out from her tiny shorts. Heat creeps up my neck.

“Speaking of bathrooms,” she says, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and there are no bathtubs in this place. People love baths.”

“If by people you mean small children or short people, maybe.”

“No. People love baths. Adult people. Trust me. I love a good bath. And plenty of tubs are big enough for tall people like us now. I think if we reworked the bathroom—” She starts drawing on the paper we’ve been using to list out our project to-do’s.

“Hold on,” I have to say. “We’ve already agreed that the budget is likely to run out, right? And that’s with fixing up and working with what’s already here. You’re telling me you want to try and rework the layout and add new stuff?”

Her face falls an inch before she tries to cover it by turning up her nose. And I’m worried I just tossed aside the shred of camaraderie we’d barely established again, so I add, “Because that’s fine. If you want a bathtub, I’ll give you a bathtub. I just want to know because then we have to reexamine the budget and timeline a bit closer.”

She blinks, and her full upper lip twitches. It’s almost as if she wants to smile, like that pleased her. But then she tosses her head a little, like she’s shaking off the urge. “Well, it wouldn’t be for me, but I do think it’d be a good draw for renters and stuff. People that want to Airbnb this close to the park and beach might have small children, too.”

I press my mouth together to stop a smile. “Valid point,” I say.

The rest of her face lights up when she looks back to the paper and starts again.

“Okay, well, here’s what I’ve been thinking. And keep in mind that I don’t know anything about load-bearing walls or any of that, so some of this might not work anyway, but here are my ideas…”

Most of her ideas are doable, actually. And they’re— good.

And every single one of them will be expensive.

After we come to terms with what things are just entirely out of our price range and settle on the priorities, I lean back and scratch my neck.

“I’m, uh… I’m gonna have to pick up more work,” I warn her. “So it’s all going to take a little longer. I can’t be here all the time.”

She frowns, but makes a good show of smoothing it away. Progress is progress, I suppose. “Why?” she asks.

“Well, realistically I’ll need to supplement where I can because we will undoubtedly need the money,” I explain, which has her folding her arms and looking away again.

“I’m not a complete tyrant, Deacon, I’m not asking you to do that. If any of this isn’t feasible, I’m not going to make both our lives miserable over it.”

“I wasn’t saying that, really.” I hold my hands up in surrender. “I stand to gain something here, too. Your ideas are good.” I leave it at that.

Her gaze lingers, trying to suss something out. “I’ll try to stick to the… budget.”

I try to give her my most charming smile in return. She only rolls her lips and lifts a brow.

I should probably quit while we’re ahead, but—“Since we’re both sufficiently uncomfortable now, I think we have to talk about something else,” I say. I definitely picked the wrong day to have a hangover, but I also know we have to get this over with.

Her entire body goes rigid and her gaze slices back up to mine.

“It was Jensen who brought it up,” I add, like a complete knob, as if that will make this any easier. “But, we probably need to have a discussion about…” I nod my head toward the bedroom.

Both brows lift in confusion. “The—doors?”

“Behind those.”

“The walls? Obviously we need more of them and need to move a few. And I’m thinking a warm white.”

“White? No. How boring. But past that.”

“White is classic and it makes everything feel bigger and brighter.”

“I’m talking about the bedroom, Larry. You and me in a bed in the bedroom.” Oh Jesus, that was not—

“What about it?” She enunciates each syllable, eyes growing bigger with each one.

“I mean, obviously we are married.”

“AND?!” Oh, God, she’s flushing in real time, right before my eyes. I’m not sure if she’s angry or worked up for another reason? Or both. I’m not sure if I’m afraid or if I like it. Or both.

“I’m not—” A laugh whistles up from my throat. “Hell, this is coming out badly.”

“Clearly.”

“I’m just saying that despite the whole marriage thing… Well, I guess I’m asking if you want to see other people?”

Her eyes narrow to slits. “Why? Do you want to see other people?”

“Nah-ah. I asked you first.”

Her chin rises. “We’re not even seeing each other, Deacon.”

Dammit, that’s not an answer. “I do not think it would help matters if we watched each other see people during this. I think it just adds a complication,” I admit. “But, I’m just trying to make sure you know you have the freedom to talk to me about it. If the need should arise, I will respect your wishes.”

She looks me up and down again, a muscle twitching in her sharp jaw. “I appreciate it. And should the need arise, you can discuss it with me, too.”

I’m not sure why that doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m not sure we actually addressed anything just now. But I’ve also got a very bad headache.

“So…” I try to pivot. “Any plans today?”

She tucks both knees to her chest. “Apparently I have a new bike to break in?”

I look away. “Yeah, that’s—uh, Jensen’s. He’s not using it while he’s on nights, so I thought I’d see if you could. He said you’re welcome to it.”

She scrunches her nose like an offensive odor found it. “That was—thoughtful of you… both.”

“You always did like your toys.”

She scoffs and moves to get up as the playback hits me. “You know, you managed to take a nice thing and make it sound dirty,” she whines.

There’s no venom in it, though, and I keep laughing when she heads inside.

“LaRynn,” I call after her, following behind. She primly starts making my bed. “I promise I wasn’t trying to be slick.”

“No, I’m certain that just comes naturally to you,” she coos. “You just love to get a reaction out of me and you know it. And, I guess your memory isn’t so superb after all, because if you remembered correctly you’d recall that I did not, in fact, purchase any toys from that shop when we were younger.”

“I was actually referring to all your nice things. Your nice car, nice headphones, nice clothes. You had the nicest, newest phone. Twenty-five pairs of shoes for one summer. Don’t think you wore the same swimsuit twice.” I can’t mentally trip myself up by remembering the sex shop.

“Well, I don’t have nice shit anymore, Deacon. This”—she makes a circle with her finger—“is all I have.”

I feel my expression tighten, debating if I want to press on that little fissure or not. This is how it always goes with LaRynn. She’ll curate the pieces of herself that she’s willing to share and then will shut down when I ask for more.

“But, regardless,” she says as she karate chops a pillow down the middle, “it was nice of him to let me borrow the bike.”

Just as I thought. A quick brush over. I guess I won’t push it for now.

“It’s electric. I have one, too.” I shrug and try the same pillow maneuver on my side. Her lips twist down at my efforts. “I could show you how it works and all that. Thinking about going for a ride and grabbing some lunch, anyway, if you want to join. We’ll count it as a team-building day.”

She bends and stretches her long, lean body across the bed to fix the pillow, and I have to stifle a snort because of course I did it wrong, even though it’s my own bed. When she stands up, she looks past me, out over the balcony, and gives a quick, limp toss of her shoulders. “Okay.”

We stumble around each other a bit, separate, and change, then go about our morning. I haven’t lived with anyone since I was eighteen. And I’ve never lived with a woman other than my mother. So it’s a strange, charged feeling, orbiting around a person. I’ve done my best to avoid it until now.

When we eventually make our way downstairs, I hold the bike and start to show her the different levers and how to change gears, how to switch from manual to the electric mode, until she sigh-groans over me.

“As much as I appreciate this, I think I’ve got it.” She grins, quirking an eyebrow at me. “I do know my way around my toys.”

She takes off at full speed and I’m left wondering, for what feels like the millionth time in under a few weeks, what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.