“Goodnight, Greg,” I say softly.
And then I leave him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GREG
David wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist, grimacing when he realizes it doesn’t help the sweating situation. He hangs one hand on his hip, the other still holding a paint brush as he stares up at the work we’ve done so far.
“Getting close,” I tell him, smoothing paint over the section of Amanda’s house I’m working on.
“Looks a hell of a lot better already.”
“It’ll be better for the wood, too,” I add, thinking about the chipping mess it was when we started working on it this morning.
I took the first day off work in my entire career.
I’ve done my best to stay healthy and avoid getting sick ever since med school, and I’ve succeeded. The worst I’ve had to work through is a nasty headache. But today, after barely sleeping, and spending most of the night tossing and turning in fits of anxiety over what had happened with Amanda, I called in.
It was a light day, only one small procedure needing to be rescheduled, and my colleagues seemed more impressed than upset that I wasn’t coming in.
Still, I felt guilty after about ten minutes of lying in bed. So, I texted David, telling him I was free and asking if there was anything that needed to be done at the house.
It was a terrible attempt at being subtle, and Amanda didn’t seem thrilled when she came home from her Friday class to find me and David peeling paint off her house. The old exterior had several spots where the paint was chipping, so we went to work on peeling what we could, using wood filler, sanding and priming, and finally painting it to match the rest of the house.
It’s been an all-day job, the sun slowly sinking over the yard as we wrap up painting the back side. Truthfully, I’ve appreciated the distraction.
And the chance to be close to Amanda.
She’s ignored us, other than to fix sandwiches for lunch before promptly disappearing into her bedroom to “study.” She won’t even look at me, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why.
I overstepped telling her to beware of Samuel — that much I get.
But she put words in my mouth, made it sound like I was insinuating that she wasn’t worth anything more than sex.
The implications of why she would ever think that are what kept me up all night.
I spent the better half wondering if that was the kind of guy I came off as, if my attempts to get close to her had signaled that she was some sort of bucket-list checkmark for me — just like the other ones we’d crossed off together.
I wondered if she thought I just wanted to bang my best friend’s mom, or a cougar, or whatever else she could think of.
But every time I had dived deep into that thought, I came back to the same notion that it wasn’t possible. If that was all I wanted, I would have given up by now. And I certainly wouldn’t be putting in the time I have been to get to know her.
She knows that.
And that’s what led me to the next revelation.
It’s Josh.
I know the outward signs of long-term abuse — the bruises, the covering up for the abuser, the isolation of the victim from family and friends. I saw all that clear as day when Amanda was younger — no matter how she tried to hide it.
But I didn’t stop to think about what would stay with her after she left him, what would linger even after she set herself free.
Anxiety. Self-consciousness and doubt. Fear that maybe her abuser had been right about her all along.
I remember the awful things he would say to her in a fit of drunken rage, how he would scream at her that she was lucky he loved her, because no one else ever would.
I crack my neck at the thought, gripping the paintbrush handle a little too tightly.
I’m not the type to murder a man, but if I was…
The sun has set by the time we finish up the job, and we convene in Amanda’s kitchen, David cracking open a beer in celebration while I drink a cold water.
“Thank you for your help with that,” he says, picking at a piece of paint dried on his arm. “What took us one full day would have taken me at least three on my own.”
“Hey, it’s me who should be thanking you. I needed the distraction.”
David frowns, leaning his elbows on the counter. “So you said, but you never told me what from.”
I just shrug, taking a sip of water.
“What’s going on, man? Girl trouble?”
I almost cough on my water at that, but manage to swallow it down. “Something like that.”
“You can talk to me, you know. You used to all the time.”