Side Squeeze (Jasper Falls 6)

He pounded on the front door and Erin opened it, eyes startled. “Harrison, what’s wrong?”

“I brought you this.”

“What is it?” She frowned at the bucket. “Spackle?”

“Can I come in?”

“Um, sure. We were just about to eat.”

His footsteps halted at the scent of food and the sound of soft music streaming from the kitchen. The image seemed all too wholesome for this house. “You cook?”

Her eyes narrowed as she shut the front door. “Yes, I cook.”

They mostly ate canned Spaghetti-O’s growing up. Erin did a lot of the cooking back then, too, but it never smelled the way the house smelled now. He shot her a suspicious glance. It smelled a little too good.

“Fine,” she hissed. “I heated up a casserole Giovanni’s grandmother sent over. But I made the damn salad, jerk.”

He laughed. Strange how he found comfort in the fact that some things didn’t change. He followed her into the kitchen. “Where’s Giovanni?”

“Showering. He should be out soon.” She opened the fridge and offered him a beer.

Not thinking, he cracked the cap off the top of the fridge like their father used to do.

“Harrison! Do you mind?”

“Sorry.” It wasn’t the battered old fridge that had been there months ago. As a matter of fact, all the appliances were new. He scanned the kitchen, admiring the fresh flowers on the window sill and the bowl of fruit on the counter.

“Are you staying here?”

“For now. Giovanni postponed his shows so he could stick around and help out his dad.” She checked on the casserole in the oven and joined him at the table with a glass of iced tea.

A bowl of mixed salad sat on the counter beside dishes he didn’t recognize. “You look different.” It wasn’t just Erin. The whole place seemed changed, yet also exactly the same.

“Good different?”

He took in her loose blonde hair and faded cotton of her shirt. It wasn’t even a good shirt. It was the kind people gave away as swag. He didn’t recognize the company logo. “Yeah. You look…natural.”

“Well, if I’d known anyone was coming over, I might have thrown on some makeup.”

“No, I meant you look…happy.” And it bugged him that she categorized him as company.

Her defensiveness faded. “Thanks.” She sipped her tea.

“I thought I heard you talking to someone.” Giovanni entered the kitchen and shook Harrison’s hand. “How’s it going? Erin didn’t tell me we were having company.”

Erin shrugged. “I didn’t know.”

Again with the company…

Giovanni paused, taking the pulse of the room. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great.” Harrison stood, grabbing the bucket of spackle. “I have to take care of something. Call me when dinner’s ready.”

“I guess he’s eating over?” Erin teased with mock imposition.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “As long as you didn’t cook it, I’m in.”

It was a nice byplay, sort of normal, but there was no missing the protective way Giovanni watched Erin, as if not trusting Harrison’s presence in their home, which massively pissed him off, being that it was Harrison’s home long before it ever belonged to Giovanni.

As he left the kitchen and headed down the hall, he couldn’t shake the sense that they viewed him as an intruder in his own house. Last time he’d visited, Erin begged him to stay a while. He was finally there, willing to stay for more than a few minutes and working through his bullshit, but his sister’s welcome wasn’t quite as warm.

Ignoring their soft chatter, he focused on the purpose of his visit. Unsealing the spackle, he mixed the putty and slathered it over the nicks carved into the plaster wall at the back corner of the hall. There were a lot of divots to fill, and his mind wandered as he worked.

He tried to focus on anything but the necessity of his task. Most homes didn’t have belt-marks in the plaster. His back knotted with tension and his jaw clenched the longer he stared at the offensive little slashes.

Each time the putty smoothed over a chip in the wall, covering traces of deep grooves put there in a fit of rage, the ache of old injuries burned like a scab being ripped away. Abuse was sometimes worn on the surface, but the real scars hid deep within a person’s soul.

Like an arthritic ache that spontaneously acted up, environment sometimes played a part. Certain surroundings simply brought about more pain than others.

The longer he stood in that hall, staring at the corner he’d faced so many times before, manually repairing the surface damage of his past, the less the marks unnerved him. He didn’t try to avoid the memories as he worked, but his mind eventually grew bored with the old images and moved onto more interesting things, like Mariella and the progress he’d made at the store.

“What are you doing?”

Startled by his sister’s accusatory voice, he dropped a glob of spackle on the trim and used a finger to quickly scoop it back onto the putty knife. “This wall was all banged up.”