At least, I’d assumed it was finished, but this morning a play frame/fort structure had been delivered while I was in the shower. By the time I had finished getting ready, the guys had all returned, and they were now doing ‘man shit’ and putting the thing together. It was just as well that Ellis’s backyard was a decent size because so was the fort. I’d gotten up to get another cup of coffee while I took a break from the piece I was working on and had almost dropped it on my foot when I’d seen the size of it.
In fact, I was still standing in the same place thirty minutes later, watching as more of it was pieced together, when Tabby called.
“What you doin’?”
Watching as Ellis and Dave screwed another metal thing in the top of one of the running bars, I gave her a rundown of what I’d encountered so far this morning, and then asked, “Why’s he building a fort with swings and a slide in his garden?”
“Maybe so he has something to do when he has people round for a barbeque?” she chuckled, and for a brief second I considered it a plausible possibility, but then common sense kicked in.
“Be serious,” I sighed, wincing when Hurst dropped a piece of wood on his toe. How that man did things like that to himself, I’ll never know. Then again, I’d head butted the float, so I wasn’t one to talk.
Tabby was definitely serious this time when she spoke. “Honey, I hesitate to say this, but have you ever thought that maybe he’s doing it for Olivia? That maybe he wants to give her a beautiful space to play in when she’s old enough?”
Deciding to ignore the last bit, I focused on something from the first bit of what she’d said that bothered me. “Why do you say that you hesitate to say that?”
I’d expected her to explain it gently, but that was far from what she ended up doing. “Don’t be a facetious twat, Josephine. I get that you’re trying to be independent and putting Liv first, but have you ever thought what you both need comes in the form of Mr. Ellis Beauregard?” she snapped. “And I’ve got to ask this, because are you honestly saying that you’re not attracted to him at all? Because, I’m about to tell you, girl, that you are lying if you say yes to that.”
Damn it, she was right.
Trying not to lie by pretending to not understand exactly what she’d meant, I hedged, “Of course I do, we’re great friends.”
I waited for her response, and when nothing came, I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen to check she hadn’t hung up on me. We were still connected, but there was a message waiting from her, so I opened it, and sighed when I saw what it was. There was a photo of an x-ray of what looked like a pelvis with arrows pointing at areas of it that had the words ‘poop’ beside them. The caption that accompanied it was: like this man’s intestines, you’re full of shit. Nice!
“Classy,” I muttered, putting the phone back to my ear.
“I can’t say I care,” she retorted irritably. “I want you to take a good look at the man right now and tell me that you don’t think about him in any way other than friendship. And I want you to be totally honest. Then, I want you to think about how he is with Liv, and tell me you don’t agree that he thinks she shits sunshine and unicorns…” A deep voice joined hers down the line at that moment making both of us scream. “Excuse me, Miss. Newton, your class is waiting.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Teller,” she choked. There was some more muttering from the principal of Piersville School, and then he walked away leaving me alone with her again. “Shit, that man walks around like a ninja cat. I think I need to change my panties.”
She wasn’t kidding, I was considering changing my own, or at least I would be once I stopped laughing. Just as I gripped onto the edge of the sink as another burst hit me, Ellis walked in through the back door, his eyes finding me immediately. I knew it was him because I could see his reflection in the reflective surface of the coffee maker beside me, so I could see clearly what he was doing when he frowned as he took in my shaking shoulders. Mistaking why they were shaking as hard as they were, he came up and turned me around, eyebrows shooting up when he saw that I was laughing and not crying like he’d apparently thought I was. “It’s Tabby,” I snickered, holding the phone up and laughing even harder.