Love Under Construction (Love By Design 1)

Damn it.

“If you don’t want to help me, Hunter, just say so and I’ll find another contractor willing to work with me.” She sighed, looking over her dream house from a B rated horror film.

Oh hell to the fuck no is she going to pull that trick with me.

Some happy meals lacked French fries.

Crayon boxes were often missing crayons.

Taylor Jane… had a sparkle that rivaled fucking vampires.

I’m so screwed.

Grumbling, I caught a hint of her smile and decided to roll with it. What choice did I have? “Tell me what you envision here.” Turning the key to the truck off, we sat inside the cool dampness. It didn’t help that there was a humid light rain falling and everything was wet. Our breaths kept the inside windows of the truck fogged, blurring the structural lines of the house outside. I don’t bother putting the truck back on to defog anything because I was going to pretend through the clouded windows that some level of ignorance was bliss. For all I knew we would have to bulldoze the lot and start from scratch. The fog mocked me like the structural integrity of the house.

“I want to update the property, restore much of its historic charm and add elements that make it a uniquely modern home that anyone would be pleased to own.” Yup. She was going to be the death of me, just tell me where to sign up and to make sure my life insurance was paid in full.

“So… not too many structural changes? Like you don’t want to knock down a wall and build an indoor pool or anything?”

Taylor Jane laughed, but I had to be reasonable. This woman could talk you into buying sand in the desert, so a simple house flipping project could be the next Mall of America if I wasn’t careful. A man’s gotta be prepared, if you know what I mean.

“Oh, Hunter, always the jokester.” She lightly slapped my shoulder, looking back at the house even though the condensation kept us from seeing it clearly. “No indoor pool, but a screened in Jacuzzi under the back deck sounds like a nice upgradable option.”

The whine from my voice filled the truck. “Tell me what kind of budget we’re working with.” I don’t have a clue of when I agreed to actually do this, but I already regretted telling her I would do it when she squealed with delight, giving me a number that probably wouldn’t cover the permits or the supplies six weeks into this project. I dropped her off at her dad’s house with a sense of panic the next time I saw her.

I hoped like hell I had extra hard hats…

2

Taylor Jane

Ninth Grade - September

“Look, there’s the new kid!” Kristen Calloway, my best friend on the planet since we were five years old, nudged me with her boney elbow. We finished our lunch about ten minutes ago, and I hoped to use the remaining time to finish my homework and study. Her smooth voice was an excited whisper and chipper distraction from finishing my notes for class.

“Kristen, what the heck?” I looked up from studying for my biology test. We were learning about the molecules of cells and having to illustrate what they looked like. Personally, I found them to be un-color coordinated blobs in serious need of a makeover. I mean, who came up with the name mitochondria and decided it should be colored a brick red? I picked through my colored pencils and realized the one I wanted was sticking in Kristen’s hair to secure her bun.

“Kristen!” I reached up to grab it, but she batted my hand away. Smacking my lips disappointed, I guessed I would be using burnt sienna instead. I started tapping the colored pencils, outlining and shading to the new Green Day tune, “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” It was a bit of a sad song, but one that stayed with me over the summer since school started.

“Taylor!” She hissed back, dragging out the syllables in my name, nodding her head in my general direction.

Putting my pencil down, I took her math homework from between her book pages and we squared off a moment before trading items. Shaking my head, I looked up and saw who she’d pointed at earlier.

The new kid. The one everyone had been talking about since the end of the summer. Finally the speculation was over and here he was in all our freshman glory, walking with our neighbor from across the street.

“Oh fucking hell, Damien is over there already.” Breathing deeply, I counted to ten because for as long as I could remember Damien Hart and Kristen Calloway had hated each other on sight. That was an exaggeration, it was seventh grade two years ago, but close enough the way these two waged pre-teen war on each other. I swear their mothers got together and they kicked each other through the womb. Born on the same day, under the same freaking fire sign of Leo, these two could not have been more at each other’s stubborn throats unless they were twins with the same DNA. They weren’t oil and water, they were a compounded blaze I loved equally and was forced to often mediate between.

The trouble seemed to start over something in the beginning of seventh grade. Maybe a hastily scribbled note? Or another girl came between them, but neither had ever confessed what broke the friendship so deeply back then. After it all went down mysteriously, Kristen taught us all the swear words she knew in French that same year… Damien got a week of detention for saying them all in our language arts class. Then he told Kristen her last name really meant ‘pebbles’ in Norman French during genealogy week in history and had been calling her that since… I actually looked it up and for once Damien was right, making the origin Old Northern French. I had my suspicions there was more to it, but neither camp was disclosing more information. To be honest, I felt like staying neutral was my only choice since my parents weren’t moving anytime soon.

Damien was Kristen’s first kiss in seventh grade. She doesn’t know that I know, but when she was at the hospital for a broken arm she muttered something under the influence of pain killers and copious amounts of Coca-Cola from the vending machine. Her big brother, Chase, seemed to be on a mission to smash his face in until I tackled him in the hallway, reminding him that whatever happened was half Kristen’s fault. Knowing her as we did, we couldn’t discount that she might have had a part in this situation. Damien Hart owed me a favor for saving his life that day. I was simply waiting for the opportunity to cash it in.

I thought Chase and I handled things as best as we could until right before Christmas. Kristen had just gotten her cast off and the one period we didn’t have class together she went off. I mean unhinged, and bit him, leaving a mark so obvious that the girl he was taking to the holiday dance dumped him via folded note during gym class. By then it was a full-on war and I was playing Switzerland.

Luckily for me, they didn’t speak all of eighth grade, which gave me a reprieve last year, but now that we’re all in the high school building it would seem their war resumed full force for ninth grade and I had no reinforcements. I was losing faster than Napoleon in a Russian winter. Just ducky. I hoped the new kid knew what he was in for. Maybe he would be a buffer and save me since Chase was busy… well, chasing tail as an upperclassman.

“So who is he?” I looked across the cafeteria and saw him standing next to Damien, holding a tray of food like everyone else. Nothing about him blended in. For one he was taller and broader in the shoulders than Damien. Thicker muscles that you didn’t really see on ninth graders filled him out and made him look older than our age. Both had that dark chocolate brown hair and a similar smile, except his was clipped, guarded even through the angles of his teen beat magazine worthy face. From across the cafeteria, the hoard of clicky girls already spied him and most likely doodling Mrs. New Guy all over their notebooks. Looking down at my own book, I noticed the swirls and scribbles on my cellular mitochondria and scratched it out, starting my drawing over.

“Well, I heard that he’s actually related to the troll demon, Damien. Something like first cousins maybe, some trouble with the law and he had to move here. This is of course speculation because Becky Myers heard it from Clarissa Watts, who was in the same gym class as that Dolan kid who always looks at you weird.” Kristen gave a dramatic shudder, and I ignored her, watching him walk around the cafeteria, trailing behind while Damien introduced him to people. There was a quiet strength in his walk, unlike Damien who moved with boastfulness that belayed his friendly and outgoing personality.