4

Jamie

The custom-madewooden crate is in place, foam and bubble wrap swaddle the sculpture like a baby. Nothing’s going to happen to this piece on my watch. It’s good that we arrived an hour early. I need at least this much time to unpack and clean up before Gavin and his fiancée arrive.

The cabin is sparkling. You might never be able to know wealth by sight, but you sure can smell it. It smells clean, nothing definable, just noticeable by the absence of dust, dirty dishes, and clothes waiting to be washed.

The ceilings are so high, the wooden beams so golden, the windows so tall and open, that it almost feels like I’m standing in a cathedral in some faraway, exotic land. The furniture is white and minimal, the stone fireplace is two stories tall, and the kitchen is just off the living room. It looks like a kitchen from a magazine. It makes me smile to wonder if there’s ever been a chicken running around it.

Diedre, my best friend, spins in a circle and lets out a low whistle. “This place sure is something else.”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

Diedre clicks her tongue and gives me a laughing look. “Okay, huh? I’d put up with a lot to be set up in a place like this. Wonder what this guy’s like.”

I shrug. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m not after the guy, or the cabin. “Who cares what he’s like? The only thing I care about is that he likes my art and I’m getting paid.”

I flip my braid over my shoulder and she snorts. “When’d your heart get all moldy and shriveled? I swear, Granny Allwright gets more action than you.”

I pry the box open and carefully lower the wooden side to the gleaming hardwood floor. “Don’t want action.”

Diedre won’t believe this. She’s been my best friend since she moved here ten years ago and thinks she knows exactly what I need. Mainly, a whole lot of wild, no-strings attached sex. She claims good sex cures just about any ill. In that case, it sounds a lot like Granny’s blackberry moonshine. Delicious in the moment, but you sure pay for it in the morning.

“Jamie, your heart is shriveled, not your lady parts. Be honest here.”

I pry loose the next side of the crate and ignore Diedre. I need her and Big Tom’s help lifting the sculpture, but that doesn’t mean I have to converse.

Big Tom’s out in the truck, scheduling his next drop-off. He runs a port-a-john business, mostly supplying construction sites, parks, and events. You’d never believe it, but supplying toilets is a real busy job.

Diedre picks at her bubblegum pink nails and narrows her eyes on me. Diedre smells like vanilla cookies and hairspray, mostly because she already did a photo shoot this morning for her social media, and she likes to smell good as well as look good. She’s made a living off affiliate marketing and ad revenue, based on, from what she tells me, “looking real big and real sexy in butt cheek-baring shorts and a crop top, barefoot in the woods, while holding an ax, a dead badger, or any other country kink those repressed city boys like. They can’t get enough of me.”

I’ve seen most of Diedre’s photos, and there are quite a few I wish I could unsee, especially the pseudo nudie ones where she used Granny Allwright’s taxidermy squirrels as props. Those squirrels, wearing red gingham shirts and hats, have always given me nightmares.

I feel Deidre’s calculating gaze on my neck as I carefully peel away the bubble wrap and packing tape. The bubble wrap crinkles and snaps as I tear it free.

Careful. Careful.

Diedre walks around the box, her high kitten heels click-clacking. Finally, she stops in front of me and clicks her tongue at the nearly unwrapped sculpture. “It’s a beauty. That’s for sure.”

A jolt of pride fills me. If I had a different life, I’d try to get my art into galleries. I’d…

Diedre frowns. “Do you ever think about everything that’s out there? Do you ever wonder what it’d be like if you could leave Hollow Creek, travel around the world, sell your art in New York or Paris? Do you ever think about all you’re missing by staying here?”

I pause, my fingers scratching against the last of the bubble wrap. A clock ticks on the opposite wall and I consider the big, wide open, million-dollar cabin that I’m kneeling on the floor of. The clean smell, overlaid by my chicken poo and smoke scent. I think about how this cabin is the most exotic place I’ve ever been. Even in sixth grade, when all the other kids went on a field trip to Charleston to see the capital building, I had to stay home because I had chicken pox.

I let out a wistful sigh. “Sometimes,” I admit. “Sometimes I think about it.” There are galleries in New York, art shows and competitions in cities around the country, exhibits in Tokyo or Rome. Years ago, I used to dream about, not showing my art in galleries, but even just stepping inside one. Even just that little thing seemed like enough.

“And?” Diedre asks.

I shrug. “And then when I’m done thinking about it, I wrap all those thoughts up in a box,” I tap the wood of the crate. “I tape it, nail it shut, and then bury it, so deep down that I don’t ever have to think about it again. Not unless I want to. Which I don’t.”

Nobody’s got time for that.

Diedre stares at me like I’m short a few screws. “Okaaay. That sounds really unhealthy. You know that, right?”

I grin at her. “Sure do.”

“As long as you realize your coping mechanisms suck. Anyway, I’m sure some good old-fashioned lovin’ would cure what ails you.”

Tags: Sarah Ready Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net