“Hang on there, Big Red.” She doesn’t look up as she finishes loosening the hat. “I’m putting this on you if it kills us both.”
But when she reaches up again, flashing me her armpits, her cleavage inches from my face, I step back and yank the hat from her.
“I’ll do it myself.”
I cram the hat onto my head, aware that my too-long curls stick out of the sides, making me look like a redheaded clown.
Greta steps back, biting her lips to fight her smile. Josh doesn’t bother.
“Awesome.” He chuckles.
I tug the pink bill down, my face scalding. “Happy now? I’m wearing the fucking hat. Can we get back to work?”
Greta’s eyes lower to slits and her upper lip curls. “Just trying to help.Jeez.”
Josh mean-mugs me like I’m the asshole.
Okay, maybe I am the asshole.
I turn my back to them and pretend to check the auger’s gas gauge. Then I position the giant bit on top of the spot we’ve carefully marked. If I didn’t think it’d tear my leg off, I’d start the thing myself and drill the damn hole, but this sucker is made for two, and I need Josh to help me balance it.
Not that we couldn’t have rented a smaller one. One I could’ve handled myself. And then I wouldn’t have to listen to my best friend gripe about how hot it is or how many times he’s stepped in deer pellets.
Or watch him grab his girlfriend’s ass while he kisses her.
I clear my throat loudly, and they leap apart.
“Right—” She giggles and runs a hand down her springy ponytail, which is coming undone since she gave me her hat, freeing two honey-colored ringlets around her face. “I’ll let y’all get back to it. I’m still sanding the window frames in the lodge. Maybe tomorrow I can start priming.”
This place used to be a private hunting camp. The “lodge” is our affectionate name for the biggest building on the property. Basically, it’s one giant room with a kitchen and laundry closet on one end and a fireplace on the other.
It also has the only working toilet in this whole place.
Oh, sure, my “cabin” has a bathroom. So does theirs. Sink, shower, and toilet. The sinks work. The showers work. The toilets were installed but never connected to the septic system. How nobody caught that before we closed on the property is a mystery to me.
Apparently, the old guy who owned this place and built all of this back in the eighties only ever stayed in the lodge—and lived there full-time in the last ten years of his life. He put his buddies up in the cabins when they came to hunt and fish with him.
They must not have complained. Maybe they were okay shitting in the woods.
I’m not.
And sharing a bathroom with Josh and Greta has already led to some pretty awkward moments.
Like a couple of weeks ago when I woke up after midnight with the need for some indoor plumbing. I slipped on my sandals and a headlamp and walked through the grass and crickets and spider webs and all the other shit you can’t see but can feel in the night to get to the lodge.
The bathroom light was on behind the shut door, but it’s always on.
Did I mention that the door didn’t lock?
I saydidn’t,because after I walked in on Greta changing her tampon in the middle of the night, Josh installed a lock the very next morning.
But she and I couldn’t look each other in the face for like two whole days.
And even though it only lasted a split second, I couldn’t shake it. That image of her sitting on the john, a look of horror on her face. Panties and pajama shorts bunched around her ankles. Blood—a scary amount of blood—soaking her underwear. Her shorts. A stray smear on the inside of her thigh.
Blood on the tips of her fingers.
I slammed the door, stammering my apology.Multipleapologies.