Part 7 (1/2)
”You know, this looks a lot like the picnic you packed for my twenty-first birthday,” I said, tilting my head against his shoulder.
”Well, let's see how many colors we can get you to throw up this time,” he said, patting my back.
”Will you be joining me in this neon-colored hooch fest?”
”Ugh. Even I'm not gay enough to drink that swill.” Emmett winced, putting a case of Heineken in my fridge to chill. He reached into the cabinet over the sink to unearth Gammy's ancient turquoise blender. ”This is the one area where I proudly reject the stereotype. But I will gladly mix up a batch of my frosty, frothy c.o.c.ktails for you.”
As he measured out just the right amount of ice with a flourish, he gushed, ”Lace, you wouldn't believe how many people are talking about you back home. It's like you're Princess Di or Britney Spears or someone more interesting and less tragic than you.,, ”I onestly don't know how to take that.”
”Your husband moved his secretary into your house the night you left town. That's practically Shakespeare territory,” he told me.
My jaw dropped. ”He moved her into our house?” I repeated.
”I was going to break it to you gently,” he said. ”But the kindest version I could come up with involved an obscene limerick.”
I shook my head. The emotional emptiness I briefly enjoyed was replaced with a dull ache in my chest. I rubbed at it with the heel of my hand. I tried to make light of it. ”Oh, screw it. Let Beebee deal with the d.a.m.n earth tones.”
”Well, that's good to hear,” he said. ”Mama said I shouldn't tell you. She was afraid you were going to freak out again and do something stupid, like shave your head or give Mike's boat a Viking funeral.”
The moment the words left Emmett's lips, he cringed. It was probably because of the way I stopped in my tracks, face alight with interest at the prospect of setting Mike's boat aflame. ”Oh... no,” he murmured.
I'd almost forgotten the boat was stored just a few yards away. I turned, a sly Grinch-ish grin spreading over my face as I focused on Mike's little workshop. Short of actually setting fire to Mike, burning his would-be vessel would be the best way to get under his skin. That pile of wood represented his hopes and dreams, the best imagined version of himself. I wanted to take that from him, to make him doubt himself. And, best of all, he would never, ever be able to talk about the d.a.m.n thing again.
”Lacey!” Emmett hissed. ”Forget I said anything! It was just a joke! You cannot possibly be thinking of setting Mike's boat on fire.”
”Technically, it is on my property,” I murmured, chewing my lip. I mean, it's just an idea. I mean, a joke. I'm just joking.”
”You don't sound like you're joking,” Emmett objected as I walked out the back door toward the workshop. ”Besides, I think you need flaming arrows and a virgin for a Viking funeral.”
”I just want to see it,” I told him as we approached the workshop, which was difficult with him dragging on my elbows.
Emmet's voice broke into a panicked pitch. ”Look, I have a better idea. We'll break into your house, take a bunch of Mike's stuff, and I'll sell it online for pennies. We'll start a website called TakeMikesStuff.com. Or h.e.l.l, we'll give it away.”
Emmett waved my cell phone in my face. ”Mama said your lawyer told you to call her before you made any rash decisions. Call her. Let her talk some sense into you.”
I forced the workshop door open and was a.s.saulted by dust.
You would think it would smell of sawdust or pitch, but this was the dust of dead s.p.a.ce. A damp, mildew-spotted canvas was slung over the hull frame. I swear, my mouth just about watered at the thought of lighting that first match. I could almost smell the smoke, hear the explosion as the varnish ignited. Dialing my cell phone, I shook my head as if waking from a strangely satisfying fog. I muttered, ”We could say it was an accident... Like I tripped and the gas just spilled out of the -”
”Samantha Shackleton.” My lawyer picked up on the first ring. And from the tone of her voice, I could tell I was taking her away from valuable after-hours downtime.
”Hi, Sam, it's Lacey,” I said. How exactly did one broach this subject with their attorney, I wondered. ”So ... uh, that thing they say about possession being nine-tenths of the law ... if something's in my possession, I can't really get in trouble for damaging it, right? Because nine-tenths of it is mine anyway.”
”Oh, Lord,” she muttered. ”Lacey, whatever you are thinking of doing, first of all, don't tell me about it. And secondly, just don't. I want you go into your bedroom, get a pillow, and punch it. It will make you feel better.”
”It would just be a little fire.”
”Am I going to have to declare you a danger to yourself and others?” she demanded. ”Lacey, I can't represent you if you're going to do things like this. Destroying Mike's property particularly with arson, is what we call, in legal terms, a bad thing, all right? It won't make you feel better in the long run and it will just make things more difficult for us. Mike could get all kinds of injunctions and damages and there's the chance you could hurt someone -”
”I was speaking in the hypothetical!” I protested.
She was silent on the other end of the line.
”Okay, it wasn't entirely hypothetical,” I admitted in a small voice.
”Have you been drinking?” she asked.
”Not ... yet.”
”Are you alone?” she asked. ”Is there at least one sane, sober adult with you?”
I handed Emmett the phone. ”She wants to talk to you.”
With Emmett occupied, I wandered toward the boat. After my Realtor related hissy fit convinced Mike that I wouldn't budge on selling the cabin, he tried to talk me into replacing the dock with a huge boathouse /workshop. His buddy, Charlie, had just added something similar to his lake house. Mike figured that if he couldn't get the cabin he wanted, he would have a brag-worthy place to house his future seaborne p.e.n.i.s replacement. While my refusal was rooted in my attachment to Grandpa's dock, I appealed to Mike's money sense. What was the point of having a waterfront cabin without a dock? How would that affect the potential resale value?
So Mike built the workshop around the dock, grousing about the added expense the entire time. He was unhappy about the cost, but got what he wanted. I was unhappy about having a pretentious faux Cape Cod mini-building ruining my view, but I got to keep my dock. And somehow both of us felt that we'd proven our points.
While I hoped that putting the workshop near the cabin would encourage Mike to want to go there more often, the cabin's location and undesirability gave Mike yet another reason not to work on the boat. And according to Mike, it was my fault, because if we had a better lake house, he'd want to go to the lake more often, and he would be finished with the boat by now.
”No problem, Sam,” Emmett was saying. ”I'll keep an eye on her. I look forward to meeting you, too.”
”You, eat this and think happy thoughts,” Emmett said, shoving the ice cream back in my hands. ”Sam says you are not to be left unsupervised for at least twelve hours or until your destructive urge pa.s.ses. She said chocolate should speed that process along.”
Behind us, I heard the rumble of Monroe's truck as he pulled up to his cabin. I looked out the window to see him pause and watch Emmett dragging me toward liquor and, hopefully, improved sanity. Monroe rolled his eyes and began hauling his groceries into his cabin, as Emmett, distracted by the sight of my grumpy, rumpled neighbor, gasped, ”Oh, my G.o.d, who is that?” He screeched to a halt and stared after him. ”I don't normally go for the scruffy, taciturn lumberjack type but - wow!”
”That's Wolverine,” I said, my words garbled by a mouthful of ice cream.
He grinned at me. ”What?”
”That's my neighbor, Lefty Monroe,” I said as Emmett shoved me onto my couch. ”Despite the hotness, he's a jerk. I think he's got an internet p.o.r.n addiction, possibly online gambling. In a choice between his being over-s.e.xed or broke, I think I'm rooting for gambling.”
”I can work with either,” Emmett said, shrugging. ”Wait, did you say 'Lefty'?”
I swatted at his hand as he attempted to dig a chocolate chunk from my ice cream carton. ”Yeah.”
Emmett grinned. ”I wonder where he got that name. Oh, the possibilities are endless.”
”I don't know, but if you start to make guesses, I will leave,” I told him.
”He's just got so much potential,” Emmett told me. ”Lacey, I think that tall drink of water is exactly what the doctor ordered.”
”For what?”
”To help you banish the memory of Mike the Moron. You know what they say, 'The best way to get over one man is to get under another one,” Emmett said, bowing his lips into a pert moue as he poured the makings of his famous chocolate vodka milk shakes in the blender. ”It's a life philosophy I whole-heartedly embrace.”
”That's because you're a man-wh.o.r.e,” I told him.
Smiling sweetly, Emmett hit the frappe b.u.t.ton. The grinding noise of the decrepit motor covered the stream of profane insults he sent my way. I could read his lips well enough to tell he was denigrating my intelligence, wardrobe, general hygiene, and ability to color coordinate a room. I let him vent. After all, he was providing the liquor.