Charlie Matheson was huge, with broad shoulders, muscular arms, large, rough hands, and a jaw like a superhero, even if it was hidden under a reddish-brown beard. He had short reddish-blond hair with a bit of a wave to it, and his eyes were a hazel that reminded Rye of the woods around his new house.
He was kind and hot and bossy and irritatingly pleased with himself for being helpful. But he had saved Rye three trips.
Rye dragged the wood inside after Charlie left, pulling his sleeves down over his hands to avoid splinters. Marmot sniffed the wood, then jumped onto it, walking each board like a balance beam, leaving tiny damp paw prints.
The YouTube video had said to shore up the structure by placing 2x4s that ran from the floor to the ceiling.
“Okay, so we just stand these up and, like, nail them...to...shit, what do we nail them to?”
Marmot looked on as he stood up the first 2x4, little face cocked curiously.
It didn’t fit. There was at least an inch between the top of the 2x4 and the ceiling.
“What the hell? I measured you!” Rye accused the room.
He tried another 2x4 with the same results. Then he moved the 2x4 to a different spot along the wall. This time it was too long.
“Shit,” Rye muttered. “You janky motherfucker.”
After much trial, error, and swearing, Rye was able to fit three of the 2x4s into places that actually were nine feet tall. He couldn’t nail them in place—the floor was too soft and he couldn’t reach the ceiling—but probably just having them there was helping hold things up. Right?
With a full-body sigh and a lancing glare at the pile of misfit wood, Rye got back in his car.
“Can you, like, add an inch to a piece of wood?” Rye mumbled, internally cursing the second it was out of his mouth.
Charlie didn’t laugh, though the twinkle in his eye betrayed his amusement. Rye glared.
Very slowly and very gently, Charlie said, “It would really help me answer your question if you would tell me what you’re trying to do.” Then he added, “I mean that in a totally professional, nonbossy, nonheroic way.”
Rye snorted. He hated not knowing what he was doing. Even more, he hated not being able to fake that he knew what he was doing—after all, acting like you had your shit figured out was ninety percent of survival. But clearly this Charlie dude knew his shit, and Rye had to acknowledge that could be useful.
“Fine. I need to prop up the ceiling of the house and my boards are all the wrong length.” At the first sign that Charlie was going to say that he had not cut the boards the wrong length, Rye specified, “I mean, the house is the wrong height. Different heights. All different fucking heights. It’s, like, droopy.”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed.
“Are you not doing demo inside first?”
Demo. Demolition. Right.
“Uh. Well. I’m just seeing if I can... What would that look like, exactly?”
“With a structure like yours—and I’ve only seen the outside; it’d help to see inside—usually you’d want to demo the old interior to check that the foundation and load-bearing posts are sound, and see about the roof. If the floor is sagging, that might mean it just needs to be replaced, or it could mean the foundation is buckling, from age or from water or from termite damage. If there’s any drywall in there you’d want to rip that out so you can reframe the walls square. Really, you’d want to take it down to the studs and give yourself a clean canvas. That would allow you to check the wiring, the plumbing, the heat.”
Each word Charlie said gathered in a haze around him—thick and oily green-black, it cracked over his head like an egg and slid down his neck and into his eyes.
Rye shook his head, trying to dislodge the haze, to stuff it back down in the tiny place it lived in his gut. He fisted his hands so tight his knuckles cracked and looked around the hardware store like perhaps the magic tool that would enable him to succeed lay right out of reach.
What the hell had he done? He’d moved away from the only place and people he’d ever known. He had no job, no prospect of a job, and from Charlie’s words it was clear that what little cash he had was nowhere near enough to fix up this damn house. If he was lucky he’d be able to sell it for the land. If he was lucky he could at least camp there through the summer. If he was lucky...
But Rye didn’t believe in luck. Luck was just what happened when you were privileged and didn’t know it. Inheriting this godforsaken house was the quote unquote luckiest thing that’d ever happened to him, and look how that was turning out.
“Fuck,” Rye breathed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He needed to get to a place where he could be alone and think this through. And by think this through, he meant get to a place where an entire hardware store wouldn’t see him lose his shit in public.