Helena
Workaholics gonna workaholic, so a week went by without the date, or much of anything except me stripping old paint, then slapping up primer, then new paint. The whole damn project was basically repainting the entire house. I was going to have extra-awesome arms thanks to Greenwood Manor. It would be extremely worth it, and that kept me going. Turning the bright colors into softer shades was transforming the house. It still had all of its old house charm but it didn’t hurt my eyes. Under candlelight every room was a new delight.
Graham called from the hospital.
“I lost the election by half a percent,” he said, sounding understandably in a low mood. “And the nurses here think I’m a medical miracle. My bones were showing up broken on the X-Ray and now they’re not.”
“You’re probably their favorite patient too,” I said. “Getting a lot of sponge baths?”
“I need to get out of here…but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to travel yet.”
“Should I…come get you?”
“No. You have work to do. I’m feeling better every day.”
“Should I dream about you?”
“I won’t say no.”
“Okay.” I smiled. “See you soon.”
He should be safe from Piers in the hospital, at least.
“I finished the artists’ cottage!” Billie declared.
“Great,” I said. At this point, I hated anyone who was able to do anything with their life besides painting.
“It’s charming,” Gaston said. “I think it will be very enticing for your buyers.”
“I didn’t realize you flip houses too.” I was getting a little passive aggressive now, but seriously, he could have been working on patching up the exterior if we were paying him.
We were all eating breakfast sort of together, in a haphazard way, taking turns making eggs in the electric skillet and toast in the toaster, the two appliances the Sullivans plugged into one of the few outlets in the dining room.
“I heard you’re planning to sell it to faeries,” Gaston said.
“That is the hope. Faeries are motivated to buy parallels.”
“So they’ll be my neighbors. I’ve always heard faeries are tricksters.”
“They do have that reputation,” Billie said, not helping at all.
“So they better not mess with my horses.”
“I’m sure they won’t mess with your horses,” I said.
“I hope not,” Billie said. “I’ve never met a faery.”
I put down my toast. “You don’t want to sell it to the faeries anymore? What happened here last night?”
Billie glanced at Gaston with a weird little smile. “Well, Gaston took me to see his horses. We went riding when the project was done.”
“No big deal,” Gaston said, with a little French shrug. He was wearing a cap and a scarf around his neck, and he was also smoking a cigarette, so he was giving me this vibe. One annoying thing about vampires is that they all smoke because they were all alive during the Mad Men years and they can’t die.
“Did you come over here to seduce Billie into making sure you like your new neighbors?” I asked outright.
Billie laughed. “Oh, come on, Hel! It ain’t like that!”
“She seduced me into painting her cottage,” Gaston said. “It’s only fair. Of course I don’t want to bring down the neighborhood with odd characters.”
Takes one to know one, I thought.
“But I’ve never met a faery,” he said. “I guess…we will see.”
“He didn’t seduce me,” Billie added. “It was just a horseback ride.”
“Under the moonlight,” Gaston said.
“It’s fine,” Billie said. “Gaston can meet the new faeries and we’ll see how it goes.”
“You can’t get the neighbors involved in a house sale!” I had never heard of such a thing. “It’s not his house! We’re not going to see how it goes! What are you going to do if he doesn’t like them?”
Jake and Jasper were, respectively, making toast and grating cheese into scrambled eggs. I looked at them for some backup.
“I’m not stepping into this one,” Jasper said. “But money talks. We’ll see what we think when faery gold is in hand.”
“I hope, for your sake, that it is gold and not an illusion,” Gaston said.
Well, I guess it was understandable that the faeries were regarded with suspicion. They hadn’t lived among us for centuries.
“So you’re starting on the kitchen?” Billie said. “What are you thinking for it?”
“Jasp and I are going out to get the materials today,” Jake said. “An upscale, light color scheme.”
“I was thinking that a little bit of a fun, country kitchen feel would be nice,” Billie said. “I mean, we’re out here in the country. That bathroom you did was beautiful but I do have to say that it doesn’t fit the rest of the house, does it?”
I bristled. “That bathroom is a masterpiece.”
“But it’s so modern and gray! And this house is so sweet!”
“This house isn’t sweet, it’s grand. And eclectic,” I said.
“Well, I do like the bathroom, but it’s very modern,” Billie said, but now I could tell she didn’t like the bathroom at all.
“The kitchen won’t be as modern as the bathroom,” Jake said. “The colors will be warm, not cold, and the fixtures will have an antique look. I’ll show you a mockup on my iPad after breakfast before we go back out shopping.”
“So you made mockups and everything. Of course you did. The three of you already know what you want to do.”
“I mean…we’re open to suggestions,” I said.
Growl. I hated sharing a house with someone who had a totally different style. I didn’t really want to share kitchen ideas with Billie. But it was her house. She had definitely picked up the vibe that I didn’t like to work in a team.
“Take a look at the cottage,” Gaston said. “We worked diligently and I think you’ll be impressed.” I wondered how of it he had actually done, anyway.
They had definitely worked it. The cobwebby old kitchen was now an extremely clean and livable space with lots of storage. The dark, smoky old wood had been brightened up.
But it was completely off from anything I would do. The cottage was not just painted but fully furnished, with decorative china plates hanging around the old stove, brass candleholders, antique chairs and tables with curvy legs, the old kitchen cabinets repainted in pale green, and a sign that said “CREATE” on the wall. Although there was not actually a whole lot of space to create anything, despite the easel in the corner.
It’s not that it wasn’t cute. It was, for the right buyer. But it was curated for a very specific type of client—a certain type of country witch. And we didn’t even know our clients. Billie and I were totally different types of flippers. I was more about getting old houses in shape while preserving their magical elements. Billie was more about a lifestyle brand.
“You don’t like it, do you?” Billie’s lips pursed. “Of course we don’t have the same style anyway, and the whole idea that these faeries would come pay good money for it, and—I don’t know what faeries like, but I’m not sure you really do either based on the way you talk.” She was getting heated.
“I do like it! I just think this whole project is a disorganized mess! We have so much to do!”
“And anyway, y’all work together so well, you don’t even want to hear from me! You’re doing all the main rooms in the house by yourself why you’re flirting with each other all day,” Billie said, “and it doesn’t matter anyway. I poured more of me into it than I should have. That’s all. I went overboard.”
Jake glanced at me. Billie thought she might die opening Pandora’s Box and maybe she felt like this was her last project. I guess, with that in mind, scraping paint for twelve hours a day didn’t have much allure. Who wanted to spend their final days doing that? But instead, I’d been doing it all by myself while Billie just set aside her own fun project.
We were definitely taking over the house plans, though. And flirting. She was not wrong.
I sighed.
I wondered how we ever expected to bring down the barriers between worlds if the two of us couldn’t even get along. I wondered how I expected to be with four men if I couldn’t cooperate with one other person.
“Let’s start over with the kitchen plan,” I said. “And go shopping together. You’re right. We took over the house. But I also really need your help with the menial labor. We all have to bring it together in a race to get the kitchen done so we can move on.”
“Am I glad to hear you say that! I actually painted up a design of how I thought the kitchen might look. I saw this adorable yellow kitchen in a house I flipped in Mississippi and I’ve always wanted a kitchen just like it. This house is so bright and cheerful that if any house was asking for a yellow kitchen, it’s this one.”
We compared Jake’s iPad computer-generated room of a shiny modern kitchen to Bilie’s watercolor pencil sketch of a sweet yellow room with white cabinets, many with glass panes in the doors, plus she drew hers with flour and sugar jars on the counter and a painting of a cow on the wall. “That’s just for examples of the sort of things I might decorate with,” she said.
I still liked Jake’s high-end kitchen better. But Billie’s had heart, I’d give her that.
And it was crunch time. My brother was sending over some buyers soon, and we would be moving on to the last piece of Pandora’s Box. It seemed like, all things considered, it had been a little too quiet around here.