Page 6 of Love Bound

"You okay?" I ask her.

"Yeah."

I can tell she's embarrassed. I let go of her.

"But really," she says, not letting it drop. Setting her coffee down, which miraculously does not spill on the table, she ducks underneath and points to two filthy holes in the floor.

"I believe you. I don’t think you broke the table," I say.

At this, she laughs.

She couldn’t possibly break the table. She's a tiny thing, small-boned and thin, strong though. I could feel the muscle harden in her upper arm when I grabbed her. A fine spray of freckles covers her nose and cheeks. Women don't seem to have freckles anymore. I think they cover them up with makeup. She doesn’t have any of that on either. Just some lip balm.

"Well, this table always jiggled. I guess the bolts finally got stripped," she says.

"We're not bolting anything to the floor this time around. It's all going to be new." I pause. "Well, new-ish. There's an old barn just north of Newburyport and we're repurposing the boards. They're tamarack, about twelve inches wide. They're going to be turned into tables."

"Really?"

"With wrought iron frames and legs," I add.

"Posh."

"Not really."

"So, you're going to give The Inn a full facelift? You're not just going to renovate parts of it?" She gestures as if to encompass the entire building.

"Yep. All these windows are coming out," I tell her.

The back of her neck tenses up and she straightens her shoulders. "Really? You're going to take all these out? They’re really old, you know. That's why they're all warped. The glass is handmade."

"Maybe."

"No. They are," she insists.

"But they'll leak heat in the winter. We're going argon-filled, double-paned, a series of five with lower panels to swing out. Easy to clean too. Jesus, these must have been a pain in the ass."

"You could do plastic," she suggests.

I can tell she’s leading me to a different conclusion. She' knows there's no way I'm putting plastic up over windows. I just cock my head to the side.

"Or here, see this?" She rubs a finger along the side of the window frame in the corner. "See these two little holes? They held a magnet. You could do Plexiglass and magnets."

"Or bubble wrap. There's an idea." My words make her stiffen even more and I immediately regret sounding like a jackass.

Now she speaks patiently, as if to a child. "You should know this. You just cut the Plexiglass to fit the window. And then you attach it with magnets. The air acts like you know, like your fancy argon gas, and creates a heat barrier. It'd be a lot less expensive."

"Yep. Nope."

"Save on that budget, earn some points," she says to me but looks out the window.

I look at her funny. I don't know quite what she's talking about. I guess she means the budget in the grand scheme of the universe. Like my carbon footprint would be smaller. "I'm not going with Plexiglas, but maybe I can come up with something else."

She picks up a muffin and though I'm not hungry, I find myself reaching for one as well, to keep her company.

Why should I care? She barged in here.

Be nice. Be nice.