You and Me Baby Page 8

  “Haven’t we been here before?” he said, laying a fifty dollar bill on the table. “You and me? Haven’t we already –”

  “What’s that?” she asked suspiciously, looking down at the table.

  “Your tip,” he said.

  “I didn’t even serve you,” she said, picking it back up and handing it to him. “And that’s way too big.”

  “Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve put up with a lot, Laurie Roberts. You deserve it. Here.” He pulled another fifty out of his wallet. “You deserve more than that.”

  “Take your money,” she muttered, stuffing it back into his wallet, then stuffing that into the back pocket of his jeans.

  “Oh, we’ve definitely done this before,” he’d laughed, with her hands in his pocket. “Why are you always trying to get into my pants?!”

  There had been plenty of unpleasantness from then on, all of it from Laurie. Any good will she had towards him earlier seemed to be gone as she’d driven him to his rent house in her car, and he’d assured her, with his toolbox in his hands, that he could walk back and get his truck in the morning. He’d slipped the fifty dollar bill into her purse on the drive when she’d not been looking, and he’d smiled thinking about it as she’d closed the passenger door behind him.

  “Why are you smiling?” she’d asked cautiously.

  “Because I like you,” he’d said. Then, looking around the neighborhood, he’d leaned his head back, and yelled, “I LIKE YOU, LAURIE ROBERTS!”

  She’d left right after that, not even thanking him for all of his help.

  “YOU’RE WELCOME!” he’d yelled back.

  Good times. Good memories. He thought about them as he continued pulling out cabinets, the shelving all rotted out and moldy from whatever it was those past residents had kept in there.

  “Knock, knock,” he heard over the sound of boards being thrown and nails flying.

  He turned to see Travis, who was staring at him open-mouthed.

  “Hey,” he said, nodding at his old friend. “What do you think?”

  “I’m thinking you’re a fast worker,” Travis murmured. “And that you need a mask to work around this stuff. Wow, it’s disgusting.”

  True enough.

  “I’ll get one later,” Aiden shrugged. “I’ve gotta go down to the store and pick up some supplies anyway.”

  “I’ve got a bunch of it out in my truck,” Travis said. “No need to spend anything if I’ve already got it.”

  Aiden nodded at the box in his hands. “What’s that?”

  “Oh,” Travis smiled, opening it. “Cupcakes. The girls wanted to send you a sample box as a housewarming gift. But they’re only doing it because they want you to get hooked and buy more at the Dive.”

  “Brilliant goddesses,” Aiden said, reaching for one and stuffing it into his mouth in one bite.

  “What did you just say about my –”

  “So, supplies in your truck,” Aiden mumbled around the cupcake.

  “Yeah,” Travis said, dropping the box down to the table, then glancing at it with concern as it visibly wobbled. “Is there anything those guys didn’t damage?”

  “Couch still works fine,” Aiden said. “Best sleep I’ve gotten here. And the bed looks good, but the clean sheets I had were back in my truck.”

  “Where is your truck?”

  “At the Dive,” Aiden sighed.

  “You got drunk again last night?” Travis asked, with more concern than he’d shown the table.

  “Just a little to drink,” Aiden said, waving this concern away. “Laurie was happy to drive me home.”

  “Laurie, huh?” Travis asked, subdued interest in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” Aiden said, wondering at that interest.

  “Okay, then,” Travis said, forcing a grin. “Just wanted to bring by those cupcakes and also invite you out tonight. Guys’ night out, that kind of thing.”

  A guys’ night out. Aiden could remember all the ones he’d had before with Travis and thought that even at their ages, he could use some of that.

  Except… did Travis still do that kind of thing?

  “Wait… what kind of night out is this?” he asked.

  “A group of us are going to go to Odessa to eat some steaks, go bowling, that kind of thing.” Travis shrugged. “Just hanging out.”

  Yeah, except probably not just that.

  “Steaks and bowling, huh? That sounds good.”

  “So you’ll come?” Travis asked, just a hint of surprise on his face.

  “If you’ll answer me one question,” Aiden said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Will anyone at any point in the evening talk about the Bible or Jesus?” Oh, yeah. Aiden knew how people got tricked into these kinds of things. Preacher’s kid and all.

  Travis let out a breath. “It’s not a Bible study, Aiden.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Aiden said.

  “And I’m telling you,” Travis tried again, “that’s it’s not a –”

  “Jesus and the Bible? Yes? No? What is it?”

  Travis rolled his eyes. “Well, I can’t guarantee that no one will say anything about either one, honestly, because –”

  “Ah-ha!” Aiden yelled triumphantly, his finger in his friend’s face. “I knew it! A Bible study!”

  “No, man, it’s just life,” Travis said, exasperated. “We can’t not talk about these things because they’re just part of who we are.”

  A guys’ night out with a bunch of Jesus freaks. No thank you.

  “You sound like a fun group,” Aiden said. “But I’ll have to pass.”

  “Fine, whatever,” Travis muttered.

  “Besides, I have plans for tonight.”

  “Let me guess,” Travis said. “Go to the Dive and get drunk, right?”

  And though that hadn’t been his plan at all, Aiden considered this for a moment, then said…

  “Well, we’ll see where the night takes me.”

  The plan didn’t involve drinking.

  No, the plan involved going back to that clinic to see how his lock was holding up after a day of people in and out, slamming the door behind them like people so carelessly did.

  The plan also involved seeing Laurie again. But that was just a coincidence.

  He walked back to the Dive after he’d finished at the house and realized he couldn’t find his keys. Before he could fully panic about that or walk back to the house to pick up the spare set, he went inside to get a drink. He wasn’t two steps in when Frank spotted him and gestured him back towards the bar.

  Maybe this drink would be on the house, too.

  “Hey, Frank,” Aiden shouted, making his way that direction.

  “Hey,” Frank mumbled, hard at work on the cash register already. “You looking for your keys?”

  “Yeah, actually,” Aiden nodded. “How did you know that?”

  “Because we have them here,” he said. “Laurie took them off of you yesterday without you even knowing.”

  He gave Aiden a reproachful once-over.

  “Must have been having a weird moment,” Aiden said, explaining away how he hadn’t gotten that drunk.

  “Must be having a weird life, Aiden,” Frank noted. “You drink too much.”

  No, he didn’t. He drank a lot, but it wasn’t like he was doing it all the time or anything. It’s not like he had a real problem with the stuff, like drunks and alcoholics.

  He just drank to feel good…

  Hmm.

  He didn’t want to give this too much extra thought.

  “I’m fine, Frank,” he said. “Really.”

  “Why’d you come in here, then?” Frank asked, looking at him knowingly.

  Well, for a drink, of course.

  Not like Aiden would say that now, though.

  He looked at Frank as though the words had wounded him. “I’ll have you know,” he said, “that I just came in here to get my keys.”

  “Well, here they are,” Frank said, bringing them up from under the bar.

  “But while I’m here and all…”

  Frank looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

  Well, fine then. He wouldn’t order a drink.

  “I was wondering where Laurie was.”

  “Same place she always is,” Frank said, going back to his work. “The clinic.”

  So without another encouraging (or more likely discouraging) word from Frank, Aiden made his way back outside and over to his truck, pointing it in the direction of Laurie’s clinic.

  It didn’t look any better than it had yesterday, but at least it had a lock that worked now.

  The clinic was nearly empty when he showed up, and he noted the day, figuring rightly that this was one of the days that Laurie didn’t do late office hours. Maybe he could talk her into going out with him one night or –

  “What are you doing here?”

  He heard her before he saw her, turning slowly from the door to find her standing by the reception desk, making some notations on a file. She looked up at him with her eyes narrowed, her movements clipped and tense.

  What in the world? Was she angry with him?

  “What? Can I not come here?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes.

  She was angry. What had he done last night to irritate her? He’d just been a little tipsy…

  “No, you can come here,” she said. “If you’re sick and in need of medical attention.”

  “Maybe I am sick,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to agree, but he cut her off.

  “Maybe I have some horrible, awful disease,” he said. “Don’t you feel bad now?”

  “Why would I feel bad when you’re the one who has the disease, not me? And it’s probably an STD, right?”

/>   He let out a breath. “Glory, woman, what is it with you and the fascination with STDs?”

  “Why are you here, Aiden?” she asked again, beginning to shut down the computers. “I have a shift at the Dive I have to go take in ten minutes.”

  She wasn’t going to give him any time, then. Fine, he could make it quick.

  “I came to check the door, make sure the locks are still good. You need to replace the whole door, you know. And the framing around it.” He gave it a good, hard look. “I’d probably have to ask Travis for some suggestions on the best materials, but I could probably fix it for you. Save you a bundle on heating costs because it would improve the insulation for this room alone by leaps and bounds.”

  She sighed. “That’s just one of many issues. It would take a whole crew of men to fix all the problems in this place.”

  “Then maybe,” he said, “that’s what you need to do. Is that a hole in the wall?”

  He’d already noticed that the place was a dump, of course, but the longer he looked around, the worse it got.

  A hole in the wall. Literally!

  She looked over at the hole with him. “Yes,” she said blandly. “Yes, it is.”

  “Why don’t you call Travis and have him come out and do the job?” he asked. “He and his guys could get it all done in no time at all. Have this place looking like a brand new clinic.”

  “I can’t afford Travis and his guys,” she said. “I’ve asked. Gotten a quote and all.”

  “Maybe he’d offer a discount,” Aiden said.

  “He did,” Laurie murmured. “I still couldn’t afford it.”

  How poor was this woman? She was a doctor, after all. A doctor who was living in the back room and working herself weary…

  “Maybe I can pull some strings and get him to do it for free,” Aiden said.

  “Because you’re tight and all,” she said sarcastically. “Yes, I’d almost forgotten.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Travis can’t do everything for free,” Laurie argued. “He’s running a business, not a charitable organization.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said. “But you need help.”

  “I don’t need help,” she argued.

  “You need something,” he said. “Has an inspector ever come out here? You know they’d probably shut the place down if they did. Health codes, fire codes, building codes, DaVinci codes. I don’t even know what I’m talking about, but I know this whole place has to be against some code somewhere.”

  Would she listen to reason at the threat of seeing the whole place shut down? Or was she hard-headed enough to ignore even this?

  “You’re right,” she nodded.

  “So, get things done,” he concluded.

  Laurie bit her lip and looked around. “If I could just find cheaper labor, we could do some things…”

  And though Aiden couldn’t define exactly what made him do it, he heard himself saying, “What about me?”

  He was attracted to her. He liked spending time with her, even if she spent some of the time (okay, all of the time) being sarcastic and rude. He enjoyed working with his hands, doing the kind of work he’d started doing on Travis’s property. He was already imagining more that he could do there, beyond the suggestions Travis had made, and it was easy to imagine the same kinds of things here at Laurie’s clinic.

  He wanted to help her. She needed the help, and this was one thing he could do for her, when he couldn’t do much else.

  “What about you?” she asked, confused.

  “I could be your handyman,” he said.

  She sighed and gave him another piercing look.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that –”

  “My mind isn’t in the gutter,” she corrected him. “I didn’t think anything bad, apart from having you around here all the time.”

  “You were glad for my help last night!” he exclaimed, thinking that she had been. Good for her, because she’d been in dire need of it, sleeping in the back room like that with a door that wouldn’t lock.

  Thinking of her sleeping in this place had him looking at it even more critically. Even more needed to be fixed if Laurie was living here, especially as it got colder and colder outside.

  “Yes, I was glad for it,” she conceded. “But just because you can fix a lock and get a car running again doesn’t mean you can do the stuff that needs to be done here. I mean, there are some complicated problems, Aiden.”

  He had no training, no expertise, and no professional credentials like Travis and his crew. But he wanted to help, and surely that counted for something.

  “I can learn as I go,” he said, knowing that this is how he’d done his PR job and how he’d been so successful at it. He hadn’t known much of anything about any of it when he’d started, but as he’d worked and done the job, the skills had come more naturally to him. Baptism by fire, his superiors had said, and it had been enough.

  “There are electrical problems,” Laurie said, and he could hear her relenting, just a little. “Wiring issues that the inspector didn’t catch when we… when I bought the building.”

  Aiden heard that slipup and wondered about it for all of two seconds. He couldn’t spend any more time on it just then, because right there was his moment to cut in and convince her.

  “Okay, so those things will probably require some help,” he said. “I can get Travis to give me some advice, and I swear, if I see someone do something once, I can do it myself the next time. So, you bring in a professional to fix one thing, and I can fix ten others after watching him.”

  This was the truth. He thought back to Papa and all that he’d learned under his grandfather’s care. Watch Papa do it, then you do it next time, Aiden.

  Laurie watched him for a long moment.

  “You can take a chance, huh?” he asked. “And if it doesn’t work out, what have you lost? Even if I’m horrible at this, you’ll still be better off than you were.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “I’ll paint the place,” he said, nodding at the discolored, stained walls. “I’ll paint it as I go. That way, even if the harder things are taking me longer to figure out, you’ll feel like we’re getting somewhere because you’ll see a little more progress with that every day.”

  She looked around at the walls, and he knew she was imagining it.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked softly.

  “What else do I have to do?” he asked.

  Find a job. A real job. Make plans to get out of this little town and find something real to do with his life…

  She looked back at the walls, even as he wondered at the steps he was taking.

  He just kept on taking them, though, knowing what he wanted to do.

  “What color do you want me to paint them?” he asked.

  And Laurie took a breath and said, very softly, “I like blue.”

  It was enough for Aiden. Suddenly, he had even more purpose in his life.

  “Then, blue it is,” he said, imagining it.

  “Oh, my lands, it’s Aiden Pearson!”

  And that makes fifty-nine, Aiden counted to himself, placing another kiss on another wrinkled cheek. Fifty-nine senior adult church ladies that he’d kissed that morning.

  “Mrs. Jones,” he cooed, grinning at her as a whole swarm of them had him surrounded. “That’s a lovely dress you have on.”

  “Why thank you, sweet boy,” she said, reaching up (way, way up – seriously, she was like three feet tall) and patting his cheek. “You always were the charmer!”

  “And you would know,” he grinned, really playing it up now, “since you’ve known me forever!”

  “I have!” Mrs. Jones laughed out loud. “Been praying that you’d get right with the Lord for nearly as long, and here you are!”

  Ouch.

  “Here I am!” Aiden bellowed, just as another senior adult lady butted her way into the entourage he had going, looking for her own kiss.

  Make that sixty.

  This was what he’d expected when he’d come to his dad’s church. He’d had a full week of working on Travis’s house, and he and Laurie had taken the day Saturday to go into Odessa and buy some of what he’d need to begin repairs to her clinic. He’d agreed, after much arguing, to take a small wage for his work, but as they’d stood before the cans of paint and he’d watched Laurie calculate what she could afford, he’d wanted to back out of that.

  “We can just start with painting one room,” she’d said softly as she’d put one can of paint in with all the other things they’d put in the cart for the more pressing problems.