They had to communicate about paint and cleaning their tools as they moved on. Sandy liked colors, and the living room and dining room were to be “Firefly Glow” yellow, and the kitchen a pale blue called “Ice Fishing”. It was getting hot inside even with the windows open, and Olly took his shirt off. Not only that, but he began to hum with the music and swiveling his hips to the beat. Every time Rich looked, there he was, sinuous body decorated with yellow splatters like some exotic wildlife.
Rich’s irritation was trickling back, but it was different, laced with something too much like foreboding.
To make things worse, nobody seemed to have taught Olly how to hold a proper grudge, and he was too social to figure it out for himself. “Is this what you do? I mean for a living,” he asked halfway through the kitchen.
“This and that,” Rich grunted. “I’m an out-of-work odd-job man now.”
“Sandy never told me she had a brother.”
“She never told me she had a pet,” Rich snarked, and it put an end to their chitchat. Olly pressed his lips together, transforming their curvy fullness into a thin line, and grabbed the roller.
Whatever. Rich didn’t give a hoot about Olly’s stony expression or the stiff lines of his back as he attacked the wall. Taking the radio along, Rich moved on to do the laundry room.
Sandy texted later, letting Rich know she wouldn’t be back till the evening. Fucking fantastic.
Rich cranked the music up even louder, but it didn’t help. An internal monologue kept running in his head, raging against pretty much everything—Olly, the color of the paint Sandy had picked, the heat, Olly… The guy kept sticking in his craw, and he didn’t need any more crap to deal with. Some days he felt as if the weight on his shoulders might squash him flat. He kept self-medicating with beer, careful not to get fall-down drunk but to keep numb.
Olly ordered pizza for lunch without asking Rich first, letting him know only when it arrived. They scarfed it up without a word and got back to work. Rich kept rolling the paint and churning his frustrations till his head and shoulders ached and his head was threatening to join in. But at least he finished the kitchen and the laundry room both.
Rich went to check on Olly’s progress, but his phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID made his gut clench. He should have deleted Julie’s photo a long time ago. He must’ve forgotten—they hadn’t talked since the breakup. He glanced around and saw Olly was almost done too. Rich quickly ducked into his room—the only room they hadn’t painted—and sat on the plain mattress on the floor before answering.
“Rich, how are you doing?” The concern in her voice was genuine, and it irked him even more.
“Fine. What do you care?”
“You know I still care about you.”
“You had a funny way of showing it.” He knew he was being unfair, but he simply couldn’t stop himself.
“Rich! We’ve been through this. You can’t have a relationship with someone who keeps parts of himself locked away.”
“You overestimate me. What you see is all there is.”
“Bullshit.” There was a long silence on the line, and Rich expected her to hang up, but she spoke again, her voice tight with self-control. “I don’t want to argue. I called because I’m selling the condo. We bought it together, so you should know. It isn’t worth as much as I hoped, but still.”
“It’s in your name—you do with it as you want. Is that all?”
“No. There’s something else.” She took a pause again, shorter this time. “Martin—your former boss, in case you don’t remember—he convinced Scott to take an early retirement, and brought in a new accountant. They are going over all the books.”
Martin Doss—the D in WDIC Financing—had the means to force out Scott Silva, the company’s head accountant. The only person to oppose him, Donald Willson—the W in the firm’s name and Rich’s father—was dead. The other two board members had always gone along with Martin’s wishes. “This should concern me why?” Rich forced the words out, though his heart thumped like mad. Those accounting books contained a secret he didn’t want anyone to see, and Scott had been the one guarding it.
“I don’t know, Rich. You tell me,” Julie replied. “Scott seemed to think you’d care. During his farewell party, he pulled me aside and made all sorts of insinuations.”
Sharp pain shot behind Rich’s eyes. “You misunderstood. He must’ve been drunk.” He tried not to panic. Maybe Scott had buried the dirty secret deep enough, and the new guy wouldn’t find it.