I had to figure out what exactly I wanted from AM before I spent any more time with her. For both our sakes.
Finn was in the kitchen throwing something together as we walked in.
“Why are you always up so early?” I asked him, waving Noah into the shower. He was heading upstairs, presumably to wake up Grace and take her back to campus. I headed straight for the sink and drank a gallon of water.
“Got shit to do,” Finn replied, his mouth half full of scrambled eggs that he must have prepared for himself. Noah and I couldn’t cook for shit and if it wasn’t for our other roommates—Finn, Adam, and even Mal—occasionally cooking us a meal, we’d eat microwaved foods and take-out only. Actually, I take that back. I could make a mean dessert out of MREs, but other than cereal breakfast escaped me. “Every morning?” I asked Finn, wondering if he would make me some eggs if I asked.
“Yes, every morning. That’s what working stiffs do. Get up every morning and work.” Finn wiped his mouth with a dishtowel and carried his dishes to the sink.
“But at the asscrack of dawn?” I’d lived with Finn for nearly a year now but didn’t know much about him other than that he drove a truck, had a lot of tools, and came home covered in dust and grime. He seemed to work nonstop, kind of like Noah. They both made me tired just listening to their twenty-minute recap at the end of the day.
Mine could fill two minutes, maybe five, if I took the time to describe a few of the chicks in class.
Quickly cleaning the dishes, Finn dodged my question with a repeat of his own, “What’s your problem this morning?”
“Are you trying to use the Socratic Method on me? Usually I only allow girls to grill me this hard.” I lobbed back a nonsense answer. Finn just shook his head.
“Fine, if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ve got plenty of other shit to do.” He wiped his hands and threw the used towel in the laundry room.
“What kind of shit?”
“I’m demoing a house today. Want to come? You can be in charge of knocking down three walls with a sledgehammer,” Finn offered.
“That’s the lamest come-on I’ve ever heard,” I said, but given that I wasn’t allowed to fight anyone decent in Noah’s gym, wielding a sledgehammer did sound like a good invitation.
“Ladies like my sledgehammer,” Finn replied.
“It’s too early for dick jokes.” I ran upstairs and threw on some clothes. When I returned, I gestured for Finn to lead us, but he just stood still, looking me up and down. “What’s wrong? I’m not pretty enough for you to take to bed?”
“Just wondering if you were going to class in those clothes?”
I looked down at my sweatpants and T-shirt. “Sure, it’s not like I’m trying out for best dressed or I’m going to have some points deducted by my frat bros for not wearing the right stuff.”
Finn shrugged. “Your funeral, but this stuff gets messy.”
Messy sounded good at that moment.
“Hold up,” I heard Noah call, followed by thunder on the stairs. He jumped the last four steps and handed me a gym bag. “You can shower at Grace’s if you want. There’s a key in there.”
“Thanks.” I took the bag. It was Noah’s unspoken apology for earlier.
Finn drove us to the north side of town where a dozen tiny houses looked like the builder had gotten his plans from the Monopoly game. The only thing different about these cookie-cutter buildings was that they weren’t all green. We swung into the driveway of one that had been painted white at one time. Nearly every exterior board was peeling and the paint still clinging to the wood was a dingy gray. Shingles hung drunkenly off the side of the roof.
“This house looks like it was fucked six ways from Sunday by the other houses on the street and then left to molder,” I observed, unbuckling my seatbelt and hopping out of Finn’s truck.
“She looks gorgeous to me,” was his reply. I shook my head.
Inside didn’t look much better. The kitchen was dirty and the smell of the house was rank. The floor was some kind of plastic that stuck to my feet.
“Smell that?” Finn said, taking a deep whiff. Guy was obviously insane.
“Yeah, it smells like someone was slaughtering animals in here and left the carcasses to rot.” I pulled up my sweatshirt to cover my mouth.
“Nope. It smells like money.” Finn handed me a sledgehammer and a face mask. The iron hammer was heavy and made me feel like I could knock down the entire structure with one well-placed blow. AM, Thor here. I’m coming over and bringing my hammer.
“How’s this work?”