Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78760 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
By the time I was through with the entire house, my blood pressure was through the roof, and I had the phone in my hand to call the builder.
The builder, who apologized, said he couldn’t get out to the house until Thursday to take a look at it, four fucking days from then.
“You do that,” I grumbled into the phone. “In the meantime, you need to be thinking of ways to fix my goddamned floor. I want this done right next time, and I want it done quickly. The move in day was last Friday, and you’ve already sailed past that day. I need this house done. My lease is up on Monday, a week from now. You have until then.”
The builder, I could tell, wanted to argue, but we’d signed an ironclad contract. I’d given him eight months to complete the project, or he forfeited his profit margin.
“That was harsh.”
I looked up to find Tally standing there, her face full of humor.
I laughed humorlessly. “Come look at my house and tell me what you think of this.”
The instant I saw her, everything that seemed out of whack not even ten minutes ago suddenly straightened.
“I’m assuming you still need to get the driveway done?” she stated as she carefully picked her way over the fucked-up driveway.
I gritted my teeth and barely restrained the urge to growl.
“Actually, it was just done on Monday of last week,” I glared at the canyon sized divot in my driveway that ran straight down the middle of it.
She looked at me startled. “Uhhh,” she blinked, unsure what to say. “That’s…bad.”
I agreed with a nod of my head.
And each truck that passes over it, causing deep dents in the gravel, makes my heart hurt even more.
“Yep,” I confirmed. “I already called the driveway guy, and he’s coming out to fix it as soon as it stops raining.”
She pursed her lips.
“But isn’t it supposed to continue raining for the next two weeks?”
I nodded my head.
“Yep.”
It sure was.
“And if it looks like this after just one day—and, which, might I add, it’s still raining—what’s it going to look like tomorrow? Or the next day?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m just hoping that it holds at least at the top, because if it doesn’t, then I have no way to get back here with my bike. Or move, for that matter.”
She grimaced. “That sounds kind of sucky.”
It did, and it was.
“The outside looks great,” she changed the subject.
I grinned at her.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Very Dallas Cowboys, though,” she admitted.
I burst out laughing.
“Yeah,” I blew out a strained breath. “I didn’t intentionally choose the Dallas Cowboys’ colors as my house colors, but I didn’t want all that fancy ass rock and brick on the house. And I suck at choosing colors. My mom helped me choose the blue, and my sister chose the gray to go with it, but when you paired the two together they made it look a whole lot different than I’d originally intended.”
She stopped at the backdoor and toed her shoes off when she saw all the other shoes belonging to the other workers, and wiggled her sock clad toes.
The socks she was wearing had words on them.
“Do your socks say ‘fuck this shit?’” I asked, bending down to get a better look.
“My mom got them for me on my first day of nursing school,” she admitted, sounding strangled. “She knew how nervous I was and went out of her way to make it easier for me.”
I chuckled as I pushed open the door, and immediately narrowed my eyes when I saw yet another flaw in the floor.
“The floors are pretty,” she said. “What’s wrong with…oh.”
I snorted. Yeah, oh.
“They were supposed to use paint thinner to get the floors clean before they sealed them, tackling the overspray of white paint that they got on the floor as they were painting the trim. This shit,” I pointed at what I assumed was putty from where the painters dropped it. “Should’ve come up, too.”
“And that?” She pointed at a bubbled-up piece of the floor.
“That, I assume, are air bubbles underneath the sealer,” I said. “Wait until you get a look at the living room. You can see footprints in the stain.”
So I took her around the house and showed her every single detail that had annoyed me over the past week as they finished up.
“What’s that?” She toed something with the heel of her foot.
I looked down, and my eyes narrowed.
Bending over, I tried to get the nail up, but stopped trying when I realized they’d sealed a goddamn nail onto the fucking floor.
This was just one more thing in my day of fucked up.
The whole project had started out okay.
The slab had been poured on Christmas Eve. The framing had started on the first day of the year…and that was where things started to go wrong.