“Your mouth?” I smirked.

“You wish!” Ellie shook her head. “Seriously, though, you know how in When Harry Met Sally, Harry says that men and women can’t be friends because of the sexual attraction? Well, if you were a lesbian, you couldn’t be friends with girls because of the sexual attraction you had toward women and you couldn’t be friends with guys because they had the hots for you.”

“It’s amazing, then, that Sasha has friends,” I pointed out.

“Just saying that the natural extension of Harry’s theory is that friendship is prohibited between people who could potentially have a sexual attraction toward each other.”

“I’ve seen you puking in the toilet after drinking. That pretty much killed any budding desire I had for you.”

“Dude, I wouldn’t want to be your girlfriend if you’re all judge-y like that,” Ellie pouted.

“You don’t want to be my girlfriend because you like dick too much,” I retorted.

“You, too,” Ellie exclaimed and threw a hot pepper flake packet at my head. It struck me right in the forehead and stung for a moment and then we started laughing again. The hurt inflicted by Clay was cleansed by the support of my friend. Ellie never failed to make me laugh at just the right moment.

Chapter Eight

BO

“SO ANNMARIE WEST?” NOAH SAID as we started our run. “Not your usual type.” He’d decided to do a predawn run before going over to the gym, leaving Grace asleep in his room. She was starting to be like a sixth roommate with as much time as she was spending at our house. I tried not to be a dick about it, as this was Noah, and he’d spent years pining for this girl.

“I have a type?” I dodged his question.

“Mike Anderson describes your type as ‘prime’.”

“That guy needs to get laid. Or get a new hobby.”

“Apparently you’ve never transacted business with him before. He was excited to share with Grace.” Noah sped up, and we ran as fast as we could for five minutes, and then slowed to a jog. Interval training sucks. I’m not sure why I do it other than it seems like a thing Noah enjoys. “Mike says she has issues.”

“Mike says she has issues?” It took Noah about a minute before he realized I’d stopped running.

“What the hell, man?” Noah asked, jogging back to me.

“Since when do you take Mike’s word on a woman? Consider the source,” I fumed.

“Wow, okay, that was probably not well done of me.”

“Not well done? Not well done is drinking the last Shiner Bock and not replacing it.”

Noah clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Say no more. You like her; I like her.”

“Sorry, just on edge.” I rubbed a hand down my face and launched into a pace too fast for either of us to talk.

Noah didn’t let it go, because when we arrived back at the house, panting and sweating like pigs, he asked, “So you like this girl or what?”

“Or what,” I muttered. I didn’t know what I was doing with AM. At first, I thought she’d be a good way for me to pass the time this semester, but after hearing Mike’s story and learning about the showdown at the commons, I knew that I didn’t want to be one more shitbag in a long line of shitbags she’d encountered at Central.

When I saw her in biology, I noticed things about her I’d missed all last semester. She was careful to walk without touching another person. She didn’t acknowledge anyone, not the other students, not the TA, not the professor. She looked straight ahead, focused on one thing, and pretended that the world around her didn’t exist.

AM deserved a guy who could act like a grown-up, and I wasn’t sure that was me.

But the more time I spent with AM, the more intrigued I became. She was reserved, but as she talked, I could see her—her humor and her willingness to challenge me. My “type” were girls who couldn’t remember my name the next day. Who were looking for one night of feeling good. Hell, one of the girls I hooked up with over the summer used some other guy’s name in bed and cried after she came. She was suffering through a bad breakup, and I didn’t mind being rebound guy. We had spent more than a few nights with each other until she kindly told me that while I was the best she ever had, she was looking for something serious and it couldn’t be with a guy who made her cry while she orgasmed. I didn’t let it bother me. After all, the goal was to feel good, and she did when she left me.

AM was so different than the rest of those girls. She wasn’t going to fall into bed for a one-night stand. I had a feeling she’d be reluctant to get involved with me for reasons having nothing to do with my fighting, my past history, or my propensity for hookups. Hell, reluctant was too mild. Scared shitless would be more appropriate.

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?”

“The sledgehammer? You knock shit down with it, like a baseball bat.”

“No, dumbass, your house flipping.”

“Oh.” Finn laughed. “You buy an unrenovated house in good neighborhood for low amounts of money, put a lot of sweat equity into it and not a lot of materials, and sell it for a sweet profit four weeks later.”

“Like what kind of profit?”

“I bought this crackerjack box of a house for fifty grand and most of the houses along this road sell for ninety or more. I’ll put maybe fourteen grand in upgrades into this place and pocket the rest.”

I gaped at him. I had no idea it was so profitable. “You have to pay anyone?”

“Yeah. My crew and my realtor.” Finn placed a round white bucket on the floor and pulled out a tool belt, buckling it around his waist. “I used to have a great one, but then Adam slept with her. Now she won’t talk to me.”

“Ouch.” When he shook his head at me, I asked, “What?”

“You and Adam are a lot alike.”

“How so?”

“You both have a hard time keeping it in your pants. I know what Adam’s problem is. He’s trying to live up to his father’s legacy. What’s yours?”

What was I doing with all those women? I hardly knew anymore. “Trying to forget my father’s legacy.” That was the best truth I could come up with. Sunk deep in the soft embrace of a woman or feeling the sick give of a man’s flesh against my fist were the best ways to forget that I spawned from the gene pool disaster that was my dad. I didn’t want to talk to Finn about the fact that the only way I knew how to cope was to fight or fuck. It sounded bad enough when I thought about it. Verbalizing it would only make me look like a two-dimensional caricature.

“You do one a month?” I asked, changing the subject.

Finn cocked his head and eyed me curiously, but answered my question. “Right now, but I hope to be doing four or more a month once I get a few crews running for me. No one else will show up before nine, so for the next three hours, it’s just you and me.”

Finn showed me the supports he’d jacked into place to hold the ceiling up when the walls came down. “Take the tip of the sledgehammer and poke it through the sheetrock carefully, like you’re doing a virgin. Look for wires or ducts. If there’s something there, leave it alone. If it’s all clear, bang the shit out of it.”

“The walls are female?”

“Anything you push a long hammer into is a female,” Finn replied, his voice fading at the end as he went down the hall.

When I swung the sledgehammer into the walls, the impact and resulting destruction felt awesome. Almost as good as hitting someone in the face. Definitely not as good as sex. I made quick work of the wall and bellowed for Finn.

“Geez, aggression much?” He inspected my work from the other side. I could see directly into the opposite room, only vertical slats of wood separated the two of us.

“Now what?”

“Now you knock down that wall.”

“The boards?”

“Yup.”

This demo was the shit. After knocking down the wall, I realized how much larger the house seemed. Before, it was a rabbit warren, with tiny closed-off spaces. Now, I could envision relaxing and having a beer without feeling as if I was going to be crushed like a can in garbage compactor.

We took down one more wall, which required the both of us because on the other side were appliances and stuff that had to be moved first.