thing in the morning. The day was going to start early and last at least as long as the daylight would allow. It looked like they would be working very closely together for the next few months at least. And though he told himself again and again that it didn’t bother him, in truth…he was still mildly tortured at the idea of all these old memories being dredged up again. He had worked long and hard to forget about Finn.
Of course, Finn was someone who was hard to forget. She had such a bright light and she knew it. She used it to draw everyone in, especially him. She was young when they met, was still young when they started dating. And in the year and a half that they dated, she hadn’t seemed to mature one iota. In many ways, she had grown worse. With her coming of age came her running to the bars with girl friends, guy friends, any friends. She could never have enough fun, get enough attention, or go too far. Finn knew no limits. Her actions knew no bounds.
Unfortunately, one of the few remaining happy memories he had of her was sitting on that same porch, maybe even in that same spot, as they looked over Hardie samples for this same house. And he remembered how they fought over the color and style. He wanted the Cedar Mill lap siding. It had a wood imprint on it. She wanted smooth. He had envisioned the house in a soft soothing color, like Sail Cloth. She had thought that the scarlet red shade was more their style. It would be interesting to see what color Marti selected. It was obvious that she had her own sense of style, since she had selected slate for the floor.
When she heard the door groan open, she lifted the sample she had chosen and turned towards him. “This,” she said, confidently, in a voice that suggested she was completely at peace with her choice. And she turned the sample to face him, so he could see it was the Cedar Mill siding in Sail Cloth. It just felt right. She looked to Joey for a reaction.
She saw him swallow before he spoke. “I think that’ll look nice.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled. She could tell it was forced. She just didn’t know why. Marti shrugged. In the end, it didn’t matter what he thought. She was the one who was going to have to live with it. She was the one who paying for it.
“So, do you need to take measurements?” She asked as she put the samples back in the box and the box back in his case.
“No, I know how many squares you’ll need,” he said simply.
“What next?” She asked. She felt all bubbly inside. The excitement was building. Progress was being made. And that always made her happy.
The afternoon was spent picking everything exterior. She decided on the color and style of the shingles for the home. Thirty year architectural shingles, not in black but instead in a brown shade. Then the windows were chosen. She went with ones that were slightly more expensive than she had planned, but adding transoms over the windows made sense to her. She loved natural light. And in the back she wanted French doors. And more transoms. And if she was going to have that much light coming in, then she needed to make sure the windows were energy efficient. She loved the style. They looked like they had some heft to them, some bulk, a nice decorative frame.
Each decision became easier. And Joe seemed to approve of and encourage every idea she had. For reasons she couldn’t understand, that mattered to her, which was strange. She was married to Blaine and his opinion on the home had never even been taken into account. He hadn’t liked her colonial style. He hadn’t approved of her wide planked floors. And yet, here was Joey, this guy she had just met, and they were tackling this project together. How he felt about her selections for reasons she couldn’t pretend to understand suddenly felt really important.
That’s when she finally realized that he had taken to glancing at his phone, checking the time frequently. “Am I keeping you from something important?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at her with a smirk at having been caught. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get really hungry.”
She tipped