Clay

I see the headlights swing around the driveway, and my chest instantly gets tight. It’s not like I’ve been waiting for them all day. It’s not like I’m intensely curious what this will be like. And I certainly haven’t been walking through my house, looking at it through their eyes.

No. This is just a business arrangement. She has made that very clear.

When I open the front door, she smiles, pulling the young man closer to her by his shoulders. He looks up at me with those same almond-shaped eyes, so direct. So intense.

I hold out my hand to him and he shakes it, nice and firm.

“Clay Corwin,” I tell him. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” he says in a voice that seems right on the edge of dropping. It’s got a little bit of kid in it, and a little bit of teenager too.

Penny just beams. She reaches around to grab the handle of her rolling suitcase and I wave her off.

“Let me get that for you,” I offer. “You’re probably tired of hauling your stuff around.”

“Just the basics, really,” she shrugs. “I’m still keeping my place back home so…”

“Sure, of course,” I agree quickly. “Smart.”

Ethan stands there, his head going back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match. Suddenly I realize we are just standing in the foyer.

“Well, come in! Where are my manners? Let me show you around!”

Penny and Ethan follow me from room to room as I give them a brief, slightly embarrassed tour. I mean I feel silly saying this is the living room when it is obvious it is a living room. And the kitchen, and the dining room. But what else am I going to say?

“Wait, is that a swimming pool?” Ethan gasps, breaking away from his mother’s side and pressing his nose to the picture window. I can see the blue lights in the pool, illuminating the glassy surface.

“Yeah. I hardly ever use it. I’m glad you’re excited about that.”

He turns around, raising his eyebrows at his mother in question. “Can I… are we…”

She shrugs helplessly, smiling. “Yeah, man. That’s basically the deal.”

“Wowwwwwwww,” he says slowly, and I can’t help but be really proud.

Penny looks around for a moment, her eyes wide with theatrical delight.

“You built this yourself, didn’t you?” she says.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I answer for some reason, though I absolutely did.

Nodding slowly, she puts her hands on her hips and walks around, raising her chin to the vaulted ceiling, inspecting the flagstone two-sided fireplace. She turns back to me with a knowing wink.

“Designed it too? The whole thing?”

I just shrug modestly. “Just wait until you see your bathroom, Pen.”

“Pen,” she repeats with a smile. “I always liked it when you called me that.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” I smile back.

We stand there for a few moments, just looking at each other. It’s weird, but not weird at the same time.

“Do I get my own room?” Ethan asks suddenly.

However, I was waiting for this moment. If I know anything about twelve-year-old boys—and I think I do—I’m about to hit this one out of the park.

“Okay, I just need to warn you,” I begin, holding my hands up, “this is all on spec. You know what that means?”

He shakes his head solemnly, no.

“It means it’s all up to your mother. She can veto this at any time. Agreed?”

Penny raises her eyebrows in warning. “Clay, what are you talking about?”

“Okay. Just follow me.”

I take them through the living room and down a few stairs to the lower level. As soon as I flip on the light switches, I can hear Ethan suck his breath through his teeth behind me.

“Clay?” Penny asks. “You were serious about the ping-pong table?”

“This is amazing!” Ethan announces, dashing off. He circles the room eagerly, dragging his fingers along the PlayStation, the sixty-inch TV, the foosball table, the pool table. He circles back to the PlayStation and picks up the headset, staring at me with a shocked expression.

“Yes, that’s a VR headset,” I confirm. “But only driving games, got it? I’m not gonna send you to war or anything. It’s a pretty intense experience.”

With a hoot, Ethan slips the headset over his ears and I sneak a look at Penny. She’s got her arms crossed and is scowling.

“Seriously,” I mumble defensively. “Just driving games. Nothing too intense.”

“You can’t be serious,” she says slowly. “Where is he going to… This is all so much, Clay. It’s just a lot.”

Suddenly I feel sort of bad. I’m not sure why, but I feel like I crossed a line. Gently I reach out and take her upper arm to nudge her toward the bedroom door. Tentatively she allows me to guide her inside.

“See? It’s just a regular kid’s room,” I reassure her. “Just a bed and a dresser and a desk. All that other stuff in the other room was here already. I just thought that a kid his age would like some privacy. Maybe a little room to play around. I’m sorry if I—”

She turns to me suddenly, her eyes glossy and filled with meaning. She bites her lower lip, and I realize she’s not furious with me. She’s feeling something, but I dare not even try to figure out what it is.

“So, is it okay? Just to try it?”

“It’s... It’s really nice,” she says hoarsely. “Really, really nice. He’s a really lucky kid. Thank you.”

I know it’s not part of the deal, but I would love to get my arms around her right now. Right this moment, when she’s humid with emotion, when there’s so much raw feeling in her eyes. This is my favorite kind of experience with Penny—the moments where she is completely present.

But then I remember that’s not the deal. This is just business. Even if she’s a thousand times more beautiful than she ever was.

I must keep that in mind.

“Okay! Back to the tour!” I announce, sounding at least twice as confident as I feel.

Back in the game room, Ethan has already fired up the PlayStation and is sitting in front of it, his back to the sofa, his butt on the carpet, his gangly legs drawn up at the knee.

“Hey… We are going back on the tour!” Penny calls out.

“Okay, have a good time!” he calls back.

She rolls her eyes and faces me. “Yeah, he’s pretty much fine where he is, right? Why don’t you show me the rest of the house?”

“Excellent. I’ll get dinner started real quick too.”

“Dinner? Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious,” I scoff. “Did you ever learn how to cook, by the way?”

I walk ahead of her back to the kitchen, afraid she’s going to pick up something and throw it at me, but instead I just listen to the sound of her throaty laugh as she follows me.

“Is that what this is going to be like?” she challenges me. “Are you going to be teasing me incessantly about what I used to know, or not know, or do, or not do?”

I shrug. “Well, I don’t know. Do you still throw your dirty clothes in a pile in the corner?”

She just narrows her eyes at me and doesn’t answer.

“Then, yes,” I nod as I start water to boil. “That is definitely what this is going to be like.”

She holds up a finger in warning. “I know things about you too,” she reminds me. “I have at least as much dirt on you as you have on me. You should take that into consideration.”

Shaking my head, I get the tray of vegetables out of the fridge. “Wait, Ethan isn’t allergic to peanuts or shellfish or anything is he? Cheese? Anything I should know?”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Okay, great,” I nod distractedly. “And for the record, you can try to make fun of me, but I don’t know why you would. As far as I can recall, I was a perfect gentleman. I even helped you with your homework.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Excuse me? I was a semester ahead of you, remember? Who helped you with your homework, mister?”

“Psssht,” is my clever response.

“And just because you’re all…” She holds her hands in the air gesturing in a way that I think refers to me, what I look like or something. “You know, ladies’ man and everything… All muscles and whatever… In this frickin’ mansion you built with your own two hands… Don’t go nuts.”

I stop what I’m doing and smile. “You like my muscles?”

She presses her lips together and flares her nostrils, blushing instantly.

Oh my God, this is going to be so hard.

I mean difficult! It’s going to be difficult!

I’m going to have to stop saying the word “hard” ever again.

“Well… they are muscles,” she mutters, her eyes sliding diagonally away. “How can you argue with that?”

“Actually, this induction stove top boils water really fast. Do you mind if we eat right away?” I ask, changing the subject gracelessly.

But when her eyes lift to meet mine again, there is that damn connection. It’s like a highway. It’s that broad, that clear.

Grateful to have a task to distract me, I just start sautéing everything that’s on the plate. The noodles are almost done when I throw some red pepper and garlic into the pan, topping it with some white wine to make a sauce. A couple tablespoons of butter and we are ready to go.

“Can I help or something?” she asks meekly.

As I plate the pasta for three of us, I just shake my head. “Did you wait until I was done to ask that?”

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt your concentration.”

“A-ha. Do you want to call Ethan for dinner?”

As soon as she trots across the living room toward the game room, I scold myself yet again.

This is too easy, I remind myself. Teasing each other, calling the kid for dinner… Don’t get used to it. Don’t get twisted.

Ethan is distracted and antsy when he sits down, hunching over the plate of pasta and eating with gusto.

“I think he wants to get back to the game.” Penny apologizes on his behalf.

Ethan looks up, blinking as though just waking up. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “This is really good, Mr. Corwin. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re totally welcome. Call me Clay, okay?”

I don’t know why I want to laugh, but I do. I’m not going to do it, because I don’t know what she would think if I did, but something in me just wants to laugh. Just let it out.

Penny keeps her eyes on Ethan while he eats, the corner of her mouth twisted in amusement. She looks at him with such unvarnished affection.

In record time, his plate is completely clean. He looks up expectantly.

“Yeah, go. Finish your game,” Penny chuckles. “Rinse your plate and put it in the sink, please.”

Ethan takes his plate and rushes to the kitchen, zipping through the chore at lightning speed. Just like that, he is gone again.

“Great manners on that kid,” I observe.

She grins proudly. “Thank you for noticing!”

We continue to eat in silence for a while. She keeps her eyes on her plate, sighing happily from time to time. I try not to watch the motion in her throat when she swallows.

Finally, when we’re done, we get the dishes in the dishwasher, moving next to each other as though we’ve done it a hundred times. We easily get the chore done in moments.

“Okay, so, when you designed this place,” she asks as we climb the slightly curving staircase to the bedrooms, “did you design it for a hundred people to live here? Or were you just unwilling to let go of any of your design ideas?”

“I designed it for all the roommates I was going to have, obviously,” I answer back, pushing open a door I’ve hardly ever opened so she can step inside. “It’s not my fault it took you fifteen years to get here.”

As soon as she walks in the room, I get the reaction I was hoping for. Her mouth opens as she looks around with delight. She notices the bamboo flooring, the double-plaster walls. She knows her stuff. She gets it.

“Okay, check out the bathroom.”

Making an exaggerated scared face, she tiptoes over to the private bathroom and pushes open the door, then squeals with delight.

“Is that a steam shower? Seriously?”

“All the nozzles money can buy,” I answer wryly.

Darting back into the bedroom, she swings around the perimeter, checking out each of the furniture pieces that I selected.

“Did you have these built?”

“There was a factory built in the 1800s, so it was basically like a solid maple monument. When we took down part of it, I reclaimed these amazing eighteen-inch wide pillars, and had some craftspeople build these pieces. You like them?”

“Are you kidding me? I love them! I dream about getting to put together stuff like this!”

“What’s stopping you?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“Oh, the usual,” she answers with a modest shrug. “About a million dollars. I will get there one day.”

“I know you will.”

She smiles thinly, turning toward me and taking a deep breath, pausing for a long time. Those almond eyes, how they stare right into the middle of me. I’m helpless when she looks at me like that. Whatever she wants to know, I want to tell her.

“I really can’t thank you enough,” she says in a low murmur as she takes a few slow steps toward me. I watch her bare toes trace lines in the carpet.

“Penny, it’s good to have you here,” I answer honestly, realizing how direct I’m being. Usually I would act with a little bit more forethought, but with her all I can be is honest.

My pulse begins to race as she nears me, wondering how close she’s planning on getting. The closer she gets, the harder it will be to pull away.