Growing and Kissing (13 page)

Because the alternative...that didn’t bear thinking about.

***

The next morning, we went to look round the grow house. Just as Sean had said, the realtor was desperate to rent. In less than an hour, the paperwork was complete, we had handed over the money, and we were standing holding the keys in the middle of the empty house.

“We can fit about eight tables in here,” I said, pacing out the living room. “And another two in the kitchen—I want to keep the sink free so I can hook up water lines. And another four in each bedroom...” I was muttering mostly to myself. “It’s almost a pity there are walls. It’d be easier if it was one big space, like a warehouse.”

Sean nodded. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “Should be easy enough.” He knocked experimentally on a wall.

I gaped at him. “I wasn’t
serious!
We can’t knock the walls down, we’re renting this place! There are rules in the lease! We’re not even meant to redecorate!”

He blinked at me. “I reckon we’re not meant to grow dope, either.”

“But...what happens in six months, when we move out?”

He tilted his head to one side and he gave me a look that told me just how naive I was being. And yet it didn’t feel patronizing at all. It felt as if he thought my innocence was adorable. “You let me worry about that,” he said.

Fine.
This was why I’d asked for his help in the first place, after all, because he knew all this stuff. I checked out the windows. “We’ll need to do something to stop the light getting out.”

“A lot of people cover them with newspaper,” said Sean. “Or use blackout blinds. But it looks obvious. Who has their blinds shut all day, every day?”

“So what do we do?”

For once, he looked almost...
shy,
like he was admitting a weakness.
“I’ve got this idea,” he muttered. “Might not work. But I’m gonna give it a crack. Okay?”

“Of course,” I told him.

He nodded quickly and went off to his car to get his sledgehammer. I gathered up the few items the previous owners had left us: some scarlet, fake velvet drapes in the living room, a saucepan with no handle I found in a kitchen cupboard and a solitary coffee mug. A few moments later, the demolition began.

I knew what he was famous for, of course. I’d imagined, plenty of times, how he must look swinging the thing. But imagining isn’t the same as seeing...or hearing.

At first, it was fine. I stood there open mouthed as he tore through the place. Huge chunks of plasterboard went flying, wallpaper flapping at their edges. Cinder blocks shattered, chunks of stone and clouds of dust arcing out across the room. The muscles of Sean’s back bulged and flexed hypnotically under his tank top as he swung, his tight core powering him round. I couldn’t take my eyes from his hard ass as it stood out under his jeans.

But as he worked, the mood changed.

It wasn’t that he got angry. That would have been okay. Everyone likes to unleash some healthy rage when they do something like knock down a wall. But you do that with a silly grin on your face—you yell and scream and it’s cathartic, but then you laugh at yourself.

Sean wasn’t laughing. I could see the rage throbbing through his body, see it in the way he gripped the hammer and the way he pounded it into the walls with single-minded determination. It pulsed out of him like a heat haze and, every time the hammer struck, it reverberated through the room and soaked into every surface. This wasn’t just demolition; Sean was ripping through the house the way a hurricane rips through a town, changing it forever.

I called out—I’m not even sure why. Maybe to get him to slow down. Maybe so I could tell him I was going to wait outside. Mainly, though, I just wanted to check that I could stop him, that he was still in control. And immediately, I wished I hadn’t.

Because he didn’t stop.

Either he didn’t hear me or he was so used to ignoring the pleas of the people whose home or business he was destroying that he tuned me out. The air was full of choking dust, now. Sean stopped for a second to peel his tank top from his gleaming body and I wanted to yell again, but I was too busy coughing. Through the dust, I saw something: I’d thought he had no tattoos aside from the sleeve, but now I saw there were some on his back: twisting black lines that fanned out like flames from between his shoulder blades. In the circular space where all of the lines converged, there was another tiny tattoo no bigger than my thumbnail, and it didn’t match the style of the lines at all, as if it had been drawn at a different time. A shamrock.

The destruction started up again and this time I got really scared. It wasn’t just that he was angry, that the destruction was letting something dark and dangerous pour out of him like a river. It was that he was enjoying it. His lips were drawn back in a tight, hard smile, a look of savage victory. By destroying, he was winning—or he believed he was. The sight of it chilled me: I’d never seen anyone take such pleasure in carnage before.
And this is the guy I’ve teamed up with. The guy I’ve let into my life.
“Sean!” I yelled between choking gasps.

No response. He’d completely forgotten I was there. I was starting to really choke on the dust, now, my fear was making me hyperventilate and that was making the coughing worse. Sean was between me and both doors and I didn’t dare get in his way. I had to snap him out of it. I darted forward through the clouds of dust to bang on his shoulder and—

Too late, I saw the head of the hammer swing back towards my head—

I let out a cry as the iron head came straight towards my face, heavy and fast enough to shatter bone. I ducked and twisted, losing my balance, and slapped Sean on the shoulder, all at the same time. The hammer whistled past my face close enough that I felt the waft of air against my eyelashes, and I wanted to throw up. Then I thudded into his wide, solid back, my feet skidded between his legs, and I was on my back on the floor, looking up at him.

He turned and looked uncomprehendingly down at me. The raw emotion in his face made my chest tighten: not just anger but hate and shame, all spilling out of him. My fear of him eased a little.
What the hell’s going on inside him?
I had this overwhelming urge to tell him
it’s okay.

And then he came back to himself. His jaw dropped open and he flung the hammer down on the floor and fell to his knees over me. “Ah, Christ! Did I hit you?” The anger in his eyes evaporated in a second, to be replaced by sick fear. He started patting my body. One hand stroked my head. “Did I hit you?” he asked again.

I shook my head, panting at how close he’d come. “Not quite,” I croaked, and coughed on the dust. We were both covered in it and more was settling on us as the air stilled. It clung to the sweat on his body, painting him gray, until he looked like a huge stone statue hulking over me. I tried to speak again but the dust had caught in my throat and I couldn’t stop coughing.

He swept his hands under me and scooped me up, then marched over to the back door and out into the sunlight.

I drew in a huge gulp of warm, clean air, then another and another. The fear eased along with my breathing. And then he was setting me down on my back on the warm, sun-drenched grass.

He knelt beside me and took my cheek in one palm, using his thumb to rub away some of the dust. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—” He looked off into the distance and his hands curled into fists. I could see the anger rising in him again, this time at himself.

I reached up and took his hands in mine, curling my fingers around his fists. “It’s okay,” I said. “You just scared me a little.”

He suddenly looked down into my eyes and I saw the fear and shame there. As if scaring me was the last thing he wanted. Then he jumped up and started to walk away, slapping the dust from his clothes.

I got to my feet and ran after him. “It’s just a job,” I said. “I mean, I get it. You have to be scary. Scaring people’s what you do. I just hadn’t seen it before.”

He didn’t turn around, but he shook his head. “It’s not just a job,” he muttered. “You know that.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You saw that.”

I swallowed and nodded. It was quiet, in the long grass behind the houses, and the air was thick with the smell of wildflowers. No kids played on the street and few people had a reason to drive through the neighborhood so there was almost no traffic. If we closed our eyes, we could have been in a meadow somewhere. “Maybe you don’t have to be like that,” I said.

He turned and spread his arms wide, showing me his huge, dust-caked body. “This is what I am!” he snapped. “This is
who
I am! I break stuff. I scare people. I don’t know how to do anything else.” He stalked away.

“Maybe you could learn,” I offered to his retreating back. But I had no idea if he even heard me.

***

I gave him some time to cool off before I went back inside the house. Now that the dust had settled—literally—I saw how cavernous the space was. You walked in the door and did a double-take at how far away the opposite walls were.

We needed supplies, so we drove to the nearest hardware store, still covered in dust. We barely talked on the way, Sean keeping his eyes on the road and me chewing nervously on my lip. Nearly hitting me had changed things: I was at arm’s length again...maybe for good.

At the store, we filled three shopping carts with stuff: the security doors I understood, but Sean bought wood, wallpaper, even window blinds. I didn’t get it: were we going to redecorate?

Back at the house, Sean went to work and I spent the rest of the day planning out the rows of plants: how could we pack the most in without overcrowding them? I got so absorbed in it, it was evening before I looked up and saw what he’d done.

Each of the house’s windows was now covered by a floor-to-ceiling box of false walls, like a tiny room only a few feet wide. I frowned, not understanding at first. Then I saw that the wallpaper he’d bought was gone. “Wait,” I said, pointing, “from the outside, does it look…?”

He turned to look at me and I saw that the brooding anger had faded away. I even got a hint of a smile. “Let’s go see.”

We went outside and looked in through the nearest window. It looked great: through the half-closed blinds we could see the wallpapered wall a few feet beyond...and nothing else. There was no hint that the house was now just an empty shell inside, and there would be no way anyone could see a plant. “That’s brilliant!” I told him.

He shrugged self-consciously but I could tell he was proud. “Ah, it’s not.”

I threw an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close to my side. “Are you kidding? It’s
so
much better than just papering over the windows. That’d look suspicious. This looks...
normal.”

He shrugged again, but he allowed himself a tiny smile. It looked great on him...but, at the same time, it made my chest crush inwards: I got the haunting impression that it was the first time anyone had ever praised him for anything.

I wanted to say:
See? You can build stuff, not just smash it.
But I didn’t know how to put it into words. It didn’t help that I was suddenly distracted. Now that I’d pulled him up against me, I was very aware of the hard press of his body, all the way from shoulder to ankle, and how it would only take the smallest twist of our bodies to be pressed thigh to thigh, chest to breast, lips to lips. He didn’t say anything, but his shoulder tensed under my hand. I felt him turn his head and my scalp prickled as I felt him looking down at me. If I lifted my head and looked up into his eyes, would something happen? Would he grab me and—

It was all too much, too fast. I dropped my hand from his shoulder and stepped quickly away. “We should get on,” I croaked. I walked back into the house and forced myself not to look back. If I looked back and he was looking at me...I wasn’t totally sure I’d be able to control myself.

Back inside, he swept up the piles of dust and debris and I pretended to be measuring for the tables. Inside, I was going over and over what had just happened. Had we been seconds away from a kiss? I was simultaneously giddy with the thought of it and berating myself for even thinking of getting involved with someone like him.

When I’d got myself together, Sean was installing heavy metal security doors to replace the existing ones. “Do we really need those?” I asked, worried.

He looked at me seriously and nodded. My stomach flipped over. It was a reminder of what we were getting into. People were going to want to break in. Steal stuff. Hurt us.

And he understood those people because he was one of them.
Jesus, and I’m standing here fantasizing about him.
I crushed the feelings down inside.
Get it together!

Another hour and the house was ready: one big, empty, secure space. It was perfect...but with the windows boxed off, all the light was artificial. And with the security doors in place, it felt more industrial than homely.

That’s what this is,
I reminded myself.
A factory. A factory for making money.
I’d be hunkered down in here for most of the next six months. I glanced around, suddenly claustrophobic despite the space. Then I looked down at my dust-covered, sweaty body. “I wish we’d kept the bathroom,” I muttered, thinking out loud.