Page 4 of Service Included

She never had enough time to think, cycling among work, her daughter’s activities, the grocery store, and taking care of her town house. Of course she had to interrupt a blossoming idea for her work-self in order to handle chores.

The door on the big truck opened.

Her brain didn’t have to tell the rest of her that the second mover, the one who hopped out of the truck, was a full-on, bona fide adult male who, at least from this distance, checked all her grown-up woman boxes. His dark brown hair was long enough to be pulled back into a stubby ponytail, which emphasized the angles of his face. The jeans that covered his lean hips were so faded that the morning sun turned the tight denim nearly white across his thighs. The lines and planes of this man’s chest and legs didn’t say “lanky,” they said “firm.”

He stopped next to his coworker and scanned the front of the house.

She retreated, hopefully before his examination had reached her window. Hovering in the middle of the floor, she felt odd, bendy-funny, as if her little break on the bed and her burning ideas about the game extension and then the men’s arrival had stretched her in too many directions.

When a hero climbed the mountain at Delphos to seek a prophecy, did the second-chance virgins who served the Oracle—in college, she’d learned they’d usually been previously married older women—peer out to watch his approach like she’d done? Perhaps they too hid behind sheer fabric or touched their own breasts as they looked upon a visiting male arriving in their midst. Perhaps the sight of a sun-bronzed male caused them to slide the linen of a pleated chiton across their tightened nipples while marveling over the visitor’s legs or considering how to unpin his wrap, how to untie his belt, how to undo him.

Images filled her brain, like screenshots flashing in front of her eyes. The Oracles in her proposal would be a team of women who weren’t punished for their desires, but rather celebrated and empowered. The color palette could reflect the jewel tones and gilding in Collier’s painting, flush-warmed skin and lots of swirling crimsons, whether fabric or blood or fire. Lush imagery was one thing her workplace did extraordinarily well.

Feet scuffed across the gravel drive.

Fuck.The embodiment of her imaginary man, a man she’d say yes to in an instant, was poised to knock, but she needed five minutes on her laptop, which, of course, she’d locked in her car. Virginia Woolf’s thesis that a woman requires a room of her own in order to work as productively as a man hadn’t included having the room packed up moments before an idea hit. At least her mother’s clipboard by the front door would be guarded by a squad of pens. She could get this idea down in two minutes, tops.

Years of familiarity helped her skip down the stairs while she folded and shoved the postcard into the rear pocket of her shorts. The men’s hazy, backlit outlines approached the front door, but she knew the rippled antique glass and dim entry hampered their ability to see her.

She reached the hall table, where, yes, her mother had included markers. But being economical and tidy, she had not left blank paper.

One of the men knocked. Without the muffling entry rug and framed paintings, the sound bounced between the bare floor and walls.

Her skin would have to suffice. At least she couldn’t lose it or toss it while packing. The cap of the blue permanent pen came off, and she wasted a precious fraction of a second switching the marker and cap between her left and right hands while the elements of a proposal—characters, plot lines, art, themes—burst in her imagination. She scrawledOracles = assassin cultnear her inner elbow as they knocked again, louder. She addedCollier,in case she misplaced the postcard and forgot the artist.

“Coming,” she called as she stuck the lid on the tip of the pen, brushed a hand over her abdomen to confirm she’d fastened everything, and took a deep breath. By the time she flipped the bolt and yanked the door inward, she’d adopted a smile and pushed work to her brain’s “later” list.

Wow.This close, the men on the porch had the tanned and perfectly scruffy forms that advertisers plastered on promotions for luxury four-wheel drives. If these two sold deodorant, she’d put it under her pillow and have dreams filled with manly essence, indeed she would. The dark-haired one was older than a job at a student-run moving company implied. She’d guess late twenties, based on the mature strength that filled out his shoulders and neck without the padded edges men in their thirties began to develop. A guy his age who worked fora campus moving company was probably a grad student, the owner, or a total stoner. Regardless, he appeared to be old enough that she didn’t have to be embarrassed to let her eyes linger on the tight fit of his T-shirt.

Her conscious mind finally processed that the sloganToo Sexy for My Chert, printed above an image of a faceted gray rock, must be a geology joke, assuming the pronunciation of chert sounded like shirt. So, a grad student, and maybe a literal stoner. Pretending to read the horrible pun again gave her a second chance to study the hint of dark hair peeking past the ribbed neck of her demigod’s tee. Nice.

“I’m Nico, from Full Service Movers.” His smile wasn’t quite symmetrical. At the corners of his brown eyes, one cheek crinkled into deeper lines than on the other side. He tilted his head to indicate the younger man. “This is Tyler.” Then Nico flourished his arm in a way that drew her attention to the elaborate curving lines and colors of a tattoo that encircled his left biceps and disappeared under his sleeve. “We’re at your command, Mrs. LaSorda.”

Not only was Megan not Mrs. LaSorda, she wanted to tell him she wasn’t Mrs. Anything. “I’m Megan, the daughter. My mother left me to handle the house. Come in.” She waved a hand to usher them past. Odd that her mother had booked the movers under Megan’s father’s name rather than Jensen, which her mother usually used.

“Pleased to meet you, Megan.” Nico stepped aside to let Tyler enter, then he followed.

From this position, she could confirm that Nico’s butt was, in fact, a masterpiece under the faded denim, but she suppressed the need to wet her lips. The man was a furniture mover, not an ice cream cone.

He turned to her, but she was confident she’d raised her gaze to eye level before he could catch the direction of her attention. “I hope your mother didn’t have a problem,” he said.

If a voice could be a snack, Nico’s would be the brownies you knew you should let cool in the pan, but couldn’t resist diving into while they were too gooey to be cut, forcing you to keep slicing to even the edges. Staring at him while he spoke made her feel like running her tongue on that sticky-sweet brownie knife.

“Apparently, she asked for me specifically.” His slight shrug let her know that he questioned why, and she too thought the news that her mother had asked for a specific mover was odd.

“Maybe moving was too emotional after forty years in the house?” That hideous girlie uptalk couldn’t be coming out of her mouth. She swallowed, and prepared to modulate her voice into competent adult tones. “She did leave a detailed list.” Megan didn’t need the written reminder of her two other responsibilities, the garage and family room, so she handed the clipboard to Nico.

Before he’d flipped past the top page of instructions, his eyebrows—winged like Mercury, herald of the gods—Geez Megan, stop already—arched at what must be their maximum peak. “Detailed.”

“Yep.” Megan’s awe over how her mother had managed complex job responsibilities alongside a smoothly organized household had increased with each stage of her own child’s development. “She’s a retired research librarian.”

“Wait, what?” He jerked his gaze from the clipboard to stare at her. “Your mother’s a librarian? That’s a coincidence.” He glanced around the hallway, seeming to look for another person, but there was only Tyler reading on his mobile phone. “So’s mine.”

“How likely is that?” Skepticism trickled down Megan’s spine. Even in a place with four thousand university employees, not everyone was a librarian, yet both of their mothers were.

“Extremely.” His grin reappeared, crinkling the corners of his eyes in a way that made her return his smile and nod. “If she plays poker.”

The certainty was no longer a mere suspicion swirling at ankle level. It had become a wave cresting above her head and she had to lift her chin to breathe. “On Tuesday mornings.”

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