Page 86 of I Heart Mason Cartwright
Willow
SIX MONTHS LATER
I show the kitchen guy at the hardware store my rough idea for the new kitchen. I may have wanted to do this house on my own, but no way in hell am I going to try and hang cupboards by myself. There are some things I need to leave to a pro. I did, however, lay the tile on the kitchen floor by myself and I plan to do part of the backsplash on my own. The floor is a little uneven, in part due to the tile I chose, and in part due to my tile cuts and mud laying. But I can look at it knowing that I, P-Tink, and a book handled it on our own.
The kitchen space is large, especially after taking down the wall between the dining room and kitchen, and then the one between the kitchen and living room. I will have enough space around the kitchen island to seat four and the dining room table I have my eye on seats four but expands to six. So if I ever decide to have friends over other than just Zach, I will have a place for them to sit when I entertain.
Ha! Entertain.
I have spent so much time alone with P-Tink over the past few months, that I think we communicate telepathically now.
“Okay, so riddle me this,” I say to the man. “Can I do a walk-in pantry in this corner, a wall of cabinets here, and then counter space with cabinets above and below, here, here, and here?” I point to all the places I would like them to go and he shows me the styles I can use and how many I can fit given the dimensions. I bought an app for my iPad that lets me rearrange my kitchen as many times as I would like.
“I have a thirty-six-inch Wolf range I’d like to put here,” I point to my diagram and the picture of the stove. “And then oven over here.”
“Okay,” he says. “But remember your gas inlet is over here.”
“That’s fine,” I say.
“You need to have your range near the gas inlet.”
“Oh, well then, where do I put these countertops?”
“You’ll have to flip them like this.” He moves some things around. I don’t like it.
“What would you do if this were your kitchen?”
“Well,” he says. “I’d want counter space on either side of all appliances, except for maybe this side of the fridge. And this over here.” He continues to move things around in my app. I tune out his voice and just watch his hands. They are big and rough looking. The man himself is not attractive, but his hands are. I remind myself that fantasizing about the kitchen guy’s hands is not a smart idea.
But they look like Mason’s hands.
Shut up, inner self. We aren’t thinking about him any longer. He is persona non grata to the nth degree.
The kitchen guy sits back in his chair and pushes my iPad toward me. I look at what he’s done.
Oh, that’s good.
“Wow, you really know your stuff, huh?” I ask.
“It’s kind of what I do for a living,” he says.
I laugh.
He doesn’t.
“Can I put a bigger fridge here?” I ask, knowing already that my fridge is larger than what he has there but not wanting him to rearrange everything again.
“Yes,” he says. “These just shift this way.” He shows me how the cupboards and counters shift a bit to one side. Which just lengthens a half wall a bit. My island stays the same, and he even adds a faucet over the stovetop.
“Is that for putting out fires?” I joke.
“It’s for filling pots. It’s a pot-filler faucet.”
“I know. Never mind.” I’m embarrassed now. I place my order with pretty much everything that he has suggested and get the quote. It’s a lot higher than I thought it was going to be. Let’s face it, everything has cost a lot more than I thought it would.
“It’s a bit higher than I thought it would be,” I tell him.
“You went with the custom cabinet option. Your original quote was all premade cabinets.”
