Page 32 of Fight

All in all though, removing the sticky sixty year old orange-colored varnish allowed for the piece's bones to shine through and for Lena’s vision to start to cement. Her first inclination had been “purple.” But even she, a fervent lover of purple, could see that that would be a bastardization of such an authentic piece of furniture. It really needed a quality acorn tinted varnish, she'd decided. She'd picked up a quart of it from the hardware store where she’d rented the sander and couldn’t wait to lay it on. It should dry pretty quickly in the afternoon sun and be ready to move inside the next day.

She was so lost in thought, dreaming about the dresser’s future, that she didn’t hear Jake approach until he was standing a few inches away from her. “Jesus,” she put her hand to her heart.“Again. Why are you always sneaking up on me? Do I need to get you a bell?”

Jake shrugged, his eyes sparkling, his lips turned up in a smile. He was in sexy, casual Jake mode today, dressed in a pair of shorts and a wrinkled green t-shirt. “It’s easy to do with someone like you,” he said with mock accusation. “You always seem to be wrapped up in some kind of deep thought. What’s going on in that big brain of yours, Helena?”

She let out a melodramatic sigh and stared at the dresser forlornly. “I have a rich imagination,” she said bluntly. “But it hasn’t always served me well, unfortunately.”

It had always been easy for Lena to get wrapped up in her thoughts, fantasies, and ideas: dreaming about possible outcomes for her decisions; fantasizing she was a completely different person with a variety of different experiences; interpreting reality into artwork—into something better and more beautiful. It was very comforting and it was easy for her to find escape from reality's harsh edges in the creative depths of her mind. However, it was a lonely existence to have such a lush interior life. Sometimes what was happening on the outside could be a bit cold and harsh when compared to what she’d dreamed up.She tended to feel like a perpetually disappointed person.

Jake nodded his head in the direction of the dresser. “This is pretty damn impressive. Ian and I were wondering how the heck you got this thing out of the house.”

“Annie and I carried it out earlier—it wasn’t too bad. We tried to ask Morgan to help, but she was…indisposed.” She and Annie had knocked on Morgan's door with no answer for a few minutes at around nine-thirty. Before too long, Annie gave her a weighty look and wordlessly opened the door to Morgan’s room. Morgan was sprawled face down on her bed, still wearing her clothes from the night before. Annie had gone to check on her while Lena filled up a glass of water and set it, along with a couple aspirin, on her night stand for when she woke up.

“That sounds about right. Ian had a rough time with her last night. I’m glad we left when we did.”

Lena scrunched up her nose and looked off to the side. “Me, too.” She felt heat rise up to her back as memories of the previous night came back to her. She and Jake had made out.A lot. It was super hot.And now he was standing in front of her under the bright, harsh sun. Her instincts told her to run and hide. This was too hard. Too confusing.

She decided to stand her ground. Although, she wished she had foreseen this and planned a sexier sanding outfit. As it was, her hair was frizzy and trying to escape her messy bun. Also she was pretty sure she had red marks on her sweaty face from the safety goggles that now hung loosely around her neck.

“I guess we have a lot to talk about?” she finally asked, daring to peak up at him. He ran a hand through his mussed hair. Had he done that to it? Or did he wake up with it so artfully mussed?

“I guess so.” The words meandered his out of mouth and she peered at him tentatively, trying to get a read on how he was feeling.

Lena finally nodded. “Well, I need something cold to drink first. Meet you on our front porch in a few?”

“Sure.” He turned and walked toward her house’s front porch. Lena rushed inside the side door and slipped into the powder room.

“Eek.” She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and hurriedly yanked the bandanna off her head and the goggles off her neck. Smoothing her hair into a more sleek top bun.I think this is as good as it’s going to get sans running upstairs and putting on a full face of makeup…which would be weird of me, right?Lena quietly considered her fresh, sweaty face in the mirror.Right.

Filling up two glasses from a pitcher of sun tea that Annie had brewed the day before, Lena carefully opened the front door and stepped out to see Jake sitting on the front steps leaning back on his hands and staring out into the yard. She was reminded of when he had come upon her in a similar fashion the night of their Come to Jesus talk the previous week.

It was a nice, sunny day with streams of light beaming through the high trees. Birds and woodland creatures hopped around the yard in sweet oblivion. The shadows made shapes all over the front porch and she stepped through them gingerly as she approached him.

“Here you go,” she said nervously as she handed him a glass of tea.

“Oh wow, thanks.” He took a sip from the glass before setting it down to his left. She sat to his right and took a long draw of her drink and let out a breath before leaning back on her hands in a similar manner as him and searched for something to say.

“Whew, sanding's hard work.” She smiled over at him. “I definitely got a workout doing that.” She still felt a little damp and was starting to regret not running upstairs to freshen up.

He looked over at her with admiration. “It sure looked like it. I’m surprised you handle that tool so well. You’ve done that before?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, a couple times. I love giving new life to old pieces. Especially beautiful ones like that. And it’s not hard. Just takes a little patience.”

“You sound like my mother. She’s always attacking some kind of project. My dad says that her eyes can see the future.” He chuckled as he watched a chipmunk tentatively hop on the front step and twitch its nose. “Once he had to go to a ranching auction that had him away from home for a few days. While he was gone, she painted his storage shed baby blue.He wasn’t too happy with her future eyes when that happened.”

Lena smiled at him as he clicked his tongue at the chipmunk.

“You’re from Colorado, right? Do you get to see them often? I feel like that shouldn’t be too far from here, but I always forget how far apart things are out here.”

“It’s about a fifteen hour drive. A couple hours in a puddle jumper, which is the only thing that flies into Jameson, the town where I grew up.” He breathed out deeply through his nose. “And no, I don’t see them very often. We don’t—my dad and I—we don’t really see eye to eye.”

“I get it,” Lena said in a commiserating tone. “My parents and I are so different. My mom is a statistician and my dad is an economist.” He laughed as she shook her head with a wide-eyed disapproval. “When I was a kid I thought I had been switched at birth. I wrote them this letter asking if it was true and read it aloud to them at the dinner table.”

Jake chortled and looked over at her with a smile. “How'd that go over?”

“They burst out laughing and basically haven’t stopped talking about it since. Every time I was moody as a teenager, they’d ask me if I wanted to go look for my real family and I was averydramatic child.”

“Why don’t I find that hard to believe?”

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