After that, he looked to my other hand which had a huge bottle of chilled Fiji water.
I held out the bag to him when I got close.
“Roast beef and Swiss. I had them heat it up. French roll. Regular potato chips, Big Grab. If you tell me what flavors you like, next time, I’ll get saucy. Also in there are two of Shambles’s butterscotch cookies with chocolate chips.” I then offered the water. “This needs no explanation.”
“Woman, you don’t need to buy me food,” Deke rumbled, straightening to his full height which meant I had to tip my head back to look at him.
“Dude, you pass out from dehydration or malnutrition, no way in hell I can carry your carcass to my truck to race you to emergency. I couldn’t even drag it. You need sustenance.”
I jiggled the bag.
“I’m not gonna pass out,” he clipped.
“And I’m not gonna have someone at my house who eats bologna day in, day out. Yes, it’s yummy, but you need variety. So today, roast beef.”
I jiggled the bag again.
“Jus—”
“I have a deck,” I said softly. “It’s an awesome deck and I don’t give a fuck you’re being paid to give it to me. I love it and it means something to me to have it so take the damned sandwich, Deke. If you don’t wanna be nice, okay. But be cool enough to let me be nice because that’s who I am and that’s what I do and I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me.”
He studied me a long time before he finally reached out and took the bag and water, doing this with no words.
“Just sayin’, a non-frozen nose means more sandwiches next week,” I warned.
“If I told you you were a pain in the ass, would you report that to Max and get me fired?” he asked.
I felt my lips curve.
“No,” I answered.
“Then you’re a pain in my ass.”
“So noted. I’m still buying you sandwiches.”
“Whatever,” he muttered, bending to put the water on the stone and opening up the bag.
“Bon appetite!” I cried, still grinning, and I walked away.
* * * * *
I sat in my Adirondack chair, scrolling through stuff on my laptop the designer sent me that I’d downloaded at La-La Land that I’d go back to La-La Land to feedback on when I saw Deke come up the side steps.
“Yo,” I called.
He shook his head for some reason and announced, “Fire pit’s done. You wanna see how it works?”
“Hell yes!” I exclaimed, jumping up, putting my laptop down on the seat I vacated and rushing past him. I then dashed across the pine-needle-ly grass, dodging the standing pines left close when they’d built the house (which were the obvious source of the pine needles in the grass), to race up the steps to the main deck.
I stood next to the fire pit that now had a beautiful rim of flagstone and did this with hands clasped in front of me.
Deke came slower, eyes to my hands at my chest, before they rose to my face.
“You regress to a six-year-old?” he asked.
“Do I have a new toy?” I asked back.
His lips curled up slightly. “Reckon you do.”
“Then yes,” I answered.
He got close, bent deep in a squat and said, “See this key?”
I looked down to the key sticking out of the side of the fire pit that he was pointing to with a long finger.
“Yes.”
“Turn it, you’ll hear the gas come on. Light it, do that carefully, holding your body away. Adjust it however you want. When you turn it off, it’ll take a minute for the gas to burn off and the flames to die down.”
He then pulled a lighter out of his jeans pocket and demonstrated this.
As I watched and saw the flames dance happily, I fought against girlie-clapping at my chest.
“See those handles?” he asked.
I nodded. I saw a handle inside the pit, one on each side.
“Lift that out, lifts out the lava rock. There’s a grate to burn wood to switch out to in your garage. Use it one way or the other, not both. Only switch out when it’s not recently been used. And do not use the gas if you’re burning wood. Yeah?”
I nodded again.
“Be good with cleaning out everything, ash and all, when you switch back to the rock.”
I nodded gain.
“You want me to leave this on?” he asked.
I kept nodding seeing as I so totally was hanging at my fire pit that night.
He shook his head.
Then he kept questioning, “How bad you want a utility room?”
“Really bad,” I answered. “Like, I might bring you a prime rib sandwich, bad.”
He kept shaking his head. “I’ll work tomorrow, get it started. Not Sunday. Be back Monday but at least I’ll have a start on it.”
“That’d be great, Deke.”
This time, he nodded. “Right, done for the day, Jus. See you tomorrow. Seven.”
“Right, Deke.”
He started moving away.
I waited until he was just about around the corner before I yelled, “Fire pit says prime rib sandwich too!”
In return, not surprisingly, I got nothing.
* * * * *
Deke
That night, Deke took a bite of the fried bologna, American cheese, yellow mustard on toast sandwich.
It was a fuckuva lot better than cold.
But not as good as prime rib.
* * * * *
Justice
I grabbed the white bag, jumped from my truck, and strolled into the house.
I went directly to the laundry room.
It had three walls and a ceiling, the sheetrock not taped, but totally fitted, and Deke was starting on wall four.