Thea was watching his friends carry furniture up to the attic. He was keeping out of the way. Kogan and Bazur and Derick and Tristan had the carrying thing down. The dresser and a desk had already been manhandled up the stairs. The one that was giving Thea some pause was that he could tell that Vinny’s mattress was not going to fit up the stairs.
He thought about that as he climbed up the outside of the back of the house and started building a winch system for raising the big stuff to the third story windows. Thea might have bulk from his spider half, but his human half wasn’t muscular. He was used to watching construction workers wanting to do things by brute force when there were safer and more efficient options for anyone who would stop and think for a moment.
Once he was set up, he cornered JJ and the two of them snuck the mattress around to the back of the house. Thea got it set up with lifting straps and then sent JJ up to the third floor to open the windows. From there it was all about mechanical advantage to get the mattress up the outside of the building. Thea carefully maneuvered it in through the windows. He managed to get it in and disengage the webbing he had made for lifting before he realized Vinny was watching him.
“Um, it’s wrapped in plastic. I was careful not to leave any web residue on it.”
She smiled, “Thank you, Thea.”
He nodded awkwardly, then climbed out the window to dismantle the winch system he had made.
Awkward became his go to word for the next few days. Driders weren’t naturally social. This coupled with working in a male dominated field left him completely unprepared to talk to her. While the others would ask her about her day and find ways to include her in the conversation, Thea went completely tongue tied around her. The food was awesome. The house was clean. Life was better with her here.
And it wasn’t even that she was doing all the cleaning. She was very clear. They got two hours of her time each day. She could either spend that meal planning, shopping for groceries, and cooking. Or she could spend it cleaning the kitchen. It was entirely up to them what she spent her time on. But if the kitchen wasn’t clean when she sat down to menu plan, or cook, or left the house to go buy food, she would do that instead. Occasionally, she would trade shopping time to any of them in exchange for doing other chores. Kogan regularly negotiated for her to clean the bathroom as he went out with the list. Derick hated the vacuum, so he worked out something similar.
Thea was very impressed that she managed to get them to do their chores without resorting to shame or nagging.
“There are underwear on the floor of the bathroom.”
Tristan got up from the couch to go deal with that. But it was a simple statement of fact. No accusations, no comments about them being disgusting. Merely, they are on the floor. She was like that. “There aren’t any clean glasses,” to remind who ever was on dish duty to fix that. And she wouldn’t nag.
Kevin had cost them a dinner once, learning that she didn’t nag. She came home from work at 5 and sent out a group text message that the kitchen wasn’t ready for her to cook. Then she planned dinner, went out and bought groceries. When she came back the kitchen still wasn’t ready for her to cook. So she put the groceries in the fridge and cleaned the kitchen.
Then she handed the recipe to Bazur and went out for supper with her friend.
The guys had a discussion about how Kevin had been home all day to clean the kitchen. In the end, he bought pizza for everyone.
The next day, since she didn’t have to menu plan or shop, she vacuumed the floors.
She was definitely working the agreed upon hours. It was just that the house was a bigger job than they realized.
And now it was Friday night. They were eating steak and mushrooms, green beans and risotto. Vinny cleared her throat. They all froze and looked at her.
“I understand you are all busy, but I made a list of maintenance that hasn’t been done on the house. How is that sort of thing handled?”
Bazur cleared his throat, “What kind of maintenance?”
Vinny shrugged, “The gutters need to be cleaned. The carpets could really do with a steam clean. The windows need the outside cleaned. There is dust matted on the walls, they need to be cleaned. Some of the grout in the bathrooms needs to be repaired before you get mould. The hardwood floors need to be waxed at the very least. I’m too short to check the batteries in the smoke detectors, but someone should. You know. The kind of stuff that needs to be done every few months.
In the end, they agreed to spend part of Saturday afternoon with everyone pitching in for a few hours. Vinny said that if they were all working on the house, she would too, but it wasn’t stuff she could do on her own.
That is how Thea ended up cleaning the gutters. Bazur was doing the windows on the main floor, but Thea was in charge of the upper floors. Kevin was washing walls. Kogan was running the rented carpet cleaner. Derick was re grouting the bathrooms and Tristan was using a restorer on the hardwood floors.
About the time that Thea was washing the windows, Vinny started washing the same window, but on the inside. That way she could point out streaks he might have missed. He was about to go on to the second window when she opened the first one.
“Can you tell me where I miss too? It’s hard to see from this close to the window.”
Thea nodded, but spent the rest of the afternoon pointing out where Vinny had missed. He wanted to just hide in his room and die. He was pretty sure that girls didn’t respond well to constantly pointing out their mistakes. They did her room last. For Bazur’s room and hers she needed to go up and down the step stool to get the top half of the windows.
Vinny was decidedly out of breath and a little sweaty by the time they finished. She headed to her shower. Thea went to his room. Kevin was sitting in the corner.
“What’s up?” Thea asked softly.
Kevin cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to not be an asshole around her.”
Thea nodded. “I never know what to say.”
“I wasn’t trying to piss her off by leaving a mess in the kitchen. I just lost track of it. And I didn’t get the text until it was too late.”
Thea frowned, “Really? Because if any of us where going to test the boundaries-”
“I know! And I did. But not like that.”
Thea felt a little worried about that. “What did you do?”
“I hid in her room. I wanted to know if she could spot me. She didn’t. But I over heard her talking to someone named Jenn about how she wasn’t sure this was going to work. That she wasn’t cut out to be the house mom to the lost boys.”
“Was that before or after you skipped dish duty?”
Kevin didn’t say anything.
There was a knock on the door and Kevin was instantly a side table.
“Come in.”
It was Vinny, “Thea? Is there something you need to tell me?”
He panicked. His brain completely blanked except for an overwhelming sense of dread.
She sighed and closed the door. “I get the feeling that you don’t actually like me all that much. Is it something I did?”
Aw hell! He was cornered in his own room there was nowhere to run.
And Kevin was snickering too softly for her to hear.
“Um… You are fine. I like you. I mean, I don’t like you but you, um, make really good cannoli. Uh… yeah, so… um.” He wasn’t helping. Her eyebrows had done that thing where they tense up over her nose. No quite a frown but just a forehead frown. “Are you mad at me?”
She shook her head slowly. “I’m old enough to know that not everyone is going to like me. But you never even say hi.”
Thea looked at the floor. “I’m not good at people. Um. Girls. Um… Women! I just…. Yeah. Ugh. Way to be coherent, Thea.”
Now she cocked her head a little and asked, “Did you mean to say that last bit out loud?”
Thea replayed what he had just said. Then he panicked and ran up the wall to hide in his nest in the top corner of the room.
Eventually, they all went to eat at the pub where Derick worked. Vinny sat next to him and they laughed and chatted and she took his advice on what to order. Derick waved as he headed to the back room to start his shift. Kogan leaned over and nudge Thea, “You are staring lad. It’s a little rude.”
Thea ducked his head. Kogan clapped him on the back. “C’mon. Let’s head home.”
“I don’t know how to talk to her, Kogan.”
“Just talk to her the way you talk to me.” Kogan said as they headed out to the van that had been retrofitted to carry a drider.
“But she isn’t you.” Thea said.
Kogan snorted, “Right. I aint that purty.” He exaggerated the mispronunciation to make his point.
Thea cringed, “Yeah,” he admitted.
Kogan gave him a long look, “Shit, son, you got get past that. We can’t run off another one.”
