7. Vex

7

VEX

I t takes ten minutes to drive to my house and pick up supplies. I end up throwing more in the truck than just the power washer and the vacuum cleaner. I add more industrial-level cleaners, protective eye wear, cloths, and a mop and bucket.

I also add wood from my own wood pile. And grab a handful of brown paper bags I keep so I can get it going for her once we've cleaned.

Can't believe Mrs. Moray has been living like that.

Should have nudged my way in there sooner to look out for her.

As I finish securing the cover over the truck bed, my neighbor Matt steps out of his house. We live far enough apart to not bother each other. He shouts a greeting of hello, and I'm inspired. He cleans chimneys for a living.

"Hey, Matt. Know it's getting late, but you think you could help my mom's neighbor? We just realized she's in some kind of mental decline. Don't know the last time she had her chimney cleaned and her heating is down. You think you could help us out before we clean her house up?"

Matt looks down at his watch. "Yeah. I can fit that in. Message me the address, and I'll head over there in fifteen."

"Let me know how much I owe you when you're done, yeah?"

"Will do."

I climb into my truck and decide I should make another stop. When I pull up outside my best friend's house, I can see lights on in the living room.

Switch sees me through the window and raises his hand in welcome. By the time I get to the door, it's already open. His hair is growing back, and it strikes me how easy it is to forget the permanent damage done to both him and Sophia.

"Come on in out of the cold," he says.

I step into the hallway and close the door behind me. I don't move from the long hallway rug, though, so I don't get mess from my boots all over the floor. There's the smell of something…burning.

I look down to the kitchen. "What's happening?"

"Sophia decided to try baking. It's not going well." Switch tries to hide his smile. "Her first batch, the cookies were so hard, I couldn't bite them."

"Shit," I say with a grin.

He raises an eyebrow. "My girl can do many things, but baking apparently isn't one of them. You wanna come in, have a beer?"

I shake my head. "Need a favor if you got a couple of hours to spare."

"Of course. What do you need?"

"Calista is back in town."

"Calista—? Oh!"

"Yeah."

As my best friend, Switch knows more than most about her, that she exists, but he doesn't know she's the reason I joined the club. For some reason, I never connected the dots for him. Just told him my best friend disappeared one day. She came up one night when I was trying to help fill in the gaps in his memory, though, now much of it has returned.

"Turns out her mom's got some shit going on. But her house looks like one of those houses you see on TV, like a neglected health hazard. She needs to get it into shape fast to stay there with her tonight."

Switch sighs and eyes me carefully. "Helping you out for a couple of hours is easy, but…"

"But what?"

"The girl fucked off and ghosted you fifteen years ago."

"So?" I say the word even though I totally know what he's getting at.

"So, why would you help her? You guys talk that shit through yet?"

I think about our conversation on the sidewalk outside the bank.

You're a long way from California.

If there were a state farther away from you that wasn't north of the forty-second parallel, I would have moved there.

We aren't friends. I have nothing to say to you.

We're old history. Nothing more.

Let's just…pretend we don't know each other.

But we do know each other, Cal. Isn't it time we stopped pretending that we don't?

"We're cool."

Switch huffs and shakes his head. "Which means you're probably just doing something good for her mom and she's still an ass. Right?"

He always could see straight through me.

"Pretty much. Doesn't change the fact Mrs. Moray is in some kind of crisis and I can help. Only question I'm up for discussing right now is if you're gonna help her too."

Switch squeezes my shoulder. "Of course, I am. Because I need to see the woman who bailed on you. My gain, I guess. Let me go tell Sophia I'm leaving."

Just as he disappears, there's a knock at the door, so I open it. Niro stands there with a cardboard box in his hand filled with random shit like spatulas and baking sheets.

"Heard there's a determined and highly unskilled baker in Switch's kitchen," he says as he steps inside. Then his nose wrinkles at the smell. "Shit, she really is bad."

"I heard that," Sophia says as she walks to the hallway with Switch. "And yes, I apparently am that bad." She turns to her man. "Did you call for reinforcements?"

Switch nods. "He's a good baker and likely a chaotic teacher, but he offered to walk you through whatever it is you're trying to make."

"Just don't tell Avery I'm here. She loves baking with me, but we'd never get anything finished, and I'd be fifty bucks out of pocket because of my swearing."

Everyone laughs at that.

"You know, I'm investing all that cash for her," I say. "Between you and me, we'll make sure she has enough for college."

Niro grins. "Let's work on a house deposit. Bates and Vi are already working on an education plan for her."

We shoot the shit for a minute more, and then I tell them we gotta go. It takes another five minutes to get to Mrs. Moray's house.

"So, should I be nervous about meeting the ex–best friend?" Switch says, his tone teasing.

"Fuck off."

When I pull up outside her house, Calista is on the porch beating the shit out of a rug, coughing as dust flies everywhere. She hangs it over the porch railing and steps back inside. She's put her long hair up in a ponytail, and it swishes as she walks.

I get the oddest vision of wrapping it around my fist while I do all kinds of things to her I hadn't considered before. She's got a great-looking ass—wouldn't mind the chance to check it out…if she could manage to swallow her hatred of me for five seconds.

"That her?" Switch asks.

"Yup."

"Can see why you're staring. She's a pretty one."

I punch him in the shoulder. "Shut up."

We step out of the truck and start unloading the things into the house.

"Cal, this is my best friend, Switch. He's gonna help me with the kitchen. Switch, this is Calista." I see the way the words best friend bring a haunted look to her eyes.

It's followed by a flash of panic I don't understand.

"Hey, Calista," Switch says, offering her his hand. "I've heard a lot about you."

"Hey," she says, but there is a crack in her voice, and she looks for a long minute at the hand my friend offers before shaking it for half a heartbeat.

"Not sure I want to know what he could possibly have had to say." She turns to me. "Mom may not want everyone to see her house like this. There's a reason she's staying hidden away in here."

I'm not sure why she feels my friend can't come in the house, but I'll work with it.

"He's gonna give me a hand power washing shit in the yard. Won't be traipsing through the house. Matt Lawrence is my neighbor. Asked him to come do the chimney so you can get a fire going in here while we figure out what's going on with the heating."

Calista's eyes widen. "Matt Lawrence from high school."

"The same. Runs his own chimney cleaning company but asked if he'd come do it himself as a favor."

Calista looks between the two of us, like she's confused. "Why would you do that?"

"It's what friends do, Cal."

"But we aren't…" She lets the words drift off.

"Well, this isn't awkward at all," Switch says, patting me on the shoulder. "I'm gonna go carry the shit we brought around back."

My eyes remain on Cal. "I don't know where the young girl I used to know went, but I hope you find her in this house somewhere. Because you are something else."

I follow Switch to the kitchen.

"And I thought I had my work cut out for me marrying a Mafia princess," he says when I find him unlocking the door to the rear of the house.

"Not trying to get her to marry me." I head for the fridge and begin clearing it out. "Figured we'd get everything we can power wash out onto the porch. Give it a good spray off, then pile it up for the dishwasher. I'll photograph the cupboards, take everything out, then clean the inside of them."

"Why are you photographing them?"

"So I can put everything back the way we found it. If Mrs. Moray has dementia, I'm sure life is already confusing as fuck. If she has depression, she probably doesn't need the barrier of finding where everything is if she wants to cook a meal."

"And that's why you're such a good man," Switch says as we hook the power washer to the tap.

"Just doing what's right."

It's fucking frigid out here. The kind of cold where the hairs in your nose feel like they're about to snap.

We work together tirelessly. The only interruptions are when Matt arrives to clean the fireplace and Calista comes into the kitchen to refill the freshly cleaned refrigerator with the supplies I put out on the back porch to keep cool while we worked.

It's dark by the time we finish, but the kitchen is as spotless as we can make it. It's still in rough shape. Broken cabinets. Stains we couldn't get off the sink, even with the power washer that we brought inside for the job, which was a fucking mistake as water sprayed everywhere.

Switch and I had a good belly laugh at that bright idea.

But finally, you could eat food straight off the counters if you had to.

We did a couple of quick cycles through the dishwasher and hand washed the shit out of the cupboards.

Switch came up with the idea of rigging Calista's hairdryer to dry the crockery off quicker when we ran out of cloths.

"Gotta go," Switch says finally as we clean up the mess outside. "Sophia's made dinner."

I hug my friend. "Thanks for doing this. You need a ride home?"

Switch pulls off the thick gloves he's been wearing. "Niro's on his way over to get me, and then he'll drop me off on his way home."

"I owe you one."

He shakes his head but looks up at the house. "You don't. But…be careful. With her, yeah?"

"I know what I'm doing."

"You sure?"

"We just got to tie up the ends. Give ourselves some closure on what went down."

Switch raises an eyebrow. "Closure? Is that what we're calling it these days?"

There's no point pretending I don't know what he means. "Fuck you. She's gonna go back to California. A woman like her doesn't stick around when things get tough."

"Even with her mom like this? I'd give my right nut to be closer to Mom right now but with our respective ongoing treatments, it's hard. Have to make do with trips down there to see her."

"I don't know, but I guess she'll split. It's just closure. We were good friends once. It feels like that's how the energy should end between us."

"Why don't you come home with me? Sophia always makes too much food. And she's a better chef than she is a baker."

I snort at that. "It wouldn't be hard. But I'm good. Thanks. See you at the clubhouse tomorrow, yeah?"

Switch nods. "Sure thing."

I watch him trudge to the curb as Niro's truck pulls up.

The sky is so clear tonight. The kind of inky blue that makes the stars pop. The streetlight casts a warm glow over the street.

And I take a deep breath.

Because there's a sense of calm knowing Calista is here, and she's safe, and I can keep an eye on her.

Just like I do everyone else.