“Every damned time,” James Neal grumbled as he reached for his car stereo. He could have hit any of the six buttons, they were probably playing that same song.

If you close your eyes,
does it almost feel like nothing’s changed at all...

It did feel like nothing had changed, and that was the worst part. James went to sleep and woke up in the same empty, nearly unfurnished house. The place was all but an afterthought, like an equipment locker for his life. It didn’t make sense. The house had been a big purchase prior to his six-year, $36 million contract in Pittsburgh. He bought it to put down roots, to be near people he wanted to emulate, like teammate and best friend Paul Martin. If only the world were a wish-granting factory. Almost three years later, the only things James had put down were mortgage payments.

At first, he didn’t notice. Once he noticed, he didn’t mind. The house was a place to hide out or seek refuge, it was the same in good times and bad. It wasn’t even that fancy - it didn’t mock him with signs of wealth when he was playing like crap and not really earning his huge paychecks. When he was on a hot streak, well then he dreamed of how to trick the house out to suit his accomplishments.

Then he went home to Whitby, Ontario to recharge for the summer. Only this time, James had left empty.

Meghan.

Just thinking her name hurt in a place that James could not pinpoint: between his rib cage and his back, too deep to be his heart but too low to be his stomach. Whatever it was ached at the idea of what he’d lost.

Meghan was his best friend, the lifelong girl-next-door story. There was always some tension between, but never anything more except an understanding - she was his barometer for the rest of the world. Girls were like Meghan or they weren’t, and often James chose them because they were not. James held every girl he met - and there were a lot of girls - to the ideal of Meghan. But it had never occurred to him to try to hold onto Meghan herself.

Then summer happened. He went home and suddenly, Meghan was more than the benchmark. She was the prize. With no change in their dynamic and absolutely no warning, James found himself completely, helplessly in love with his best friend.

Too bad he was too late. James didn’t figure out he wanted Meghan until she figured out she could do better, namely the New York Islanders freshly-minted captain and MVP nominee John Tavares. James had never met a bigger goodie-two-shoes in his life and wouldn’t you know, that’s what Meghan wanted. A guy who worshipped her, who fumbled his words and blushed around her, who would never, ever do anything to hurt her. A guy who treated her like the queen she was and who, despite his awkward shyness, was never afraid to say that Meghan was what he wanted. James could never had been that square -or that good.

So he lost. He lost the girl of his dreams, the one who knew him to the core and still loved him anyway, to a better man. James had swallowed that bitter pill in early August. A month later it was still lodged in his throat like a stone.

and if you close your eyes,
does it almost feel like you’ve been here before....

Even when the song didn’t play, James heard it. It was the story of his life.

Pulling into the driveway, he examined the house he’d put all money and no work into. It was lovely - a McMansion of sorts but with enough brick exterior, arched doorways and flagstone walk to throw off all but the sharpest investigators. From the outside, it was something to want.

Funny, that’s how James himself looked to the world.
____

“Hey, this place looks great.” James stood in the middle of the Craig and Ann Adams’ living room, admiring the cognac-colored couch, stuffed to bursting and upholstered in leather like butter. How it could survive kids he didn’t know, but currently one tiny human was curled up against the arm licking his fingers.

“Honestly, Rhys. You’ve had like eight ice pops,” Ann Adams bustled into the room and thrust a paper towel at her young son. He wiped his sticky paws on it, then took the napkin and licked a bright blue spot experimentally. Ann rolled her eyes at James, the only other person in the room.

“Boys,” she scoffed.

James followed her into the kitchen, with its gleaming granite countertops and white and blue mosaic tile blacksplash that glittered in the recessed lighting. “Seriously, how much work did you guys do?”She shrugged. “A ton, but we didn’t do it. I hired a decorator. We spent a bunch of the summer at Craig’s parents’ - she was in here working her magic. Hey, you should call her.” Ann turned slowly, the light of a great idea breaking across her pretty features. James immediately shook his head - he knew that look when he saw it. He did not want to become a WAG project.

Every so often - too often, the wives and/or girlfriends of the Penguins players made one of the single guys into their pet charity. They tried to hook him up with a “good” girl - usually that meant some 7 who James could have picked up at a Taco Bell instead of the 9s and 10s he usually met post-game, at a bar, surrounded by a gaggle of high-rated friends. The shortest distance between any girl and his bed was the length of her skirt.

Now though, James doubted he had the energy for that obstacle course. Most of the guys were married or engaged. Over the summer, his teammates Marc-Andre Fleury and Kris Letang had become fathers. The new guys were so young that James felt old: California blond Beau Bennett, aw-shucks Robert Bortuzzo. It was getting so there were no other young millionaires to go pulling chicks with.

Ann gave James the look he hated most - pity mixed with impatience. Since he’d signed a big contract a few years back and been featured on NHL36, a TV program that followed him around for a day and half straight, James’ secrets had all but been blown. His suits were all plaid. Button down shirts confounded him. And, worst of all, his recently acquired house was as empty as a psych ward.

“Call her and I promise not to tell anyone,” Ann said, already reaching for her phone.

The rest of the guys and their better halves were outside, lounging around the Adams’ yard at what had become an annual pre-pre-season team barbeque. A word from Ann and they’d be all over him, pulling fabric swatches from their purses and talking about cabinet fixtures. Better one WAG drill sargeant than ten.

“Alright, fine,” James caved. “What’s her name?”
____

Harper scanned her living room. The couch her common vantage point, so she got up and stood in the doorway, playing visitor in her own home. What did people see? What message did her place convey? As always, she loved the individual elements but felt the overall room lacked something.

Her life was not unlike her living room: well put together, thrifty but not threadbare and with more effort than expenditure. Harper had been doing interior design for six years - four in school and as apprentice, two on her own - and felt that her personal space should be the ultimate showcase for her work. Too bad it was always shifting.

She got a particular thrill from running her own small business. It was an indulgence in itself, as she could have made less per project but had steady work at any firm in town. Instead she opted to use her resources and fly solo, hoping that each job would yield another. One person could only do so much, but that person could not afford downtime. Recently she’d wrapped a renovation project with a boutique hotel, turning an outdated, haunted-feeling downtown standard into something more modern and accessible. The client had loved her use of color - no avant garde sculptures or nude paintings required, just paint one wall aqua and another wall yellow and POP! Fresh as a daisy. Her check had been big and for once, the publicity had been bigger. Already another hotel and a restaurant group had invited her to meetings.

A call from a previous residential client might not have piqued Harper’s interest much at the moment, except for who that client was. She had loved working with Ann Adams - an effortlessly stylish woman with kids running underfoot and a husband on the local, impossibly popular hockey team. The goal had been to design something as beautiful as it was functional, with plenty of room for the family to grow . The budget had been, in Harper’s mind, virtually unlimited. Craig Adams was a fourth-line guy but he still made bank. Kids didn’t live in houses with furniture from Restoration Hardware anyway - or maybe that furniture didn’t live long around them. Either way, Harper had loved working with and with the Adamses to create a house that was truly a home.

When her phone flashed Ann’s number and a text icon, Harper immediately swiped a finger across the screen.

Ann: Sending one of C’s teammates your way. He’s hopeless and he’s hot. A job only you can do.

Harper smiled and figured she’s wait for the call.
___

The phone was ringing. James hadn’t really intended to call - the Penguins were busy getting ready for the start of a season with high expectations and higher pressure. In truth this was no time to be looking at upholstery. But the days’ mail had come with a Pottery Barn catalog from his mother, stuffed full of sticky notes around her favorite pieces. They worried about him. Even his dad had stuck one inside the front cover: Just buy the whole page. Every page. He had a day or two before Ann checked his progress, so James needed something to report.

“Hello?”

“Uh, hi. Can I speak to Harper?”

“This is.”

“Hi. My name is James, I got your number from Ann Adams. I wanted to uh, to see about getting my place decorated.” He couldn’t believe he’d finally gotten around the saying that to someone who could do something about it.

“Okay,” she answered.

Just like that.

“Have you ever hired a decorator before?” In her own home, Harper had flipped over a paper shopping bag to write on.

“No.”

He sounded young, she wouldn’t have guessed otherwise.

“Cool, then you won’t notice I’m a little different. What I’d like to do first, if it’s okay with you, is meet outside your house. I like to get an idea of the people who live somewhere before I see the space, makes it more personal.”

James ran through his schedule mentally. This had been a long time coming and he wanted to keep going. “How about tomorrow? Lunch maybe, around one?”

“Perfect. If you have a wife or girlfriend or whoever lives with you, bring them too.”

“No. It’s just me.”

Harper smiled. “Even easier.”
____

Craig Adams passed the phone to his wife, still ringing. No one ever called him on the land line. Ann’s smile got bigger after she answered, and she looked right at her husband as she spoke.

“Hi Harper, how are you? Did he already call?” She listened a minute. “Yeah, he’s got this big empty house. Hasn’t done a thing in the two-plus years he’s lived there. And Harper, he’s really cute.”

Craig shook his head at another of his wife’s master plans. She was forever trying to set the younger Penguins up with nice, normal girls before someone made a mistake he couldn’t take back. James was his own particular brand of trouble - more on the ice than off, but he chased some tail and pulled top-notch talent whenever he wanted. With his All-Star status and thirty million dollar contract, he was a walking target.

Ann kept talking as she swiped open the screen on her iPad. Three clicks later, she spun the screen toward her husband. He looked down at the photo - Ann and a younger woman, piled into the center of the couch in their just-finished living room, wearing huge smiles. Craig had forgotten, or maybe not noticed in the first place. This Harper character had long dark blond hair with even longer tanned legs and a brilliant smile. That, if not the decorating, would hold Neal’s interest.

Craig gave his wife a thumbs-up.
____

James adjusted his t-shirt, tugging them hem so it didn’t look too short. He was glad that summer had stuck around the east coast a few weeks into September. Inside the cafe, he spotted an older woman with a bob haircut sitting alone.

“Harper?” he asked

The woman looked up confused, and quickly shook her head.

“That’s me.”

James turned toward the voice. His heart skipped - that hadn’t happened in - well, not that long. But only for one girl. He made a mental note to throw something heavy at Craig and run away. James apologized to the older woman and began the slow approach to the beautiful girl standing in front of her chair. She was about 5’ 6”, dark jeans and an oversized, silky button down blouse in a warm peach color, tucked in at the front. Her hair was dark blond shot through with light brown, braided and pulled forward over one shoulder. Long bangs slipped from being tucked behind her ear and sunglasses perched atop her head. Her eyes were somewhere between dark and light, he noticed as he got closer. Hazel maybe. She had a heart-shaped, friendly face and a dazzling smile.

“I’m Harper.”

“James,” he said, wiping his hand covertly against his jeans first. “Nice to meet you.”

Harper sat and allowed James a minute to get situated. Oh hell, who was she kidding? She should have looked him up last night after speaking to Ann.

Look at Craig! she thought. Craig Adams was the most unassumingly gorgeous man she’d ever met, and that was before she’d seen him with his shirt off. Ann’s barometer of good-looking men was clearly skewed. She’d said James was “hot” and “really cute” - which hardly explained Harper’s desire to climb him like a rock wall. She cleared her throat nervously.

He was really tall, and lanky in a way that made him seem even taller. A little skinny almost, though obviously strong. One arm was covered in an intricate sleeve tattoo, dark lines weaving and disappearing around every curve. He was all arms and chest and legs and... stop. STOP!

So she looked him in the eye. Bad idea.

His eyes were blue, maybe teal, and bright as jewels. His thick brown hair was a perfect mess - this from a girl who tried hard to look as if she didn’t try. That wasn’t real bed head unless he slept at an architecture firm. His wide, soft-looking mouth that was trying not to smile. And he was blushing.

Oh hell, she thought.

“Thanks for meeting me,” she managed. “I hear you’re teammates with Craig.”

So Ann talked to Harper about me. James wondered what the conversation had entailed - probably that he was a hopeless bachelor with a bad temper and she was terrified his gorgeous house would turn into a frat den like Old School.
“Yeah, I saw their house. You do beautiful work.”

“Ann helped with that, she knew a lot of what she wanted,” Harper explained. “You do too, even if you don’t think so.”

“Oh, I don’t really....”

“I’ll show you,” Harper promised. The waitress arrived. She ordered a turkey club and James got a hamburger, medium. “So tell me about yourself.”

James swallowed hard. It felt like ages since he looked at a girl and really saw her, instead of just counting all the ways she wasn’t Meghan. Maybe he was doing that now - Meghan was brunette, taller, bursting with a lifetime of memories - but it felt positive and surprising as hell. James reminded himself this was work. He had mishandled Meghan’s friendship and ruined it; he didn’t want to do that with a work relationship too, especially one he so badly needed.

This wasn’t a date. James was going to hire this girl even if she suggested a hot pink motif with light-up butterflies. Before long she would discern that he was a broken mess and the possibility of them - and therefore any awkwardness between them - would disappear. Harper would be like Meghan: smart enough to see James wasn’t worth it. Then they could work side by side and when she left, he wouldn’t miss her.

He told Harper about moving to Pittsburgh from Dallas after being traded to the Penguins, living with his teammate and best friend Paul Martin, then buying the house mostly because of the location. He liked the natural light, the attached garage, the yard even though he rarely used it. James explained that he went home to Ontario every summer and listed some of the things he liked there - a “friend” he’d lived with, the feeling of a full and active house.

“I signed a big contract a while ago,” he finally said. “So I hope I’m going to be here, and in the house, for at least a few more years.”

“I remember. Congratulations.”James thought it was time to try a joke. “So you know I can buy you lunch.”

Harper smiled. “I know you can afford my work.”
____

“Did you get enough? I feel like I didn’t even tell you what colors I like, that stuff,” James said as he signed the credit card slip. Harper had offered to buy, laughing she’d just bill it to him later anyway.

“All that comes next. I like to kind of know the person before I see their house. We can talk about colors and fabrics when I come over. Do you want to pick a day?”

For no reason at all, James looked at his watch. “How about now?”

Harper followed, his black Mercedes sedan leading the way for her blue Hyundai Santa Fe SUV. They drove a few miles to a nicely developed residential part of town before James wound through side streets and pulled into a driveway. The house was brick exterior, two stories, with lots of windows. Designed to look old though it was no more than ten years built. A high-end development, the neighbors’ houses differing in shape but not in feel.

It was almost exactly what she expected. Something about James was off - blurry, if that meant anything to describe a person. He’d laughed and talked during lunch but she felt him holding back, protecting something. She guessed that James was unsure what he want to do with the house because he was unsure of himself. This is going to need some personalization, Harper thought. Just like this guy could probably use a hug.

“Home sweet home,” James said, sweeping an arm toward the front door.

He’d reminded himself over and over on the drive that she was an interior decorator, she probably loved blank slates. But he was still embarrassed to show this gorgeous girl around his barren home. It looked so lonely and transient, leftovers from the way he’d felt after being traded and struggling to fit in with the Penguins. Since then he’d been a blockbuster success and the sad atmosphere of the house no longer matched his play, but it mirrored his current personality. James felt that reminder around his shoulders like an anchor.

“Wow,” Harper said appreciatively as they started in the living room. “You’re right, the light is fantastic.”

The couch was nice too, from an expensive retail store. It sat before a huge flat screen TV mounted to the wall, various video games stuffed into a rather ugly shelving unit. No art or paint on the walls - just function, no fashion. Still at least the room was used. A throw blanket on the back of the couch gave her a vision of James laying down, watching a movie, maybe cuddling with...

STOP.

Those positive thoughts evaporated when she saw a leopard print rug under the coffee table.

“What is that?”

James almost cursed. The rug had been purchased for theme party, but as it was the only thing with any personality in the room, James had kept it. He didn’t hate it. It had grown on him. But to a decorator.... “What, no jungle theme?” he pouted.

“Please, please tell me you’re kidding. Are you Austin Powers?”

James laughed.

“Seriously, do you have a circular water bed upstairs that rotates?”

“No!” he rolled his eyes. “It’s kind of a joke. We can toss it.”

Harper sighed with relief. “You can toss it. I need a shower just looking at it.”

Slightly ashamed but more than happy to be sharing a laugh, James showed her into the kitchen. It was a dream - granite countertops, island with a built-in sink, a long set of beautiful wooden cabinets and a dining room table that held nothing but mail and blue Gatorade. Harper wandered into the den, piled with some Penguins stuff and extra sports equipment like a storage room. James showed her a half-bath in the hallway then upstairs.

“These two are empty,” he led the way into two fairly large guest rooms. The beds were made but the carpets so untouched they had vaccuum lines. “And this one’s mine.”

“No water bed?” she asked again.

“Just the kind you put quarters in and it vibrates,” he smirked.

In truth it was just a bed, some furniture and the kind of mess where everything miraculously disappears right before someone comes over. A flat panel TV hung from the wall. All the drawers on his dresser were closed, some of them forcibly. The mattress was king-size, since James was kind of a giant, with no headboard or visible frame, just the rolling metal kind that came with the bed. He’d tossed the fluffy comforter over everything. She pictured him sleeping, face down in the pile of pillows, the wide span of his bare upper back visible, the soft blanket wrapped around his waist. It should have been a gorgeous vision but something about the plain bedroom seemed especially sad.

“It’s nice. And uh, big.” Harper looked anywhere but the bed, her eyes falling on a sock caught under the closet door. A smile broke across her face. James’ features clouded in confusion. She walked over and toed the sock with her shoe. “What’s in here?”

“Nothing!” he stepped over and put a hand flat on the door. A big hand.

Harper nodded. “You’re messy.”

“Uh, yeah. Kinda. I just, I don’t....”

“Open it,” she said playfully.

“No. You don’t want that.” He shook his head and tried not to smile, but she saw it flicker.

There was a point to this exercise - well, two points. She needed to see what type of organization James Neal’s house required. This job was more than painting some walls and picking out curtains, she needed to help him live comfortably in this space. Plus she wanted to see if he’d really stop her. She turned the knob.

“Don’t, I’ll clean. For next time. I promise.” His bright eyes were pleading, like a little kid hiding something from his mom.

Harper arched one eyebrow and James crumbled. She was so relaxed. So confident. He always had a weakness for girls who gave him a hard time. Not to mention she was incredibly pretty and he felt a little drunk on her presence, like an alcoholic taking that first, forbidden sip. For months James had barely been able to touch any girl yet his mind reeled: what would it be like to wake up in sheets that smelled like her? Preferably when she was still in them? Frowning at his own helpless daydreaming, James stepped back.

“Lord.” That’s all Harper said. A knee-high pile of laundry served as a platform for whatever else had been strewn around James’ room - a hockey bag, three pairs of sneakers, some magazines sliding toward the wall that she’d didn’t need to see the covers of. On top was a fifty pound barbell.

“Can you pick that up?”

James did so effortlessly. Harper’s fingertips dug into the door jamb in response. Then she reached for the top of the pile - a dark, tailored and undoubtedly expensive suit, rumped like a dirty towel. She held it up between them.

“Right. I’ll do the closets too,” she said.

James was torn - he wanted her out of his sad, lonely-looking bedroom only slightly more than he wanted her to stay in there all night. Maybe tomorrow too. It was such a rush of forgotten feeling his heart thumped. She mercifully closed the closet and turned back to the room.

Harper wondered if he ever brought girls here. Hot, superstar athlete, rich, famous - right. What am I thinking? She figured it just happened after dark, after drinks, and maybe the mess stayed in the closet. Yet something about James said that wasn’t really his style - and she’d come here to learn what that style was.

Don’t, she told herself. There was a classic technique, a kind of method acting, she often used when discussing the design of a bedroom with the person who slept there. Maybe it wasn’t the right move with James. Maybe he had no idea what was right anymore. Harper slipped off her shoes and flopped down on his bed, arms behind her head like she was sunbathing on a lawn. It was soft and comfortable. She preferred to assume it was clean.

James blinked. For a moment, he thought he’d somehow controlled her mind: get in my bed, he’d been thinking. And she had. He tried it again - her pants stayed on.

Damn.

Harper lay there in her jeans and silky shirt, pulled taut against her stomach. She shifted her eyes to him - just a look, like: I’m waiting. Then James was laying next to her, on his bed, not touching but close enough to do a lot more. Her bare feet had bright purple painted toenails. Their heads were level and her legs ran out somewhere around his calves.

“This is the first thing you see in the morning,” she said.

I fucking wish, James thought.

“What do you want it to look like?”

He turned his head toward her. Like you.

“Are you a morning person, James?”

“No.” That made him laugh. “I am able to drag myself out of bed for practice, though.”

“Something light then, to help you wake up.” He watched her hazel eyes move over the ceiling and walls, measuring and picturing. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue, I guess. Or whatever you think would look good.”

Harper knew what would look good, and that she shouldn’t look at it right now. She thought a warning even as she rolled onto her side and faced James, head balanced on one hand, eliminating half of the already small distance between them on the bed. Looking down over him, there was a lot of bicep sneaking out from under his short sleeve, covered in tattoo. There was personality in this guy, she just had to find it.

“We have a whole house, every color will go somewhere. But this one is important. Your bedroom should be...,” she searched for something that wouldn’t sound like an innuendo. She wanted to say locked with us inside. “Peaceful. Relaxing.”

James was glad his hands were under his head. Harper rested inches away, her long dark blond hair pooled between her hand and cheek, spilling and tumbling down toward his bed. He caught her eyes as they lingered on the tattoo inside his right arm, the one without the sleeve, but she didn’t ask. The last girl he’d laid next to was the one he’d lost.

“What does yours look like?” James asked.

Harper smiled. “Let’s go.”
____

This time he followed her car. He wished there’d been a way to insist on taking one car; James wasn’t ready for this part of the day to end, he didn’t want to leave her house and leave her. He wondered how long it would have taken her to realize if he just started driving somewhere else, like Vegas. Instead it was just a twenty minute drive to her townhouse. She lived in a development on the South Side, at the end of a row of matching two-level buildings.

Inside was a different story. Even from the entryway James could tell that someone who lived here took tremendous care with her surroundings, but not in the usual way. Things were not too neat. They were comfortable. It was the Adams’ house times a hundred, yet in miniature, and James was instantly in love with it.

In the entryway, the walls were pale red that was not pink, but rather the color of being bleached by the sun. A big mirror to one side made the space seem double, and a collection of colorful hats and scarves were crammed onto the hooks below. He followed Harper up two steps into the living room, which had the same paint. An overstuffed white couch with colorful throw pillows and a soft-looking striped blanket was the centerpiece; James instantly wanted to take a nap. Above that, picture frames of all different sizes hung on the wall - at least thirty of them. Some held pictures, others clocks and mirrors. A few displayed those square cards with famous quotes. None were bigger than eight-by-ten and the smallest was merely inches.

“Wow, Harper. This place is incredible.”

A huge window ran the front wall. Before it was a chaise - one of those half-sofa, half-chair things James never really understood. It was white with black flowers and vines. He pictured Harper laying there, reading in the sunlight. In the corner, a large TV faced the room. Next to it was a fireplace, white against the red walls, with a mantle full of paper flowers. They were stuffed into vases and laying on the painted brick - every color of the rainbow and then some. Higher, an antique-looking compass rose design was painted or stuck onto the wall. The last thing in the room was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, built right into the wall, that was stuffed with books and DVDs, more pictures and trinkets, and entire life on eight shelves.

“Did you make these?” he fingered the edge of a delicate paper flower.

“Yup. Something to do while I watch TV.”

The kitchen made James a little weak in the knees. Not cold and unused like his kitchen, this one was sleek and clean. Slate gray countertops set off the bright, robin’s egg blue on the walls. A patterned tile lined the wall behind the sink, right up to white, Cape Cod-style cabinets with silver and blue knobs. The fridge had more things stuck to it - notes, cards, photos. Two wine glasses sat upside down in the drying rack. James was already jealous of whoever had been there before.

Harper thought James looked a little intimidated. Her place was a bit overdone; she was there all the time, always changing things. From the stark newness of his place, like a blank sheet of paper to this one painted and colored over a hundred times, she understood his fear.

“This place is like my drawing board. I like to try out new ideas, before I go and ruin someone’s house with them,” she explained.

“If I’d seen this, I never would have let you in my house.”

The stairway and hall upstairs were white. A guest room in sage green and white made him wonder who got to sleep over. The bed had a dark silver headboard he thought might be antique tin. She also had a small office, with piles of everything everywhere. The room was surprisingly plain, but Harper explained that it helped her compare colors and patterns to each other, with no interference. It was organized and neat. Trustworthy, James thought. She cares about the places she designs. He’d hadn’t lived in a place that felt this homey since he moved out of his parents’ house.

Harper stopped in front of the last door. She had not planned on bringing James here, but then she hadn’t planned on James being James. Didn’t do my homework, she chided herself. Secretly she was glad; he had been the best kind of surprise.

If James had been expecting anything, Harper’s bedroom was pretty much it. And by that, he meant that he never could have predicted what her room would hold, only that it would be perfect. The walls were pale yellow. Light poured in through three windows with the roman shades lifted all the way. A tall, old-fashioned looking dresser painted the same blue as the kitchen stood between two of the windows, a bookshelf in white between the others. Directly opposite was the bed: queen size, with a duvet striped in every color. Three pillows were piled at the top, and James wondered if anyone else got to rest their head in that place. The outline of a headboard, all curves and swoops, was painted right onto the wall. A full-length mirror on a stand leaned in the corner, like something out of a fairy tale. Alongside it, running the full length of the wall, were painted words.

It was like the eve of a battle; the hearts beat, the eyes laughed,
and they felt that the life they were perhaps going to lose,
was after all, a good thing.

“What’s that from?” he asked, realizing he’d been silent and staring at her room for several minutes.

Harper unearthed a second chaise lounge, twin to the one downstairs, from beneath some clothing and coats. She sat on it to be out of James’ way. “The Three Musketeers. It reminds me not to take things so seriously.”

He considered her, sitting cross-legged with her feet tucked underneath. The room suited Harper perfectly, or at least the idea of her that would be lodged in his head for the foreseeable future. It was open and friendly but somehow rowdy and creative. James felt like he’d skipped a few dates by being in here, and not just because a pair of black panties were caught on the edge of the hamper, more out than in, and he could recognize a Victoria’s Secret tag from a mile away. She must never design for guys she dated. She wouldn’t bring a date here unless she was serious about him.

“Is that something you do?”

“Not so much anymore,” she shrugged, then tilted her head toward the bed. “Try it.”

James would never turn down an invitation from a beautiful girl to climb into her bed. He lay back and the difference was obvious. A yellow room was like being inside the sunrise and gently shaken awake, rather than picked up and thrown. He could see the books on the shelf and the tree outside, the words on the wall and the jewelry in the box atop her dresser. She came alongside the mattress and stopped.

“What do you think?”

Without speaking, he patted the blanket next to him. She had started it.

Harper knew it wasn’t a good idea to have James laying in her bed. He looked even taller and larger, all lanky muscle just waiting to be climbed on and test the springs in that mattress. Taking the space next to him and dropping back, her bed required them to be even closer than before. James left his arm at his side; it pressed against hers all the way down. Her fingers brushed his wrist.

“You’re a morning person,” he guessed. “The yellow gives you away.”

“I try to be.”

“What do you do in the mornings?” James wanted to roll, as Harper had done before, but was afraid this would be too close. They were already touching - it was making his heartbeat skitter. He was undoubtedly her worst client ever.

“On really ambitious days, I run. The light is perfect in the morning before it gets too bright. Gives me good ideas.”

I am a glutton for punishment. Why couldn’t she have said ‘Eat bacon and watch Sportscenter?’ James said to himself. But out loud, he asked, “Will you be feeling ambitious tomorrow?”

Harper smiled to herself and the ceiling. Will I feel like seeing you again, potentially all sweaty?

“That depends. Do I get the job?”

He did it then: rolled toward her. Harper’s eyes were definitely hazel up-close. Her lips were the almost-red of her living room - the color of the promise of a kiss. He was inches from her side, in the perfect position for it.

“Of course. When do we start?”

“When you show up for running.”
____

Notes

Finally! Real life is crazy - even crazier than usual - but I've been working on some stories and it's time to kick myself in the butt by actually posting. You guys motivate me better than I do myself. So here's the first chapter, and I hope you like it because there is much more to come. Happy summer, everyone!