Mitch shrugged. “Sure. I mean, we’ll be doing some work, but we can get them both done today if you want.”
“Oh, I definitely want.” I threw a tsk in his direction as he raised his eyebrows at me over his coffee mug. How could he turn everything into a double entendre? “The carpets,” I said. “I want to get the carpets done.” Come to think of it, that didn’t sound much better.
“Mmm-hmm.” He tilted his head back to finish his coffee and I tried not to be mesmerized by the muscles in his neck as he swallowed. “Anyway . . .” He reached into his back pocket, pulling out two large mat knives. He handed me one, and I took his empty mug in my other hand.
“Easiest way to do this,” he said, “is to slice the carpet into strips. We can move the furniture around while we work, instead of moving everything out and back in again.”
“Well, that sounds ridiculously sensible.” I set his mug down on the dresser in my room and twirled the knife between my fingers. I was glad he’d thought ahead and brought the knives, because all I had was a little box cutter that was about half the size of the one in my hand now.
We fell into an easy rhythm once we got the carpet loosened from the edges of the wall. We pushed the furniture to one side of the room before slicing the carpet into long strips, rolling it up, and getting it out of the room. Then we moved the furniture onto the bare concrete side of the room before doing it all over again.
“You know . . .” I dragged the back of my wrist across my forehead, which did nothing to get rid of the sweat that had started to gather. “All those shows about people remodeling their houses, when they pull up the carpet there’s always this perfect original hardwood underneath. I’m feeling a little ripped off here.”
Mitch snorted as he handed me a roll of duct tape. “Yeah. That’s not going to happen in a house in the suburbs like this. These places were built in the eighties.”
“I know.” I sighed as I picked at the tape, pulling till I got it started. “But a girl can dream, right?”
“Sure.” He held the rolled-up carpet strip together while I wrapped a line of tape around it, then we wrestled it into the contractor’s trash bag, laying it out in the hallway with the others. The neighbors were going to think I was cleaning the bodies out from under my crawl space when we started getting rid of all of this.
“Now, my grandma’s house, that’s a whole different story. That place is something like a hundred and fifty years old.”
I gave a low whistle. “I bet you’d find all kinds of stuff under the carpets.”
“Oh yeah. And secret passages in the closets.”
“Seriously?”
Mitch shrugged. “Someone told me that when I was a kid, and I spent every visit there trying to find them.” He paused. “Now that I think about it, maybe they were trying to get me out of their hair. Huh.”
“Now, why would they do that?”
“I had a lot of energy as a kid.”
“Hmm.” I pulled at the last sliced-up strip of carpet, but it wasn’t giving. I braced everything and tugged harder. Still nothing. “So not a lot has changed, then, huh?”
“Nope.” Suddenly he was down on his knees beside me, grasping the carpet in his much-larger hands, helping me pull. Our hands overlapped each other, and with his shoulder leaned into mine, I tried to ignore the way his breath stirred my ponytailed hair. The carpet came up easily when we were both pulling on it.
“There, see? Easy.” His voice in my ear shouldn’t be doing things to me. That wasn’t what was happening here. But I couldn’t ignore the way things inside of me tightened when he was this close.
I didn’t want to think about that. “So you’re sure it’s okay that you blew off rehearsal today? I don’t want you getting me in trouble with my brother-in-law.”
Mitch shook his head with a smile. “Nothing going on today that I need to be there for. Once we start fight rehearsal . . . that’ll be another story.”
“Really? Isn’t it the same fight you did last year?” Here I was, talking out of my ass again. The Renaissance Faire was in no way my domain.
But Mitch didn’t seem to mind me asking such basic questions. “Yeah, for the past few years. But Simon and I want to change it up a little. Pass on the big fight to someone else, you know? Which is great, because then we don’t have to work as hard during the summer.”
I nodded like I had any idea what he was talking about. “So you’ve been doing the big fight?”
“Yeah. It’s the climax of the whole thing. Simon and I sword fight for a while, then we punch each other around a little. He flips me over his shoulder, and . . .”
“No.” I sat back on my heels and shook my head. “There’s no way Simon flips you over his shoulder. You’re like six inches taller than he is.”
Mitch echoed my posture, sitting on his heels and leaning his hands on his knees. “You’ve never seen our fight?” His voice was wounded.
“Um . . .” It was hard to not cringe. This Ren Faire thing was a part of life for so many people in this town that it was almost embarrassing to be someone who wasn’t involved. “Sorry?”
He laughed at my meek attempt at apology. “Here.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone, turning to sit cross-legged on the floor. While he tapped and scrolled, I sat down next to him. It was break time, apparently.
A few moments later he handed me his phone turned sideways. “Here,” he said again. “This is the fight we usually do.”
I hit Play on the video he’d called up, which unpaused the action of two men mid-tussle on a grassy field. I recognized Mitch immediately, wearing a kilt, knee-high boots, and little else. But it took a moment for me to recognize Simon, wearing leather pants, a loose black shirt, and a red vest. The two fought hand to hand for a few tense moments: punches and backhands, circling each other threateningly. Then Simon caught a punch thrown by Mitch in both hands, turning the larger man’s momentum against him, and before I realized what was happening, Mitch was in the air, flipping over Simon’s shoulder. I frowned and paused the video.
“I still don’t get it. How does that work?”
“Leverage.” Mitch reached around me for his phone, taking it out of my hands and rewinding the video about fifteen seconds. “See? He bends like that, gets his shoulder right about there on my chest, and then I basically dive over him. Like a lever, you know?”
“Hmm. I’m very bad at physics.” I watched the flip again, but this time my focus was on Mitch’s kilt, and the way the fabric flew when he flipped over Simon’s shoulder. “Hey.” I paused the video again with a frown. “You have shorts on. Under the kilt.”
Mitch’s laugh was practically a guffaw. “Nice of you to notice.”
“I mean . . .” I’d made it pretty obvious where my attention was, hadn’t I? Yikes. I rewound the video and watched it again, from the beginning this time. “I know what a stickler Simon is for historical accuracy. I’m surprised he let you get away with that.” On the little screen the men circled each other with swords that matched their physiques: Mitch with a massive sword that took both hands to wield, Simon with a slender rapier.