The Kitchen Renovation Crew Stayed Three Weeks Longer Than the Quote novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Back of the Line

Britta's POV

"I want it on the record that I did not listen," Mikko said from the doorway. "I heard every word, but I did not listen."

Nobody told him to come in, and nobody told him to leave.

Kou had fallen asleep on my shoulder with his glasses still on.

I slid them off him, folded them, and set them on the nightstand, and Tanner watched me do it.

"He'll want them folded," I said.

"He will," Tanner said.

Mikko stood in the dark with his hands jammed in his back pockets and his curls standing up from where he had dragged his fingers through them.

He had been crying, a little, in the yard, and had washed his face at the garden hose.

I could tell by the wet at his collar.

"Mikko," I said.

"Yeah."

"You said you'd be mad in a minute."

"I have been mad for forty minutes," he said. "I'm exhausted by it. It's boring. I'm a bad hater."

"Come here."

"If I come over there, I'm going to say something stupid."

"You always do," Tanner said.

That was the second time all spring I had heard Tanner make a joke.

Mikko's head came up.

"Was that a joke?" he said. "Did you just joke? Brit, did you hear the foreman?"

"I heard."

"Do it again. I'll stand here all night."

Tanner sat up on the edge of the bed with the sheet across his lap and his big hands hanging between his knees.

"Come here, Mikko," he said. "I have something to say, and I'd like to say it once."

Mikko came.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at Tanner and waited.

"I wanted you off the job in the third week," Tanner said. "You were too happy. You whistled on my scaffold. I thought: what has he got that I haven't got."

"A whistle?" Mikko said.

"The noise," Tanner said. "I haven't got any noise."

Mikko's mouth opened and shut.

"I'm sorry about the ladder," Tanner said. "I moved it on you twice to make you work for it. You don't have to be my rival. I don't want you for one."

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