The Unofficial Zack Warren Fan Club (9 page)

Her arms were flung over her head and she’d kicked the covers off. Her creamy legs looked soft, touchable. She had a silver bracelet on her right ankle, and I couldn’t help noticing she had a perky little ass to go with her perky walk. The thing that made me smile, however, was the nightlight next to her bed.

I slipped up next to the bed, feeling like I broke a law being in her room in the middle of the night. She rolled onto her side, facing me.

“Yeah?” I asked.

She let out a long sigh, eyelids fluttering, and I wondered if she knew what she was doing. Maybe she was sleep talking. “Why are you up?”

She sighed again, mumbled something about the dog, and fell asleep. I went to my room, trying to hold in my laughter. She had a playful innocence about her. A guy like Max would take someone like Chloe and turn her into Lana, or worse.

That thought horrified me.

I fell asleep thinking Chloe needed a keeper, and I was just the guy for the job.

Chapter 10

Chloe

One thing the house needed was a new air conditioner. I woke up the next morning sprawled on my back with the covers kicked off. Rubbing my eyes, I glanced at the door. Last night I had a weird dream involving Zack. He was in the hall, talking about hot air and Kirk eating chickens.

I probably need to lay off the caffeine.

After a second cool shower, locking both doors to the bathroom, I threw on a pair of shorts and a clean tank top, with a bra. Kirk and I headed downstairs to have breakfast.

Much to my delight we were the only ones up. I ate a bowl of cereal and fed Kirk his special sensitive tummy dog food. The kind in light broth. He ate it reluctantly. It wasn’t his favorite. He preferred the gooey stuff, heavy on the gravy. If I let him eat it living with him would be unbearable. Our noses would probably shrivel up and fall off.

Once Kirk and I had full tummies, we found our way to the detached garage in the side yard. It was old and musty. The roof had a blue tarp over it. I’m thinking it leaked during the rain.

The big, white door was wide open and I found the last person I ever expected to be up at the crack of dawn.

Zack was going through a box of brushes and rollers. He had on a green t-shirt and a well worn pair of jeans, frayed and full of holes. They looked well ventilated. He probably didn’t feel the heat in them.

“Yeah, I’m not most guys.” He turned back to a makeshift worktable. It was an old door balanced on a pair of stools. Didn’t look very stable, but I’m sure Glenn had big plans for this death trap. There was enough rusted metal and junk to pose as a health hazard. Just being in it made me want to run to the doctor for a tetanus shot. “You’re not most girls either.”

“Is that a complement?” Wow. Really?

“Haven’t decided yet, I’ll let you know.”

I moved closer to see what he had collected. It looked like he was getting ready to redo his room. There were buckets and brushes, paint cans, car oil…don’t know what that was for.

“My mom is an artist. I know my way around paint.” I picked through the supplies in front of us and found two buckets of flat white. “Use these. Are you taking down the wallpaper?”

He read the front of the can and shrugged, as if he still didn’t see any difference between the two. He’d thank me later. “I was going to paint over it.”

My jaw dropped. “You can’t do that!”

He crossed his arms, muscles perfected from years as a baseball player bunching in ways that made my traitor heart hammer. “I don’t see the big deal.”

“Do you know anything about painting? That dark green wallpaper is bound to show through white paint?” probably not, but I couldn’t pitch a curveball either.

“I know enough to work a roller and brush.”

“At least you’re not a total virgin.” I snapped my mouth shut, mentally kicking myself. “Uh, do you know how to take down wallpaper?”

He grinned, seeing how flustered I became, and I wanted to run back to my room. “No, I’m guessing you do. You want to make a deal, Baker?”

“Be thankful I’m willing to help you after you stuck me with that green hell hole.” He rocked forward, tapping my nose with the end of the paintbrush. “I know what I want. You know how to get me what I want.”

“Which would be normal looking walls?”

“We aren’t going to help each other out of the goodness of our hearts.” His grin was mind blowing, the way it made his face light up. I had to watch myself. One wrong move and I’d get burned. “And when I drive to and from school, I won’t mind taking you with me. You won’t have to depend on Lana.”

“I don’t have a car.” I grumbled. “I’m saving up.”

“So, Baker, do we have a deal?”

I gulped, wishing I had my own wheels, and grateful that I didn’t at the same time. Then my voice came out in a pathetic squeak. “Sure.”

Zack hadn’t done much by way of unpacking. He still had boxes taped shut, stacked high when I went into the camouflaged nightmare. Other than a laptop and dresser, his room consisted of an empty desk, a mean looking punching bag hanging from the ceiling in a corner, and a bed with the covers kicked off. He must have felt the heat too.

We moved his bed and desk to the center of the room, stacked the boxes on the mattress. I covered the mountain in an old tarp. Zack laid newspaper on the floor to protect the wood.

I hope mom and Glenn weren’t looking forward to reading it.

“First we need to see if the paper will peel off by itself.” I went up to one of the garish green walls and picked at. It flaked a little. I smiled. “This isn’t going to be hard.”

He picked at the paper too. “Why? This crap is glued to the wall.”

“It’s coming off without any effort. The glue must not have been very good, so we may not have to use chemicals.” I grabbed a bucket we brought up and handed it to him. “Fill this with hot water, we’ll take sponges and dampen the walls. Once the paper is wet the glue beneath will dissolve, and it should peel off.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we will use the chemicals.”

Much to my surprise, Zack went to the bathroom and filled the bucket with steaming water. He came back and placed it at my feet. I handed him a sponge and we set to work.

A few minutes later we heard giggling and whispering downstairs, slamming of the refrigerator door, and hurried footsteps back toward the other end of the house.

The house was huge. It was not, however, completely soundproof. Hearing them scamper from the kitchen to the bedroom was enough to make me heave.

Zack ripped open a box and brought out a stereo. He cranked up the first station he found and shut the door. “Just incase.”

I sent him a grateful nod. “Good thinking.”

He took the top half of the wall, using a stepstool to reach the higher parts, while I crawled along the bottom, soaking it until the room was looking like something out of a Stephen King movie.

Glenn rubbed his chin. He looked a little uncomfortable. Probably because he was wondering if we knew that he and my mom were having wild, hot, monkey sex.

Oh, god.

“Molly and I are putting the dining room table together, setting up the living room. I just wanted to tell you we’re having a new air conditioner installed, so you’ll have to bear the heat for a while. We’re going to order pizza for lunch later. What do you guys want?”

“Is everything okay between you two?” Glenn hovered in the doorway, “I know this must be strange, sharing a bathroom with a member of the opposite sex you barely know.”

I opened a second garbage bag for trash, holding it out so he could dump in an armload of wallpaper. “How would you have reacted had he told us?”

“That’s why he conveniently forgot.”

We finished Zack’s room faster than I anticipated. The wallpaper practically slid off it was so crappy. Underneath the paint was a yellowing white. Since we had to wait for the walls to dry, we moved to my room.

In the daytime it felt like I was standing on the surface of the sun.

Zack smirked. “I can’t believe you slept in here last night.”

“My eyes were closed.” He helped move my furniture to the center of the room. Kirk was on the bed, flopped on his back, tongue hanging out one side of his wrinkly mouth. He let out a happy howl when Zack rubbed his tummy. While he was occupied, I took the nightlight from the outlet by my bed and stashed it in my closet.

“You’re going to be his new best friend if you keep that up.” I observed. Thankful Zack hadn’t seen my secret. It was silly to have a fear of the dark, but I thought I was a pretty well adjusted person otherwise, and accepted my quirk. But I didn’t want anyone else to know.

“I don’t mind. I like knowing that he can’t talk back or intentionally irritate me.” He said.

I rolled my eyes.

We tossed the tarp from Zack’s room over the furniture, Kirk howled again and burrowed around under it. Minutes later he was snoring, sounding more foghorn than bloodhound.

For the next hour we didn’t say anything, just painted. It was a slightly uncomfortable silence. Part of me that wanted to flick paint at Zack, strike up a conversation about things we liked, something. I just wanted to know more about the star pitcher with the beastly truck. Figure out what was going on between us.

It’s so hard to be mysterious with all the blogs and webpage’s, but Zack was doing a very good job of it. Even with a club of half crazed girls following his every move.