The Rebuilder's Dare

I swung the sledgehammer into the plaster wall and the whole sheet gave up at once. Dust rolled out in a gray cloud and the panel cracked down the middle and slid off the studs into a pile on the floor. I stood there breathing hard with the handle still in my hands, feeling the sting in my shoulders, and I thought, six months of this and it still doesn't get old.

The house had been my ex's project. Then it was his excuse. Then it was the thing he walked out of in the middle of a Tuesday, and I bought him out of the mortgage the week he left, because I didn't know how to leave a half-finished thing behind. So now I had a gutted three-bedroom on a quiet block, holes in the drywall, wiring hanging out of the ceiling like weeds, and most of my weekends.

"Nice swing," a voice said from the doorway.

I turned and there was a guy I'd never seen, maybe thirty-five, hard hat under one arm, boots dusty, a stopwatch hanging off a lanyard around his neck. He was built like a man who carried lumber for a living and he had a slow smile going.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Luca. The company sent me. You booked a consult on the load-bearing walls." He held up a clipboard like proof. "You're Aisha, right?"

"Yeah. Sorry. I thought that was Monday."

"It is Monday. You booked Monday." He looked at the wall I'd just killed, then back at me. "You got here early too, I guess."

"I got here angry," I said. I set the sledgehammer down. I was thirty-three years old, recently single, and sweating through a work shirt in a house I paid too much for. "Anyway. Walk me through the walls. Which ones can I take out."

He walked the rooms with me for an hour, tapping studs, marking things on paper. He was quiet most of the time, which I liked. When he did talk it was short and sure. Near the end of it he stopped in the front room where the plaster pile was and looked at me for a beat.

"You want to know something?" he said. "Most people I work for don't swing the hammer themselves. They pay me to feel like they did."

"I can't afford you to do it for me."

"So you do it yourself. And you're good at it." He shrugged. "But you look like a coiled spring, and it's not about the walls."

"Wow."

"I'm just saying what I see." He wound the stopwatch lanyard around his finger. "Tell you what. We finish the consult, and then if you want, we play a game. One task for you, one dare for me. You complete a task, I give you a dare. You don't want the dare, game's over, no hard feelings."

"That sounds like a dare designed by a guy with a stopwatch."

"It is." He grinned. "You in or not?"

I should have said no. I'd been burned by a man with big plans and a confident way of talking, and here was another one, standing in my dust. But that was exactly why I said yes, to prove to myself I don't fold just because some guy smiles slow at me.

"Fine," I said. "But I set the tasks."

"Deal. First one. That baseboard along the hall, pry it all off, whole run."

It took me twenty minutes and I only bent the pry bar once. When I dropped the last piece on the pile, Luca clicked the stopwatch and put it away.

"Good. First dare." He reached into his nail pouch and pulled out a bent tenpenny nail, one he'd obviously worked into a curve on purpose. "Hold this between your teeth. Ten seconds. I count out loud."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

I took the nail. It was clean and it still smelled faintly of metal and cut lumber. I set it between my teeth, careful not to chip anything, and he counted. Ten, nine, eight. He didn't rush it. Three, two, one. When he reached to take it back, his thumb brushed across my lower lip, slow, as if to see whether I'd flinched. I didn't flinch. My stomach did something anyway.

"Next task," I said, a little rougher than I meant to.

"The stud frame in the bedroom corner. Rip it out solo. No bar help from me."

That one took real work. I cut the nails where I could and pried where I couldn't, and the frame came down in pieces and left a wound in the corner of the room. I was breathing hard again and there was drywall dust on my arms and in my hair. Luca watched the whole thing without helping, which I both hated and appreciated.

"Dare," he said, when I stood back from the pile. He dragged a finger through the fine white dust on the windowsill and held it up. "Shirt stays on. I'm going to draw a line of this down your spine, and then I'm going to lick it off. Right here. You say stop, we stop."

I looked at him. He wasn't leering. He was waiting, flat and patient, like the answer was mine either way.

"Yeah, okay," I heard myself say.

I turned around and pulled my hair off my neck. His finger was cool where it touched me, just below my collar, and he drew it down slow, one long line along my spine over the damp fabric at my lower back. Then his mouth. He followed the line with his tongue, warm and unhurried, and by the time he got to the small of my back my hands were flat against the studs and my eyes were shut.

"There," he said, standing. "Dare done."

"That was," I started, and stopped, because I couldn't find a sentence that made me look composed. "Shut up."

"Didn't say anything." He smiled at the floor. "Task."

"The kitchen. Those upper cabinets, the ones he never hung right. I want them gone."

The cabinets came down in a fury I didn't entirely plan. I tore the doors off first for the satisfaction of it, then popped the boxes off the screws and let them crash onto the drop cloth. Six months of his kitchen, gone in forty minutes. I stood in the wreckage panting and grinning and I felt better than I had in half a year.

Luca pulled out the stopwatch and clicked it, though I never saw him start it.

"Dare," he said. And this one he said quieter.

I wiped my face. "Say it."

He reached into his bag and brought out a small bottle of lube, the kind they sell at the hardware store checkout for sliding glass doors, and a pair of nitrile gloves. He set them on the sawhorse.

"You kneel on the drop cloth there. I put one finger in your ass. Slow. Just that. You say stop, it stops, and the game's over and I still finish the consult like a professional."

My mouth went dry. Almost six months of nobody's hands on me, and this guy wants to start there. But the thing was, I liked the way he asked. No pushing, no sales pitch. Just laid out plain, like a receipt.

"Why there?" I asked.

"Because you're wound so tight you rattle," he said. "And because you didn't say no to the spine thing, and I figured you might be curious how far you go." He shrugged. "I could be wrong."

"You're not wrong." I knelt on the drop cloth, knees on the crumpled canvas, and braced one hand on the sawhorse. "Okay. One finger. Slow."

He pulled the glove on and warmed the lube between his fingers first, which I hadn't expected and which mattered more than I'd have guessed. Then his other hand settled on my hip, steady, and I felt the slick tip of his finger press against me. He didn't shove. He just waited there, letting my body decide, and when I exhaled and stopped clenching he slid in, slow, the whole first knuckle, then further, a little at a time while I breathed through it.

"Oh," I said. My voice came out small.

"Good?"

"God. Yeah. Don't stop."

He moved it slow, a gentle curling motion, and the drop cloth bunched under my knees while I pressed back against his hand without deciding to. The highway hummed somewhere past the windows. His finger worked me open with a patience my ex never had for anything, and I knelt there in the wrecked kitchen I'd built and destroyed myself, sweating, dust in my hair, about to ask him what the next task was going to cost.

The linoleum went next. I wanted the whole kitchen floor gone before lunch, and I told him so, and he just nodded like I'd promised him something.

"Pry it up in strips," he said. "Start at the seams. You'll feel where the adhesive let go."

The floor fought me. Six months of his glue and forty years of old floor. I got the first strip up in one long curl and it felt like peeling a sticker off a new phone. By the third strip I was sweating through my shirt and swearing under my breath, and by the last one I had the pry bar wedged under a corner and my whole weight on it and the sheet came free all at once and sat me down hard on the bare subfloor.

"Dare," Luca said from the doorway.

I stayed sitting. "I just did the whole floor."

"Task and dare. That's the game." He crossed the room and crouched next to me. "Hands and knees. I add a second finger. Slow, same as before. You say stop, everything stops."

I looked at him for a second, then I got up on my knees and put my palms flat on the subfloor. "Yeah. Okay. Slow."

He gloved up, warmed more lube, and the first finger went in easy this time, my body already knowing the shape of it. Then he rested the second one against me and waited.

"Breathe out," he said.

I breathed out and he slid it in beside the first, a slow stretch, wider now, and I made a noise I wasn't planning on. My elbows dropped and my forehead nearly touched the floor.

"Still good?"

"Still good. Don't stop." His fingers worked me open with that same patience, scissoring just a little, and I pushed back onto them while the dust drifted in the light from the empty window holes.

He pulled his hand away after a while and I felt empty and off balance. "Task," I said, before he could say anything. "The ceiling. Bedroom. I want that section down."

I took the crowbar to it standing on a kitchen chair, hooking the drywall and pulling chunks loose until the whole section sagged and came down in sheets over my arms. Insulation snowed on me. I laughed, actually laughed, covered in it, and Luca clicked the stopwatch and almost smiled.

"Dare." He went to his duffel by the front door and came back with something small and silicone, tapered, flared at the base. He set it on the sawhorse with the lube. "This goes in. I'll work you ready first. You tell me when."

I wiped insulation off my arms. "That's a big jump from fingers."

"It's a jump. Not a leap. And you don't have to."

"I know I don't have to." I pulled off what was left of my boots and stepped out of my jeans and underwear, which felt insane in a gutted house at eleven in the morning, and bent over the sawhorse with my forearms on it. "Okay. Go slow and talk me through it."

He did. Fingers first, three of them now, long minutes of it while I breathed and cursed and told him more and then less. Then the tip of the plug, cool even warmed in his hand, pressing in while I panted through it. It stretched me wider than anything had and I gripped the edge of the sawhorse and rode it out, inch by inch, until the base seated and I stood there full and trembling.

"Done," I managed.

"Not yet. It stays for the next task."

The last wall was in the living room. The last one he'd framed and never finished, studs standing in a row like teeth. Luca said it wasn't bearing a load, said I could take it alone, and I put the plug in place and picked up the sledge with both hands.

It took twenty minutes and it was the best twenty minutes of my whole six months. I swung until my shoulders burned, I kicked the bottom plates loose, I dragged the studs out one by one and threw them through the open window hole into the yard. When the last one went, the room was one wide open space full of light and dust, and I stood in the middle of it breathing like I'd run a mile.

Luca set the sledge against the wall. He bent me over the sawhorse and took the plug out slow, which was its own kind of ache, and then I heard the foil, felt the condom roll on, and more lube, cold and then warm.

"You sure?"

"Yes. Please, yes."

He pressed in slow, slower than the plug, and I felt every inch of it, my body opening around him while I gripped the wood. He went all the way in and stopped and let me have it.

"Feel that?" he said, low. "Feel every inch. That's the rebuild."

Then he moved. Slow and deep, hands on my hips, and I pushed back to meet him, swearing, sweat running down my spine. It built and built and I came with my cheek against the rough sawhorse, shaking, and he held still inside me until I stopped clenching around him.

"Turn over," he said after a while. "On the drop cloth."

I lay back on the canvas in the open room. He re-lubed, more lube over the condom, and lifted my legs over his shoulders and slid back in, and this angle was different, deeper, and his pace went tender, almost careful, his hand flat on my stomach.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Okay. Don't stop." I reached up and gripped his forearms and he fucked me slow like that, face-down over me, and I came again with my heels digging into his back and him following right after, a low groan, his hips pressed flush against me.

He pulled out, dealt with the condom, and I lay there shivering on the gritty floor with the dust settling around us and the light coming in through every hole he'd mapped for me that morning.

That's when I saw it.

The front door clicked open. I didn't remember unlocking it. And standing in the frame, keys in his hand, was Daniel.

My ex. Six months since he'd walked out on a Tuesday, and here he was on a Monday, keys still on his old ring, looking at his gutted house and at me laid out naked on a drop cloth with dust in my hair.

"Hey," he said. "I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd, uh. See how it was coming."

Luca didn't even look up. He handed me my jeans like a guy handing over a coffee.

"You can see how it's coming," I said, sitting up. "That's what you're looking at."

Daniel's eyes went around the room, the missing wall, the bare floors, and back to me. "You did all this yourself?"

"Every stud." I stood up and stepped into my jeans. "You should see the kitchen."

He shifted his weight. "I could maybe help, if you wanted. I still know the house."

"It's not your house anymore. You signed."

"Yeah, well." He looked at the keys in his hand like he'd forgotten them. "Anyway. Looks good. Really."

"Lock the door on your way out," I said. "And leave the keys on the porch rail."

He did. Luca and I stood in the wide open living room and listened to the Taurus pull away down the quiet block.

"Task," Luca said.

I laughed. "You're joking."

"Sweep the room. Then lunch." He shouldered his duffel. "After that, we talk about the bathroom."

The highway hummed somewhere past the windows. I picked up the broom.