Chance Of A Lifetime

You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

      "So, have you ever been to this place that Ash said he's taking us tonight?" Aidan queried as she looked through her bags. "Do I need to pull out my dressy outfit, or are jeans okay?"

      "Yeah, he's taken me there a few times, and ya should prolly pull out the good stuff," Aerin replied. "Which reminds me, I should find myself somethin' to wear before he gets home. And we'd both better get a shower in, too, cuz he takes fuckin' forever to get his shit together when he goes out. Especially since he's been working on the new flip today, he'll have to get rid of all the sawdust, or insulation, or whatever the hell he carries in with him this time."

      Aidan finally located the clothes she planned to wear for their outing, then followed her friend across the hall into her room, which was done almost completely in shades of purple: Pale lavender walls, with the wall and window trim, as well as the built-in bookcases, painted a glossy violet, matching the bedcovers and drapes. A pewter-gray deep-pile carpet provided the only contrast, and kept the purple theme from being overpowering. Aidan looked  around the room, then glanced across the hall at the teal-and-cream room where she had slept for the past four nights. "This might be a weird question, but how is it that these two rooms are the only ones that aren't done in black and white?" she inquired.

      Aerin's voice came from the depths of her closet, saying, "Because when he got the wild hare up his ass to redecorate not long after I moved in, I told him I wasn't really into that, and he was okay with it. Not like everybody that comes here is gonna see it anyway, so what difference does it make?"

      "Kinda sounds like the scene in 'Beetlejuice' where the guy is perfectly happy with the house he's just bought, but the crazy wife has all sorts of weird ideas about redecorating the house. She tells him that she needs to 'express herself', and informs him that if he won't go for it, 'I will go insane, and I will take you with me!' They're in sort of a den-type room at the time, and he caves, as long as she agrees to leave that room alone for him, and she says okay, and licks his face."

      "I'll have to take your word, since I've never seen it," Aerin replies. "And, since I seemed to be kind of on a roll there, I pointed out that he might want to have at least one of the guest rooms done a bit differently, in case somebody dropped in that didn't share his taste in decorating. Which is why you're not sleeping in a big square referee's uniform. Or a fuckin'zebra, however ya wanna look at it."

      As Aerin perused the clothing that she'd laid out, trying to decide what to wear, her phone started ringing, and Aidan was slightly startled by the speed with which her friend practically leapt across the bed to clutch at the device, and puzzled when the other woman muttered "Excuse me a sec," and dashed into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it. 

      Since it seemed that she was left to her own devices for the duration, Aidan decided that she might as well take her shower while no one else was using up the hot water, and headed back to the guest room, and its attached bath. As she rummaged in her bag for shampoo and shower gel, she heard footsteps coming down the hall, and Ashley's voice called out, "Hey, where y'all at?"

      "I'm right here!" she yelled back, and he appeared in the doorway, closely followed by Sparrow. "I was just getting ready to shower, since we didn't figure that you'd be home quite this early."

      "We hit a problem with the water lines, so we had to stop until they can look it over and tell us exactly what needs to be done," he replied. 

      "That sounds like it might suck just a bit. How long do you think it might hold you up?"

      "That entirely depends," he said. "If it's just a leaky pipe in the wall, or even in the connections under the house, maybe just a couple days. But if we have to get into having contractors come and dig up the yard, and all that happy horseshit, who knows. Maybe a week or longer." He turned his head, looking up and down the hall, then inquired, "Where's Aerin?"