The Unlikely Quarterback Ch. 11

I had to gather myself and I couldn't look anyone in the eyes or I'd break.

"I know I promised to give you a car if you became the valedictorian but ... I did that already. I'm giving you something you've wanted even more."

I pulled out an envelope and handed it to her. She took one look at the plane tickets and she screeched so loud I was worried I lost a little hearing. She nearly jumped out of her chair showing them off to everyone ran over to me jumping into me, and giving me her expected Minnie Mouse kisses.

"Technically you're an adult but you're gonna have to take Mom with you..."

I was surprised there was no disappointment there.

She didn't complain at all, instead, "Ohhh, she's never been anywhere! We are going to have soooo much fun!" and she detached from me where she immediately started making plans with mom. The rest of the night was filled with talk of Europe. Paulette and Amanda had both been to Europe at different times and suggested places to go. Simone and Candy discussed the fantasy places to go, and added to the discussion and I was finally able to sneak off to be by myself.

*

My phone still hadn't been hooked up at my new place but at least the utilities were turned on. I brought over some tools and went to work.

The upstairs had three bedrooms, one was a master with its own bathroom and the other two had a shared "Jack and Jill" bathroom. I planned to hire contractors to renovate the master bath, but other than that the upstairs rooms mainly needed painting and carpeting. The downstairs was going to be a big headache. That would require knocking down walls, replumbing, and pretty much redoing everything to get rid of its old sixties look. The home was already inspected for lead and asbestos and other nuisances and other than the electrical box needing to be upgraded it was good to go. It already had a good central air/heating system before I bought it, so there wasn't anything major that I needed to do myself. I was hiring people to do the remodel, but I figured I had the time so why not save some money and do as much of the work myself.

The problem was, I was hoping to get my friends to help, but none of them answered the call and I really didn't want to beg them. The girls weren't the only ones that I asked, I also asked some guys from the football teams I played on as well as Dan and Ted, but I wasn't able to get a commitment from anyone.

The Johns, as I'll call them, had three big dogs, so any of the flooring that wasn't ruined by wear and tear and stains from all the kids in the house, was summarily finished off by the dogs. The downstairs was covered in cheap vinyl because I guess they just gave up after the dogs probably scratched and pissed all over the hardwood floors underneath (yes, I checked). The carpeting upstairs hadn't been changed in decades, the dirt and stains gave it a gray color but you could kind of see that it used to be an avocado green in spots where furniture had preserved its color for years. There was no way I was keeping it.

The plan was to remove the ugly popcorn ceiling, then paint the walls and ceilings, and use the carpet to catch all the drops rather than use drop cloths and throw out all the mess in one shebang. I got a special scraping tool for scraping the popcorn ceilings and got to work. I had worked for about an hour and was still finishing up the first room when I heard the doorbell ring.

I was hoping one of my friends decided to show up but instead I was presented with the voluptuous form of a gorgeous older looking woman. I remembered seeing her when I pulled into my driveway. She was working in a garden next door. She had dark, jet black hair with a few strands of gray, almond shaped eyes that sparkled when she smiled and she filled out her overalls nicely.

"Howdy, Neighbor!" she said, loudly as if she needed the whole house to know she was there.

I was surprised that she had a slight southern drawl. I guessed she must have lived in the south at one time.

"Uh, Hey... neighbor."

"The name's Hannah," she said, holding out her hand, which I quickly shook. "I live next door, and thought I'd introduce myself."

I would guess Hannah was in her late forties or early fifties, but there was no way I'd ask. Fifty or not, she looked pretty good, she had a beautiful face, sparkling eyes, a hawk nose, and deep lustrously long curly hair and plump ruby red lips. She was a shapely woman with large breasts and very large ass. She was a little overweight but not fat. She looked like she might have had a few kids at one time, yet she was in incredible shape. If I were to describe her in one word it would be vivacious.

"The name's Mike," I said. "I'm fixing up the place before I move in," I informed as she poked her head in and looked around.

"Need any help, Mike?" she asked with a mischievous grin.

"That'd be nice, but I can manage."

"Nonsense! What are you working on?" she asked. "Popcorn ceilings?" she said more than asked as she looked at my hair like that explained it all.

"Yeah... Look Hannah, not to be rude, but I got a lot of work to do. Maybe we can have a nice neighborly chat some other day?"

"Oh, sure, sure. Listen you mind if I bring you over some food and drinks? I really have nothing better to do right now and would really enjoy being useful."

"Uh, sure. When a beautiful woman like yourself offers food and drink, how could I possibly refuse."

"Great! I'll be right back."

"OK... I'll just leave the door unlocked for you. You can let yourself in."

I just got started scraping more ceiling when I heard the doorbell once again. I was kind of annoyed because I told Hannah to just let herself in and I guess it must have shown on my face when I opened the door.

"Surprise!" Simone said, semi-enthusiastically.

Candy, Amanda, Paulette and a whole slew of other people I knew or I knew they knew were standing outside on my walkway and my lawn.

"Wow!" I exclaimed, and must have been beaming because everyone seemed to brighten up. "You guys here to help?" I asked stupidly because obviously they were, they were dressed up in raggedy clothes and were carrying various tools, some of which I couldn't ever imagine having any purpose for what we were doing.

"Hell yeah, dude!" Dan exclaimed. "Our friends shone the bat-signal and so here we are."

"Wow, thanks guys. I didn't expect so many."

There were five guys altogether, three from high school football, and one from city college and of course Dan. Also, there were ten girls, most were cheerleaders from high school, as a matter of fact Monique and Amy (a girl I knew in a home economics class) were the only non-cheerleaders.

"Come in, come in... Ah let me show you around."

After a quick tour we had a meeting in the living room and it was decided that the guys would be in charge of the ceiling since the girls didn't have bandanas or hats to keep the mess out of their hair. Besides the guys were naturally taller so wouldn't need step stools to get the job done. So, I left them to it.

"Hey, we came to work too!" Amanda cried.

"And believe me, I've got plenty of work for ya. But logistically, you'll need to stay out of the rooms until the ceilings are finished. After that we'll have plenty of walls to paint..."

"So what? The little, 'helpless' women are going to sit around doing women's work?"

"I'm not sure why you think you're so helpless," I mocked. "Unfortunately, I don't have any work for helpless women so I hope you won't feel insulted doing some 'men's' work?" I asked, sarcastically.

Amanda was about to go on one of her rants, but was interrupted by Simone, "OK, OK, get a room you two. Whacha got for us?"

I smiled and dropped my sarcastic tone, "It looks like a lot of you brought hammers and crowbars and sledgehammers and I have a few here too," I said pointing off to the side where I had a pile of tools. "I'm gonna need you ladies to flex your muscles because you're going to be doing demo work, downstairs."

Technically the work they would be doing would be done much faster by a very strong person, actually not even strong but heavy would do also, but I wanted a more surgical approach to the walls since I didn't want someone breaking a pipe or tearing up the existing electrical work. The ladies would take their time and since there were twice as many ladies as men, I figured they'd get it done in the same amount of time but with less damage.

"You see all the wood paneling? It all needs to go and I marked the walls I want tore up. I turned the breakers off in the living room and dens so if you are ready to move on to another area let me know so I can turn off the breakers there too."

I went over what I wanted them to do and even Amanda felt satisfied that I was treating them as equals, but honestly some of the girls didn't feel comfortable doing demo work. Luckily, we didn't have enough tools and I got a reprieve in the name of Hannah.

"Helloooo?" I heard Hannah call out.

"We're in here," I answered.

The living room was in front of the house but the den was in the back and was an addon to the house which was lower than the kitchen since it didn't have a crawl space underneath. Hannah stepped down into the den.

"Oh, I see you got help after all," she said, smiling.

"Yes, these are my friends," I said and introduced her to all of the girls. "Hannah is my next-door neighbor and was kind enough to make me a lunch," I bragged.

"It looks like I got my work cut out for me," she said. "I didn't know I would be making so much for so many."

"You don't have to do that, Hannah. I can just order some pizzas for everyone."

"Oh nonsense! Pizza! You kids nowadays! You need to eat healthier and pizza's not fit for dog food. All that fat, salt and sugar... You'll have heart attacks before your thirty eating like that!"

"There is almost twenty of us here, I can't ask you to make all of that," but she looked insulted. Then inspiration struck, "I mean not by yourself anyway... Amy, Monique, Heather, Tracy (all of the girls that were complaining about demo work and dragging their feet or worried about their nails), would you girls please help Hannah with the food and drinks?", they brightened up immediately and jumped to the task.

I handed Hannah some money for food and whispered in her ear, "Please, put them to work, they are no good to me doing this," I said and she gave me a knowing nod.

"Girls. I sure do appreciate your help..." she said acting like a helpless old grandma, she being far from helpless was a godsend because the girls bought right into her act.

I spent most of the day prepping areas for the next group and keeping everyone working and on task. I had to do a lot of little things, like test electrical outlets to make sure they weren't hot, just in case they weren't on the same breaker that I had just turned off. I did a lot of taping baseboards, removing faceplates etc. and we all moved along like a well-oiled machine.

Hannah didn't sit idly by just cooking, once she got the girls making sandwiches, she brought over a wet/dry vac and vacuumed up the ceiling messes and dumped them into garbage bags.

By the end of the day, we had huge piles of wood paneling, sheetrock and bags of popcorn ceiling debris stacked up in my garage. With so many helpers we even got the upstairs bedrooms painted and the carpeting ripped out, rolled up and also thrown into the garage.

The girls not only made us sandwiches for lunch over at Hannah's but they also cooked us burgers and dogs for dinner. Hannah made us potato salad and a classic Greek salad. Everyone left stuffed and sang the praises of Hannah and she seemed to bask in the gratitude.

I spoke an impromptu speech, "Thank you! All of your help has saved me a month of time. With the bedrooms painted and carpeting tore up, I can have carpeting installed by the end of the week. With the timing of the contractors coming in to fix the rest of the place, I might just have this house in tip top shape by the end of summer!"

Amanda spoke up, "We all love you Mike. You're always helping everyone else and never thinking of yourself first. I think I speak for all of us when I say, it was our pleasure."

People started leaving but a few stuck around to talk, that's when Candy pulled me aside.

"I've got to ask you a personal favor," she said, seriously.

"You know I'd do anything for you, right?"

"Yes, but this isn't for me directly," she said. "And I don't want you to do this because you love me."

"Why can't I do anything because I love you?" I asked, and she just seemed to ignore that.

"Simone hasn't done very well in school the last semester. She lost a few of her scholarships and her mother kicked her out of her house. Her tuition is still paid for but she can't afford student housing anymore; not without getting a job."

"OK? You want me to give, or loan, her some money?"

"No... She wouldn't take it anyway, you know that. Besides if she needed money, I would give it to her."

"What then?"

"I want you to offer to let her stay here - rent free," she said.

"You want me to do what now?... You can't be serious!" I hissed. "Why would you ask that of me?"

"She's your friend, Mikey. I know you just made up with her, but you'd only be roommates."

"Roommates..."

"I know," she interrupted. "Just do it for me," she pled.

"Damnit! Fine! For you I w..." I tried to say, before she stopped me with a passionate kiss.

I felt like heaven was being ripped away from me when she finally pulled away. She touched my chest and said thanks and walked away quickly, leaving me thunderstruck. Was this a signal? Was I supposed to go after her, tear her away from her boyfriend? I refused to do that before mainly because I thought she wouldn't want me to. She knew how I felt about her and I was single now, so why was she still with him? To me the answer was, she didn't feel the same about me that she did before.

When I finally came to my senses I walked out of the room and saw that just a few people were left including Simone, but Candy was gone.

"Hey Simone. Can I talk to you for a sec?" I asked.

"We've got to take off, Mike. They're my ride," she said.

"I'll give you a ride... it's important."

"OK." she said to me. "I'll see you later," she said addressing Amy.

After she said her goodbyes, she met me in the kitchen and sat down on one of my fold up chairs across from me at my card table. My kitchen was a mess, I had no real plates, utensils or cookware of any kind really and didn't want to get any until after the kitchen was redone. So, having a neighbor like Hannah was a god send.

"What's up?" she asked.

"I heard from a little birdie that you are having financial problems... And that your mom kicked you out?"

She looked a little perturbed and said, "Candy!" I nodded, "I'll be fine."

"Can I ask you why your mom kicked you out?"

"You know my mom's a religious fanatic. Once she found out that Treyvonne had sex with me, she went ape shit. I mean it happened almost three years ago, but it didn't seem to matter."

"How did she find out?"

"Treyvonne called her from the hospital. I guess to get a little revenge for my ruining his life, as I'm sure he sees it."

"So that's why you girls were mad at me?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry. I mean, I knew he would do something like that. It's one of the reasons I didn't steal the pictures back myself. I realize now I was deflecting my problems on you. It wasn't your fault."

"What about your grades? You were the friggin Valedictorian for god's sake."

"Well, I was depressed for a long time," she said. "I broke up with you and immediately regretted it... it wasn't just that, I lost most of my friends too. Ha! It's kind of funny, you know, they were MY friends first and yet they ultimately chose you over me..."

"Now you have your friends back, right?"

"Some of them, but it's not the same as it was before."

"Where are you staying?"

"I've been crashing on my friend Amy's couch. It's funny she wasn't even a cheerleader and SHE was mad at me for what I did to you... I didn't even know you knew her."

"Home Ec.," I said, and she shrugged and said, "Figures."

"Well, roomy. Pack your bags, because you're staying here with me... as soon as the paint dries that is."

"I, I can't do that," she stuttered.

"Why not? I've got the rooms; I wouldn't mind the company and you'd be able to continue going to school. Think about it, no rent, no bills and since I'm going to be commuting to school next semester we could carpool. Besides, how long is Amy going to let you stay there?"

"Just a few days... I don't know..." she said, hesitantly.

"What have you got to lose?"

"Oh, alright... Thanks Mikey!" she said. "Umm, so how will this work? You don't even have any furniture."

"Well, we're going to have to do something about that aren't we? In the meantime, you can sleep in Stephanie's bed at my mom's house. Lorry won't mind." Lorry was sleeping in my room while she was home for the summer.

"Where are you sleeping?"

"Here," I said, "I have a blow-up mattress and a sleeping bag."

For the first time in a long time, Simone looked happy again. Candy was right, she knew me so well.

I drove Simone to pick up her stuff at Amy's house, which was just a few bags full of stuff. She told me that she needed to get the rest of her stuff packed up and out of her mom's house by the end of the week. She would come back in a few days once she secured a truck to move all of her stuff.

Lorry, to her credit, was great about the whole thing. I think she was lonely in the house by herself.

*

With all the demo work done and the rooms upstairs painted, I had some contractors come out to give me bids on the remaining work. Rather I should say I had some contractors give Lorry the bids because I was having my 'lawyer' sister handle that part.

I did go down to Carpeteria, and through some finagling and bribery I got the carpets fast tracked and scheduled to be installed the next day. I then went down to a furniture store and bought two-bedroom sets, one king sized bed for the master and a queen-sized bed for Simone's room which wouldn't be delivered until Friday. That meant, it being Tuesday, I would have to sleep on the blow-up mattress for three more nights.

I was planning on making the third room into an office but now that I didn't have a guest room, I left that decision for later since there was an unofficial room down stairs that I could make into an office just as well. That room wasn't considered a bedroom because it didn't have a closet or a window, but I remember the "Johns" using it as a room anyway. I figured I could add a window and closet and bring it up to code. Having a fourth bedroom would add to the value of the house.

When I got home, Lorry left a message for me that she signed a contract with three contractors, one to do the kitchen, one to do the upstairs master bathroom, and one to do the sheetrock to replace the wood paneling and redo any of the electrical while we had the walls open, she even left me a schedule. I still needed to get someone out to take out some trees in the backyard and front. I was planning on doing most of the yard work myself but tree work required a lot of specialized equipment, including a wood chipper and for the bigger pieces to be hauled away. It was actually cheaper to have a landscaper do all of that than it was to buy the tools and do it myself, besides cutting down trees was dangerous work.

Even after the rotten and neglected trees were taken out there would still be a ton of work to do. The backyard was a barren mess, the three dogs killed all the grass and all that was left was dirt and weeds. The sprinkler system didn't work and looked to be decades old, so the metal pipes were most likely rusted away.