Page 42 of Beating Heart
Yep. Hot dogs, brewskies, fireworks, and some lake time. I think we could all use it.
Romeo
Beans and I will be there. Will we be inviting the good doctor next door? I still haven’t met her yet.
Well, I always let all the neighbors know, seeing as they’ll all see us out there. So, I’ll mention it to her, but I doubt she’ll come. She likes to keep to herself.
King
When she’s not delivering care packages to you. Saylor and I will be there with Dandelion.
Kingston and Saylor had a goldendoodle that they treated like their child, and they took her everywhere with them now.
Hayes
I’m off this weekend, so I’ll be there.
River
Ruby and I could use some downtime. Looking forward to it.
I set my phone down and made my way to the renovation site. It was going to be a long day, and I was ready to make some progress on this project.
Once we were there, I spent all my time putting out fire after fire, so to speak. There was a leak issue in the men’s restroom, and the flooring that we’d chosen didn’t match the existing flooring. So now we were having to add another coat of stain to darken them up. The front door that Kingston had built at his shop was about an eighth of an inch too big, so we’d have to shave off the edges of the drywall to make it fit.
“Hey, Nash.” Lucille and her husband, Dave, strode through the large opening where the front door would go once we fixed the issue.
“Hi. How’s it going?” I asked.
“Well, we’re anxious to get the doors open,” Dave said, raising a brow. “It costs me a small fortune every day that this place isn’t open. And there still seems to be a lot of work to do here.”
“Correct. We gave you the timeline, and we’re on track to finish in three weeks, as planned. We’re on schedule, so I’m not sure what the problem is?”
“The problem is that we’d like to open the doors sooner than planned.” Lucille raised her chin and her brow all at the same time in a move meant to intimidate me.
It didn’t work.
We had a timeline, and we were sticking to it.
It wasn’t uncommon for clients to get impatient once we were in the middle of a project.
“Listen, we need to get this right, and we’re on track to do so. But you can’t change the timeline when we’re three weeks out. It doesn’t work that way.” I shrugged.
“We’re manifesting it,” Lucille said, her tone harsher than I’d ever heard it. “And when you manifest, you don’t have to get permission. It just happens.”
I used my hand to cover my mouth to keep from laughing because this was the first time I’d heard this reasoning when it came to changing the timeline.
“I can respect you putting all the positive mojo out into the universe, but that’s not how construction works. We have every single minute of the workday thought out for the next three weeks, with a full team of guys working long hours at the site. All the manifesting in the world is not going to get the job done any sooner.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“That’s disappointing. So, I’m going to ignore what you’re saying and count on the doors opening in two weeks.” Lucille stormed off, and Dave groaned.
“Sorry about that. She’s just stressed about money right now, so she’s got it in her head that if we open sooner, all will be good. But we’re fine with the timeline as you have it. I just wanted to make sure we were on track,” Dave said.
“If nothing major comes up, we should be good to go. I’m sorry we can’t get you in here sooner. We’re doing the best we can to get it done on time.”
“I hear you, and that all sounds good. Thanks, Nash. It’s really coming together, and I’m very pleased.”
Just then, Lucille snapped her fingers from a few feet away. “Let’s go, Dave. I can’t manifest when I’m standing in the middle of a construction site.”
