Paul

"What'd you wear that for?" Mel poked my defenseless abs and I looked up from the tattered western of my dad's that I was trying to read.

I followed her long, acrylic nail pointing at the shedded suit from the funeral slumped over the side of the laundry basket. I don't remember the last time I wore it. Or if it was washer-safe.

"Doc Steve's funeral."

"Hmm." She dropped her hand on my torso and snaked herself further under the covers, strands of her bleach-blonde hair sure to be tangled in my sheets later. They'd be a bitch to pick out.

I propped myself up higher and turned my direction back to the page I'd tried to read. "What time do you work today?

I watched her fidget with the sheets with her other hand.

"Three."

And here we were at noon.

Mel was quite a lay. And a lingerer.

But I'd known those things for years. Even before I came back here.

I waited a moment, unsure if she was going to spring to life or continue the questions. But her soft snoring gave me a sigh of relief.

My eyes were glued to the yellowed pages of the western, but my mind was elsewhere.

When I was a boy. The first time I wore a funeral suit.

I was eight at the time. My mom got cancer - lung cancer.

It was no surprise. My dad was a heavy smoker. And though she never brought a cigarette to her lips, she paid the price.

He stood, his eyes empty, before her casket. Doc Steve right by his side. Doc caught it soon enough, we got two more years with her.

I remember Doc Steve hunkering down next to me, his big hand on my shoulder.

"I'm always around. Medical need or not." He released his hand from me and went to collect his wife and sleeping toddler.

The thing is - he always WAS there. Just like he said.

When my dad got his COPD diagnosis and his ability to care for himself faded away with every hospital trip. When I moved back home and was just about to-

My phone rang loudly on the bedside table next to me and I set down the western and picked up the screen, seeing the contact name "Princess" read to me in the blue light.

I slid out of bed and closed the door to the bedroom, settling into a chair in the kitchen table of my trailer.

"Hello."

"Paul. Uh, hi." She started with uncertainty.

"I...need your help with something."

That took me for a loop. Something in her voice had me revved.

When I saw her at the funeral, she had Prick - I mean, Prince - Charming at her side. Ring and all. What else could a woman need?

If she needed my "help", I'd have to tell her my two rules: first, that I don't do married women and second, I don't do-

"I'm at my parents' house. Or my house, now, actually."

"What do you need?"

"My father did a number on the place, trying to renovate it on his own."

I pulled the phone away and tried to stifle the laughter brewing. I wasn't expecting that.

"It's not good?"

"...not in the slightest."

"So you need me for what?" I asked though I thought I knew the answer. Suit-and-tie pretty boy probably had no handiness skills.

She sighed and took a deep breath. "I'd like to hire you as a carpenter."

I guess she wouldn't need to hear my rules after all.