Domestic Do-over by Kate McMurray

Author:Kate McMurray [McMurray, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-64405-835-0
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2020-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

THE NEXT night Travis followed Brandon home, and was somewhat intimidated by his apartment. Brandon was renting out the second floor of a brownstone on a charming block of Brooklyn Heights, in a house that was likely around 150 years old. It was a long, narrow apartment, not a great deal of square footage, but with french doors at the back that led out onto a little deck. The apartment itself was white and a little stark. When they came up the stairs, they were in Brandon’s living room. A narrow hall took them to the bedroom and the kitchen in the rear. The kitchen was the stuff of Travis’s nightmares: white cabinets, white marble counters, no color, no character.

“I didn’t do this work,” Brandon said. “It’s a rental.”

“Good. Because yikes.”

“This is the dream kitchen of a good number of clients I’ve worked with, though. Lots of people like white kitchens.”

“They can have them.”

“Why does it mean so much to you?”

“It doesn’t.” Travis shrugged, but it nagged at him.

Brandon could likely tell he was lying. “Come on. It obviously means something to you.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

Travis rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna need some booze or something first.”

“I’ve got beer in the fridge. Have a seat at the island.”

Because of course the model generic kitchen had a huge island. The stools beside it were the only pops of color in the room, dark wood with blue upholstery. Travis slid onto one as Brandon grabbed two beers from the fridge.

When they were seated beside each other, Brandon lifted his beer and said, “Cheers.”

Travis clinked his bottle.

“So talk to me about why you are so passionately opposed to white kitchens. Have I finally unearthed one of your secrets?”

“It’s not white kitchens that I abhor, exactly. It’s this trend toward making everything so bland and homogenous.” Travis sighed. “Fine. So, I know intellectually that owning property in New York City is in some ways a good investment, and in other ways it’s just pissing money away. But my parents own their house in Forest Hills, and I guess I always assumed I’d own a house someday. I worked for Mike McPhee for a few years before striking out on my own, and I was making a good enough living that I was able to sock away some money. And a little over a year ago, I found this house. It was perfect.” Travis knew he was going to get emotional, although he didn’t want to. “Well, the house was my grandfather’s.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. My parents sold the house after my grandfather died, but it came back on the market, and I jumped at it. I could afford it because calling it a fixer-upper was kind of an insult to fixer-uppers, but I figured I could do a lot of the work myself over a few months before I moved in.”

“Where was it?”

Travis sipped his beer while he collected his thoughts. It seemed like such a small thing in retrospect, but it still bothered him. “Fort Greene, on a residential block that was a real hodgepodge of architectural styles.

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