#oypt

Appliance Delivery Men as a concept paints a not necessarily flattering image in Astrid’s mind.  She can’t help but expect someone paunchy who looks like her plumber, old and gruff and ready to call her sweetheart.  She doesn’t realize that she even has a strong image in her head until she pulls up in her new, blissfully owned driveway and sees the two guys sitting on the lift-gate of the appliance delivery truck.  

They’re about her age, which makes her feel so young for what feels like the millionth time since she signed her uncle’s house over into her name, because she should be delivering things to a home, not owning one, and this is the scariest curve she’s ever been ahead of.  They don’t jump up immediately, waiting for her to park then standing lazily, like they’re getting paid by the hour and they aren’t eager for the money earning window to disappear.  

“Are you uh…I can’t read Gobber’s handwriting,” one man—boy, really, she wants to say boy, but if they’re boys she’s just a girl and she has far too much responsibility for that—jumps down from the liftgate and calls over his shoulder at the other one, who starts unbuckling a fridge from the wall of the truck.  “Do you live here?”  He looks up at her and seems to take a second to focus before his face splits in a wide, opportunistic grin.  “I’m glad I know where you live.”  

“Creepy,” the other man calls from the truck, voice a surprisingly loud echo on the quiet street.

“As long as you brought the fridge,” Astrid shakes his hand and he holds on a second too long, looking her house up and down with the closest thing she’s seen to optimism since she learned it was hers.  

“Yeah, yeah,” he waves her off, “we’ve got it.  Just show me how we’re getting this thing in there, it’s not going through the front door.”

“Super creepy,” the man in the truck sing songs, grunting as the back end of her fridge rolls out of the truck onto the lift gait.  

“The truck says free delivery, cuz, not free audience for your lame jokes.”  He laughs like he expects Astrid to back him up and she blinks.

She’s thinking she would have preferred the fatherly plumber types in her head.  

“The patio door is wider,” she leads the way through the back gate, aware suddenly of how messed up the place is, construction debris strewn across the dead patches of yard. She knows they’re not guests, they’re not judging her disarray, but it’s discouraging anyway, because she’s supposed to have this all figured out already but she doesn’t.  

“Do I love me patio doors! Always a good time,” He whistles, pulling a measuring tape from his pocket and stringing it across the gap, “Snotlout, by the way.  Jorgenson. You can ask for me if you need help getting this puppy hooked up.”  

“I’ve got it.”  

“Thirty two and a half inches,” the tape measure snaps closed, “another door shorter than your inseam, cuz.”  

“That’s not an insult,” the other man comes around the corner and offers his hand, making brief, startled eye contact with Astrid before glaring down his partner, “Hiccup.” He introduces himself, freckled cheeks flooding pink.  

He looks more like a boy than the other one—Snotlout, if that’s a name and not something printed on a fake ID someone printed to get into a Black Metal concert—all lanky teenaged angles and uneven dusting of red hair across his chin.  

She wants to call back for an actual adult to deliver the fridge she paid so much for.  Well, ok, the fridge was a deal, but still, it’s the first purchase for the house that feels like a guarantee and suddenly these two dorks moving it might as well be toddlers carrying a cup of coffee across white carpet.  

“We’re going to have to butterfly it in,” Snotlout spreads his arms wide, looking at Hiccup, who nods like it means something.  

All Astrid can think of is her shiny new fridge and the fact that butterfly is something people do to chicken breasts with really sharp knives.  

“What’s that mean?”  

“Oh, uh,” Hiccup scratches the back of his head, “it’s like—the handles are too wide for the door, so we open the doors and kind of curve it in,” he demonstrates the motion with his hand, knobby bruised knuckles fitting in with the utter disarray of her backyard.  

Her yard.  Her fridge.  Her house.  Her insurmountable odds of success.  

“And you aren’t going to knock it on the stair?”  

“Nah, we got it,” Snotlout flexes, winks, and pats his arm, and Hiccup rolls his eyes, glancing around the yard and almost catching Astrid’s eyes, like he’s not sure she wants to commiserate with him or not.  

She does.  Kind of.  Because he’s made more expressions in the last ten seconds than she has in the last six months and because every time Snotlout opens his mouth it’s a multi-toned ping on the dusty douche-dar in her brain.  It’s not threatening though, it reminds her of school, back when she had time to be there and watch Freshmen stumble through social interactions like knock-kneed fawns.  

“Sorry about him,” Hiccup tucks his hands in his pockets, “it’s a big yard.  You just moving in?”  

“Trying to. Everything I try and fix falls apart into a hundred other problems,” she says it like a mantra, something pithy and empty that she can say out loud without anyone asking if she’s been sleeping.

“Are you going to rent it out, or…?”  He asks like he has some grand, instantaneous idea about what he’d do differently and she crosses her arms.  

“No, I’m living here.”

“Oh, cool, I just…yeah. I’ve got to go because my cousin’s trying to bear hug your fridge off the lift gate but—“  He waves and jogs off through the gate, smacking his hip against the fencepost and stumbling.  He actually is knock-kneed, and the freckles don’t detract from the baby deer comparison.  

She takes the moment they’re gone to rearrange the mess inside, scooting paint buckets under the lone work table in the soon to be living room and tugging stuff away from the door.  

Snotlout grunts outside and she can’t help but be a little irked that a couple of dorky boys in a truck have somehow effortlessly involved themselves in her adult moment in the sun.  Cleaning this place up is a thankless task and she doesn’t need some twerp named Hiccup of all things looking at it like he could do better.  

They come around the corner, slowly but surely, weight baring strap stretched under the fridge and over both of their shoulders.  Hiccup stumbles backwards, almost falling on his ass as he shoulder-checks the patio door.

“Can you slow down?” He hisses, like it’s supposed to be a secret argument.  

“I’m barely moving, dude.”

“Then maybe you should back up.”  

“You’re the one insisting you’re a much better leader than a follower,” Snotlout laughs like he’s not out of breath and Astrid rolls her eyes.  

“You’re the one shoving it into my lap,” he stumbles again, “lean it forward, it’s going to clip the ceiling when we open the doors.”  

“No, it won’t, we’re professionals,” Snotlout says professional like an amateur in earshot is jealous.  “Just keep moving.”  

“It’s heavy,” Hiccup coughs, “and I swear if you say I’m being uncommunicative—”

“You’ll what?  Drop the hot girl’s fridge on me?”  

Astrid holds back a yawn, keeping her eyes open to watch the lower edge of shiny stainless flirting with the step as they open the fridge doors on a count of three.  Hiccup grunts.  

“Do you need help?” She steps forward, bracing one hand on the open fridge door and lifting before either of them say anything.  

“No, I’ve got it,” Hiccup takes a step backwards all at once, like an incredible hulk fueled by her second-hand embarrassment, and the fridge curves through the door surprisingly smoothly.  Hiccup shuts the fridge door that he’s holding.  

“Uh, you didn’t communicate before you did that—”

“And the only staff meeting you’ve made it to ever was the one with the safety video about teamwork.”

“That hurts my feelings, and HR cares about my feelings, Hiccup.”  They set down the fridge and Snotlout lifts the strap of his weight belt over his head, rolling his shoulders and turning to Astrid, “you sure you don’t need help installing this?”  

“You don’t have a waterline over here yet,” Hiccup pulls the strap around his shoulders aside, rubbing a red impression in the back of his neck, “main water supply downstairs.? Otherwise you have to come down through the attic—”

“I’m going to run it later,” she feels like that’s the new consummate answer for everything.  The mythical later that never gets any closer to a now where she’s not constantly breathing drywall dust.  Part of her wants help, at this point, someone to come in and finish the million things she’s started and gotten tangled with each other, but she’s too stubborn for that.  She’s not giving up the stamp she gets to mentally press into every surface of this place at the end of this remodel.  “The main is right downstairs, it’s like six feet of hose.”  

“Six feet is overrated, no leverage up there,” Snotlout snorts and waves his hand at Hiccup, half banter, half thinly veiled animosity, and Astrid almost asks them to stay and help.

Because stupid pick-up lines are better than creaky silence and a shiny fridge making everything around it look like it needs to be scrubbed.  She’s been alone too much lately, if she’s enjoying this company.  She should get a cat.  There might be a mouse problem in the basement anyway.  

“Did you remember the paperwork?”  Hiccup rolls his eyes, looking around again like he’s seeing nothing but projects and potential and money she doesn’t have seeping into every groove of newly patched drywall.  

“It’s in the truck.  I just need some initials and your number and we’ll be out of your hair.”  

“He doesn’t need your number,” Hiccup says with the bored intonation of someone with the monotone catchphrase practically on speed dial in his brain.  

“I do if you want a customer service survey rating our interaction returned to you in two business days.”  Snotlout winks again and Astrid almost laughs, the sound floating like a bubble at the base of her throat.  

She used to punch people like him for existing.  That was before she had an impending mortgage and a brand-new copy of Plumbing for Dummies.

“You don’t want the survey,” Hiccup warns her as the three of them walk back through the patio door and gate, towards the parked truck, “he just took the customer service comment form and replaced lumber with boner.  And there’s a string of emojis I’m sure are dirty but I’m scared to ask.” He looks up, eyes widening, “and I just said boner to a customer.  Twice. For the record, I skipped the staff meeting with the sexual harassment training video, so it’s the corporation’s fault, really.  And if you complain, remember Jorgenson is spelled with a J and Snotlout’s just how it sounds.”  

“I think I need the survey for evidence.”  

Snotlout nearly falls over the truck, walking over with an over-eager stride, pen tucked into his shirt pocket.  

“She wants the survey,” Hiccup elbows the shorter man, “something about an excuse to get away with murder?  The undeniable urge to strangle people who abuse the tongue out emoji?”  

“I ain’t scared, I dropped dead sexy years ago,” he says it with such a straight face that it’s almost art. Deep Seated Denial, 2016, Medium: Facial Expression.  

Astrid tucks her overgrown bangs behind her ear, ignoring the lock that falls back over her forehead. She needs a haircut.  Her too long, ticklish hair is like a tenuous tether to reality while the appliance delivery guys seem hell bent on orchestrating some improv skit in her driveway.  

“Alright, so I need one signature on the first page,” Snotlout hands her the clipboard and pen, “an initial in these boxes saying we didn’t damage your property, even though Hiccup tried his hardest.”  

“Just letting you play the hero,” Hiccup takes a wavering step towards the car while Astrid initials down the last page.  “Oh yeah, you have to dump the first couple buckets of ice and the first gallon or two through the water filter.  Unless you want to anti-rust coat your taste buds.”  

“God, I almost want to pity ask her out for you, cuz,” Snotlout rolls his eyes, “any problems in the next thirty days and we’re happy to help.  After that you’re dead to Hiccup and owe me a drink so…”  

“Seriously, Snotlout Jorgenson with a J, that’s who you report.”  Hiccup shoves his hands deep into his grubby pockets, like if he doesn’t pin them still he’ll lose total control of them.  He glances at the house again, her house, the house that’s one step closer to livable with not so serious voices still echoing inside of it. “Enjoy the fridge.”  

“Our next delivery is bitching at us,” Snotlout leans out of the passenger window of the truck, “come on, let’s go.”  He honks the horn and Astrid flinches before yelling back.  

“What are you doing? It’s a quiet neighborhood!”  

Hiccup laughs, “right, I’ve got to go save the neighborhood watch the trouble of orchestrating a citizen’s arrest,” he waves, the hand sliding out of his pocket with a jingle of keys.  “But I’ll uh—I mean, good luck.”