Arrogant Devil

  “Thanks boss,” he retorts sarcastically, “but last time I checked, I don’t need your permission to work on my own property.”

  Then he turns and gets back to work.

  I pinch my eyes closed for a second. It’s so hard to be nice to a dick. “No, I just mean…you’re not doing them on my account, right?”

  There’s no pause before he replies, “Right.”

  I step forward, trying to angle myself so I can see his expression. Spoiler: it’s not happy.

  “So you’d be willing to go on record that you’ve been wanting to fix the place up for a while?”

  “Uhh…sure?”

  I exhale.

  “Okay, because it’s just that I don’t need you to do anything on my account. I won’t be living here that long.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “No, I just mean after payday I should be able to get my own place, get out of your hair.”

  I can’t help but notice that, in the confusion over my departure, he looked disappointed rather than jubilant, but he regains his composure in an instant.

  He goes back to installing the air conditioner, and I’m left standing there aimlessly. I turn on my heel and then pivot back. I have nowhere to go. I need deodorant and a bra, but I’d die before I put a bra on in front of him.

  I try to make myself useful by picking up a wrench off the ground (at least I think that’s what it is). “Err…do you want my help or—”

  “Yeah, can you not touch anything?”

  I drop it quickly then declare I’m going to take another walk, though it’s the last thing I want to do. I’m still sweaty from the first one.

  This time, while I stroll around his property, I think about my conversation with Edith at the diner. She really let it spill about Jack. It’s like she opened up his case file, pushed it toward me, and said, Here, catch up. All those secrets, all those emotions were foisted on me, and now I don’t know what to do with them. Up until yesterday, I saw Jack as two-dimensional. He was an angry, hotheaded cowboy. His main tasks in life included barking orders and wearing tight denim. Given the choice, he wanted me off his property and out of his life. He’d made that abundantly clear, and I was okay with that, but then Edith had to change things. She had to take a man I generally disliked and stuff him full of explanatory emotions.

  Up until then, I could almost believe Jack had spontaneously sprouted up from the underworld one day just the way he is: jeans, hair, smoldering gaze. Edith disproved that theory. She turned him into a scared twenty-year-old kid, grieving the loss of his parents and learning to carry the weight of his newfound responsibility with the ranch. Of course he’s angry! Of course he’s stressed and short-tempered! No one’s a happy-go-lucky person after going through an experience like that.

  I hate this. I hate Edith for telling me his secrets. We could have gone right on bumping heads and throwing jabs, but it’s not fun anymore. I can’t look at him the same way. I can’t go back into that shack without apologies spilling out of me. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry you had to live through that. Then I’d probably try to offer him a hug, and I know how that would go: he’d shoot his hand out, smack me on the forehead, and stiff-arm me so I’d be left swinging my arms in vain.

  Therein lies the problem: just because I know why Jack is the way he is doesn’t mean he’s going to stop being that way. He still wants me off his property and out of his life. He still finds me to be a general nuisance, and I’m pretty sure he still thinks I’m a spoiled brat from California who’s never worked a day in her life. Well, guess what, buddy boy? I’ve worked FIVE DAYS NOW! So ha!

  All this…this knowledge about Jack paired with Helen’s warnings about not taking advantage of him has left me feeling like things have to change between us.

  I’m just not sure how.

  16

  Meredith

  I start the week with one clear goal: to be the most productive, useful employee Jack has ever had, like if Mary Poppins and Monica Geller had a love child. On Monday, I wake up at the crack of dawn, toss my thin sheet aside, and get to work. I clear everything out of the shack so Jack can have easy access to the floors for his repairs. Then, I make sure to stay out of his way by cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. By the end of the day, the farmhouse is gleaming, and I’m confident Jack could lick any surface and come away with the lemony taste of Pledge on his tongue. Yum!

  My efforts are thwarted when I see that Jack has half a dozen ranch hands working on the shack all day. By the evening, they’ve not only fixed the floors, they also repaired the drywall and moved all my stuff back inside, plus there’s a new pendant light hanging in the center of the ceiling. It doesn’t even look like a shack anymore, more like one of those adorable tiny houses from HGTV.

  With the A/C on, it is—dare I say—chilly inside. I lie awake that night with TWO soft blankets tucked around my body, worried sick about Jack having gone to all this trouble.

  Helen’s words keep reverberating in my mind, leaving bruises.

  You better not be taking advantage of him, Meredith.

  Keep your head down, work, and try to make yourself as useful as possible.

  My only choice is to redouble my efforts on Tuesday. Jack sends a few guys in to retile the shower in the shack-turned-tiny-house, so I decide to draft a list of menu options for him. I’ve seen the way he scowls when I put down a plate of salmon or try to pass off baked asparagus as a carb. No more! If he wants burgers with mac and cheese by the boatload, by golly he’s going to get it! The list I compile includes everything I’m comfortable making (or attempting to make) for his lunches, that way he can cross off anything that doesn’t sound appetizing.

  Later that morning, when I’m sure he’s not too busy, I tap, tap, tap on the door of his office and let myself in after he gives me the go-ahead.

  “Good morning!” I chirp like a songbird.

  “What do you need?” he asks gruffly, skeptical of my cheer.

  I pass him the menu across his desk.

  “What’s this?” he asks, not even looking up at me.

  “I thought I’d get your taste preferences so I can avoid making anything you don’t want to eat for lunch. I’ve separated things into categories for you. There are protein options and side dishes—”

  He shakes his head and pushes the menu back to me, gaze already falling back to his work. “Just keep doing whatever you’re doing. I don’t have time for this.”

  My upper lip wants to curl with annoyance, but I don’t let it.

  “Are you sure? You could just—”

  “I’m sure.”

  Alrighty then. I take the menu and march right on out of there, determined to find some other way to be useful.

  I’m loading clothes into the washer when Edith finds me.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

  I smile and keep tossing clothes in. “I’ve been in here, loading and unloading. Tell me, how do two people produce so much laundry? It’s like you both change your underwear forty-five times a day.”

  She ignores my question and holds up two yoga mats still in their original wrapping. My eyes go wide with wonder.

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “In town, yesterday.”

  My fingers reach out as if to say, Gimme, gimme, gimme. My eyes glisten. My fingers twitch anxiously. I want one of the mats so badly. I need it. Even with the prospect of new floors, yoga on a thrift store rug is getting kind of old.

  Too bad my conscience prods me to remember my mission for the week: Be useful! Happy! Helpful! Especially do not accept any more help from Jack or his well-meaning, impossible-not-to-love grandmother.

  I drop my hand and turn away.

  “I hope they’re both for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. The blue one is yours. My new year’s resolution is to start doing yoga, and you’re going to help me.”

  “It’s June,” I point out.

  “I’ve learned that if I don’t start
resolving until midway through the year, it’s much easier to make it to the finish line.”

  I smile at her genius. “Right, well, you’ll have to find someone else to help you. I need to keep cleaning.”

  “No, you need to come help me yoga. Can yoga be used as a verb? Anyway, it’s nice out and you need a break from this laundry room.”

  “I don’t think Jack would agree with that.” I close the door on the washer and the machine rumbles to life.

  “I just asked him, and he did.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Well, his exact words were, ‘I don’t care. Leave me alone,’ but coming from Jack, that’s all the approval we’re ever going to get, and all the approval I need. Now c’mon. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with my child’s pose.”

  “That’s really more for resting.”

  “Good. Best to start slow.”

  I’m helpless to resist her, not only because I’d love a break from laundry, but because doing yoga outside under a shady oak tree sounds too good to pass up. I convince myself accepting the mat isn’t going against my mission for the week because technically helping Edith with her yoga practice will make her stronger and healthier. Jack wants his grandmother healthy, ergo I must become her yoga Yoda.

  Once I reassure myself my logic is sound, I run to change into the yoga pants I got at the thrift store then meet her outside. I’ve been practicing yoga for years, but I’ve never led anyone else through a practice. I’m a little clunky, not sure how to best explain certain poses for a beginner, but Edith is a good sport. We start slow, and by the time we roll up our mats, she’s proven I shouldn’t have underestimated her. I wasn’t even really going easy on her; all in all, it was a pretty decent workout.

  “Same time tomorrow?” she asks, standing up with her mat.

  I grin. “Sounds good.”

  I feel amazing as we head back to the house—better than I have in a long time. Not only did I get a little break from cleaning, it was actually really fun to practice yoga with Edith. I liked guiding her and coming up with poses, and I already have ideas for what I want to do tomorrow.

  Later, Edith tries to get me to eat lunch with them, as she’s done every day, but I insist that I need to keep working. The rest of the afternoon passes quickly as I continue scrubbing, and shining, and folding, and generally staying out of Jack’s way. I figure my best chance of keeping under his radar is to steer clear of him altogether.

  It works remarkably well. We don’t fight at all. In fact, it’s been so many days since we fought (two, for those of you counting at home) that he’s probably already warming up to me. Bonus: I’m so preoccupied with Jack and my work ethic, I hardly have time to remember my own crumbling life. Thumbs-up.

  On Wednesday, I turn into Betty Crocker in the kitchen. I don an apron, use a rolling pin, and have half a pound of flour caked in my hair by the time I finish trying out the recipe Dotty sent home with Jack. A few dozen cranberry oatmeal cookies litter the counter. I put extra white chocolate chunks in them, and the result is nothing short of a culinary masterpiece. After a quick thank-you call to Dotty—that lasts 45 minutes—I fill up little take-home bags with cookies and deliver them to all the ranch hands. They thank me so profusely. “Meredith, you’re the best!” “Thanks Meredith!” “Aw Meredith, can’t you stay and chat?”

  Though they’re remarkably good for my ego (much better than Jack is), I don’t let the hands coax me into staying. I don’t want to be a distraction. Instead, I tell them to enjoy then scurry back inside so I can take a plate filled with the very best cookies and an ice-cold glass of milk up to Jack’s office. The glass numbs my hand as I walk up the stairs, and the cookies are the perfect mix between crunchy and gooey and straight out of the oven. They could force an entire squadron of bake-sale moms into early retirement.

  The door to his office is open, and he glares at me from behind his desk as I stroll in and out again without so much as a word, just a pleasant smile and a wave. He scowls like he’s confused by this version of me. Meredith Avery: non-nuisance. That Employee of the Year award has my name written all over it.

  I grin to myself as I walk back downstairs. Obviously, I would have liked to stay and watch him roll on the ground, weeping at the glory of my baking abilities, but that’s not part of my plan. Instead, I just have to imagine it.

  I think I’m kicking butt, proving Helen wrong, and staying focused. Later on, I’m in the kitchen making a marinade for tomorrow’s lunch when Jack shouts my name through the house. Uh oh. That doesn’t sound like cookie ecstasy. When I find him, he’s in his closet, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing to his racks of clothes. He’s wearing his Angry Jack face, his shoulders blocking out part of the overhead light. I wonder if he could squash me beneath his shoe or if it just feels that way when he’s worked up.

  “What the hell is all this?”

  His voice makes me jump.

  “What is what?”

  He points to the clothes, reminding me of the task I undertook earlier while the cookies were baking.

  “Oh, right. I organized your clothes by color and category.”

  “Why?”

  I sweep my hand across the impeccably organized garments. “It was all a jumbled mess before—I’m surprised you could figure out where anything was.”

  I don’t find it necessary to mention the fact that I did a fabulous job. His jeans are in descending shades of blue. His shirts are grouped together so that his black t-shirts (of which there are many) are all in their own section. His work shirts are separated from his nice long-sleeve shirts. The suits I was surprised to find are hanging together near the back. I also don’t mention the fact that I imagined him wearing those suits and had to prop my hand on the closet wall and pause my organizing for a solid five minutes while I let the fantasy play out in my mind. It was jarring, to say the least.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t like change.”

  “Okay-okay-okay,” I say, immediately deferent. “I’ll put everything back. Just…in the meantime, don’t look in your underwear drawer. No reason.”

  After I finish work for the day, the guys are still wrapping up some tile work in the shack, so I’m left with no place to go. I could stay in the farmhouse, but Jack still seems annoyed about his closet and I don’t want to impose on him. I already did yoga with Edith, so I don’t really need the exercise, but I decide I’ll take another stroll around the property anyway. When I was chatting with Chris earlier, he mentioned that there was a nice creek due west of the house. He said it was a quarter mile or so to get there, but there’s a trail to follow and it’s worth the trek.

  I set out in that direction and am a few minutes into my walk when I get the feeling that I’m being tailed.

  I turn and see Alfred trotting behind me at a distance. He tucks himself half behind a bush. If he could, he’d be wearing a pair of those disguise glasses with the comically large nose and mustache. I continue walking and so does he. I stop and he stops and sits, tongue wagging, eyes shining with stupid love.

  “Go back home, Alfred!” I shout, assuming my words will hit their mark.

  He doesn’t budge. His tail swings back and forth in the grass.

  “Go on!” I wave my arms menacingly. “Get!”

  I’ve become Frankie Muniz in My Dog Skip. Alfred is supposed to walk off dejectedly and the audience is supposed to cry, but Alfred, who promptly listens to every command Jack utters, seems to turn a deaf ear to me.

  I sigh and tell him to stay—adding in a dramatic STOP hand motion—and then I continue my walk. He does stay for a little while, but then he hops right back up.

  It’s not like I’m that scared of him anymore. In the last few days, I’ve even gotten used to having him around. He’s always in the farmhouse, sleeping on his bed or under the kitchen table, and I feed him and replenish his water bowl. Earlier, he came to lie down near my feet while I was baking, and I didn’t even notice until I nearly st
epped on him.

  Still, there’s a difference between tolerance and active friendship. I’d prefer the former; Alfred clearly disagrees.

  He gets closer to me and trots along at my side. I glance down at him with pursed lips, and he nudges my palm with his nose, like he’s saying, See? I’m nice. Please love me.

  He is pretty cute with his floppy ears and golden coat. Dammit.

  I sigh and give in to him. We walk together for a few more minutes in silence before I ask him how he likes the weather. He ignores me. Then, because why the hell not, I start to tell him about my day, and then that somehow morphs into me explaining to him why it hurts my feelings that I don’t have a better relationship with Helen. I divulge the fact that even when we were younger, we didn’t get along that well. He’s the perfect listener, doesn’t interrupt me even once, and before I know it, we crest over the top of a hill and I spot the creek.

  Except, it’s not a creek—it’s a river! Or at least it looks like one to me: wide, crystal clear, and rimmed with cypress trees, wildflowers, and ferns. The path I’m on dead-ends in a little clearing on the bank of the creek. It looks like a perfect, pebbly beach entrance.

  Alfred and I step closer. Even though the creek flows pretty quick, I figure it’s not going so fast that it’d sweep me away to the Gulf of Mexico.

  I can’t gauge how deep it gets in the center, which means it probably goes well over my head. To my left, there’s an overgrown oak tree with a rope swing hanging down. The knot at the top cuts into the tree’s limb, and it’s probably been up there for a while.

  Even though it’s early evening, the sun is still blazing overhead. The temperature has to be in the high 90s, and our walk built up a nice layer of sweat on my skin. Swimming sounds heavenly.

  I turn to Alfred and dab sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “What do you think? Should we swim?”

  Alfred leaps into the water before I even have time to remove my shoes, splashing and pouncing and lapping it up like he’s having the time of his life.