Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
JULIETTE
I stand with my back against the door, taking a deep breath. It still confounds me how one man can strike two starkly opposing emotions in me. Hudson is the opposite of everything I have ever hoped for in a man. He is brashly proud, open sexually, uncouth, and disrespectful. Yet, there is a softness about him, the way he touched me when I asked him to help with the zipper.
Why did he spin me around, and why didn’t he get his hands off my breasts immediately? Why did he linger? Does he want me?
He doesn’t. He made that clear earlier on in the office. But then why did I make a show-off showcasing the clothes to him? I had restyled my hair and ensured the dress splayed on my body in the most enticing and revealing manner. And the zipper? I could have gotten to that myself. What game am I playing here? Why am I instinctively longing for his attention?
He’s in the next room now. I wonder what he’s up to. I don’t want to delay him, so I hurry into the bathroom. He asked me to choose a new outfit from the set of clothes, and that’s what I did. I choose a short black Chanel gown, with a matching purse, and I’m ready. Now, all I have to do is wait for him.
I wait a long time for his knock which doesn’t come for an hour. When I open the door, he steps in like he owns the place. Well, he is paying for it, but he walks through like he’s the king of the place, even though I didn’t invite him in.
“Come right in,” I say, letting my displeasure be obvious in my voice. He ignores it and looks around the room.
“Mine has a darker shade of brown for the wallpaper,” he points out.
Making small conversations, are we?
“Are we going to eat?” I ask him. “There is no one around. You don’t have to keep up the charade.”
“I thought we were supposed to know each other better,” he says, and for a moment, I think I see pain in his eyes. Did something I said get to him?
“Well. The shade of your room’s wallpaper tells me nothing about you.”
“I like it,” he mentions and then immediately turns around, heading for the door. I follow him.
Oh, so that’s it? This is about the favorite color conversation.
“Are you always this moody?”
“Moody? What gives you the idea that I’m moody?”
“I don’t know. Look how quickly you turned the conversation on its head when I didn’t seem interested in what you had to say.”
“I don’t care if you’re not interested in what I have to say. I’m just making conversation, playing polite.”
“Oh, you’re far from polite.”
“You are the queen of courtesy, aren’t you?”
Why does everything always end up in a fight between us? We’ve known each other for about half a day, and we’ve spent the larger part of that time fighting and arguing.
He stops walking suddenly, and I almost bump into him. The look on his face tells me he’s still in a foul mood. His anger now is just irrational.
“Did I say something or do something to piss you off?” I ask him, squaring up to him. But since he is significantly bigger than me, I cannot help but step back. It is embarrassing because I’m sure that he doesn’t need this but because I really can’t help it.
“Have you ever considered that not everything is about you?” he hisses at me. “You said, let’s get to know each and ask what my favorite color is. I think to tell you a color, you dismiss me.”
“You’re just being petty now. How was I supposed to know you were talking about your favorite color when you mentioned the thing about the wallpaper? You waltzed into my room, said the most random thing ever, and got angry at me for not picking up on your cues.”
He has a very cold look about him that for a while, I fear I had struck a nerve that he can’t look past, but then he chuckles, turns away from me, and continues walking.
“Why are you laughing?” I demand.
“Look at us, bickering,” he says. “No one will believe we aren’t a couple.”
I’ve seen couples bicker, and it’s nothing like what we just did. There is hate laced in every word we speak. They sound like the words of people who can barely tolerate each other. I’m here for the seventy-thousand-dollar paycheck at the end of the seven days, and he’s here, hoping to use me to divert an impending disaster. We are using each other, and that, I predict, is the root of all the troubles. There is nothing genuine about what the two of us have created here.
At the table, we have nothing to say to each other. The waiter comes around, takes our order, and then returns with the food; still nothing to say to each other. We dig in immediately as we are both hungry. Halfway through our dinner, Hudson passes his phone to me. It’s opened to the webpage with the one hundred questions to ask a new potential girlfriend. I’m not going to do that with him. If we have a discussion, it’ll have to be about genuine issues. I could ask him about his ongoing clash with Frank Dubois and how he intends to solve it. But he won’t be willing to talk to me about that because it’s too heavy. I should start small.
I push the phone back to him.
“We’re not doing that,” I tell him.
“Oh, but we need to. The contract says that you must partake in all activities that’ll help further the ruse.”
“But this doesn’t do that. It’s just a list of some stupid questions put together by someone who doesn’t know you. Who doesn’t know us.”
“And you think you know me enough to ask me more personal questions?” he asks defensively.
“Why are you always so defensive?”
“Why don’t you ever take anything seriously?” he countered.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You came. You came to me even though I’m sure all the other girls told you it was a bad idea. It was your first day at work, and you chose to fill the shoes others weren’t willing to.”
“Naivety,” I say to him.
“That’s not true. You’re not the na?ve kind.”
“Oh, now, so you know me,” I say mockingly.
“Enough to know that you’re not an idiot, and neither are you na?ve. But you’re something else. Careless, I think, is the word I’m looking for. You didn’t care for the pain and the difficulty that you might be presented with. You only think of forging on. That’s all your life is about, forging on.”
Which is similar to you, isn’t it? I think, but I don’t say. Total honesty isn’t necessary yet.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s a bad thing if you have no sense of preservation at all. If you think you can forge through just about anything.”
“You’re taking pride in being the thing I can’t forge through, right?”
“No… you’re getting it wrong. I’m not saying this as it pertains to me. Just your person.”
“But we’re discussing, and everything we say is as it pertains to us,” I say. “You say I’m careless, but you’re difficult. Even when you don’t need to be. You don’t seem to have any other mode but the difficult one. And you seem to take pride in it?”
“I am not difficult. I am meticulous.”
“See, you won’t even agree to a simple observation,” I point out.
“Even if it is false?”
“It’s not. Tell me the truth about Aliya, is she really sick? Why does she take many breaks?”
“I don’t know; She has a family issue, I guess.”
“You know why she does it,” I say, maintaining eye contact until he admits the truth.
“Alright, she takes the breaks to cool off from me.”
“And you think you’re just being meticulous and not difficult?”
“Well, I can’t help what I am.”
“I can’t help what I am either. So, you’re an ostensibly difficult man who is almost incapable of forming any meaningful social relationship because people find you unbearable, too controlling, and annoying. And I am a woman whose motto is: when God gives you a lemon, you make lemonade out of it. A woman who never knows when to back down. It should be a fun seven days.”
Hudson guffaws and takes a sip of his wine. He leans forward into me, still grinning.
“What do you need the seventy thousand dollars for?” he asks me, changing the direction of the conversation. I don’t object to it because it is at least an avenue for us to know each other better.
“I want to start a bakery. I’ve saved some money, but not enough. But with the seventy thousand dollars, I’ll have more than enough to get started.”
“A bakery?” he says with a trace of disgust in his voice.
“What? It’s too lowly for you, huh.”
“Forgive me if it sounded like that. It was strange to me, was all.”
Too tired to fight him, I let that go.
“How long have you had the bakery idea?”
“Since college,” I tell him.
“You really want it?” he asks me, leaning even further and sipping his wine. There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Will you do anything for it?”
What is this? What is that look in his eyes? He’s had more than three glasses of wine now, and I can see it’s affecting him, causing him to set aside all his inhibitions.
“Anything like what?” I ask, not quite sure I know how I’ll respond to the answer he gives. I know what he’ll say. His body is speaking louder than words he’s yet to utter.
“Break the contract? Those wallpapers, do you want to see them?”
I stand up and pick up my glass of wine. “I think I’ll just go to bed.”