Chapter 7
Update: It’s almost two hours after bedtime. Loch Ness is for sure asleep by now, so I’m going to start.
I will be playing the role of a sad clown ghost with a really high pitched voice that only dogs and sea monsters can hear who keeps wailing about the Great Balloon Animal Rebellion of Yonder Year that has been putting all the other clowns out of business.
There is circus music playing quietly beside me to set the mood.
I will be holding my nose and making my voice really shrill to optimize rage damage in hopes of a critical hit.
Stay tuned.
Amber was, quite possibly, my favorite person of the decade.
Not only had she massively pulled through on the coolers, but she’d lined them with ice packs and neatly packed the perishables inside before driving over.
She was extremely sweet, studying social work part-time while raising her thirteen-month-old son, Ash (a button-faced cutie with the squishiest, most ridiculously adorable cheeks I’d ever seen), and, from what I gathered through her breathless introduction and constant thank-yous, very, very sleep-deprived.
It took a bit of insistence that I didn’t need help carrying everything inside before she finally caved, pulled me in for one last hug, and drove off in a battered silver sedan with a shimmy, a squeal, and $5,900 in well-deserved tips.
Dominic, on the other hand, who was not raising a child by himself while studying part-time without the means to afford a babysitter, did not offer any assistance when he saw me hauling everything inside.
I’d double her tip next time. Triple it, even. It wasn’t like he’d notice.
I unpacked the cleaning supplies, wiped off enough counter space to make lunch, and got to work.
Without washing, descaling, or deboning the fish, I slapped it onto the shiny new oven sheet Amber had picked up, drowned it in a freshly made, unsalted marinade, threw the whole thing in the oven, and set it to broil.
The requirement was that I make him lunch.
Nobody said it had to be good.
Or even edible.
Rosie’s cooking was obviously top-notch. But she wasn’t a spoiled heiress with no life skills to speak of whatsoever. And the longer I played into the role, the more leverage I gained over her son.
If he weren’t eating my food, I wouldn’t have to put any real effort into cooking. Imagine how much time and energy that would save me.
Even the cleaning I was doing felt like too much. I’d need to offset my competency with something ridiculous, like polishing his shower with olive oil. Or trying to move a four-hundred-pound fridge with the flimsy rope Amber had deemed appropriate for a roast suckling pig cosplay.
I’d barely managed to unravel enough of the stuff to theoretically fit around Goliath (the fridge) before Dominic cracked. “What are you doing?”
I batted my lashes at him innocently. “What do you mean?”
His teeth, lips, and surrounding skin were now stained a gag-inducing corpse gray from the food dye. It was hilarious.
“What’s with the rope?”
“Your fridge isn’t plugged in.”
“And toppling it onto yourself will remedy that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Your salmon is burning. You might want to take care of that first.”
“It’s not burning,” I insisted, ignoring the subtle hint of smoke tickling at my throat. “I set the oven to boil. Last I checked, you can’t burn something by boiling it, Dominic.”
His lips parted. His cheek twitched. Then he glanced down and rubbed a palm over his mouth with a broken “hmm” that sounded a hell of a lot like it was meant to cover up a laugh.
I sucked on my cheeks and returned my attention to the rope. After tying one end around a small sack of lentils, I chucked it over Goliath, satisfied when it hit the ground on the other side with a thud.
Ignoring Dominic’s judgmental snort, I dropped to my hands and knees, used a broom to push the bag all the way to the left, then drew it back out from underneath. It worked like a charm. A handful of flimsy knots later, Goliath was sufficiently ensnared.
Then I started to circle the rope around my hips.
The salmon was charred by this point, and we were seconds away from the smoke alarm triggering. It smelled rank—borderline hazardous to eat.
“Be a dear and turn off the oven, would you?” I asked Dom sweetly. “I’m a little tied up right now.”
He did so without a word, making a point of throwing all the windows open. “I should’ve made you sign a waiver absolving me of being held responsible for the consequences of your… do people still refer to it as creativity to soften the blow?”
“I don’t know. Do they still tell you it’s perfectly normal to drink breast milk at your age?”
He pressed a hip to the counter and crossed his arms, biceps bulging. “I know you started that rumor.”
“Only after you went around telling everyone I was born with a tail.” He’d done it a day before Show and Tell, then dubbed it Show and Tail because it was the lowest-hanging fruit, and he’d never been all that clever.
Either way, it’d caught on, and Mrs. Kim had to call a “zip-lip minute” when half her third graders started cackling and demanding I show them my tail in the middle of my presentation.
It was traumatizing, obviously.
So I’d put a dead worm in his soup and told anyone who would listen he couldn’t sleep without suckling on a bottle of breast milk.
“You were born with a tail,” he deadpanned.
“For the last time, it was someone’s finger in the picture.” Why my dad had agreed to share my newborn photo album with the demonic little menace would remain a mystery to me until the day I died. “I was bundled up in a swaddle blanket. How would you have even been able to tell?”
“They cut a hole in the fabric to accommodate your protuberance.”
I snorted. “Like you’d know anything about protruding body parts.”
That was one rumor I hadn’t started. He had his ex to thank for that one.
It was the end of grade eleven. She was the captain of the girls’ swim team, and their relationship had lasted for a whopping total of ninety-eight hours. Once they’d broken things off, she’d gone around telling everyone it was because he couldn’t get it up.
Dominic’s tone turned a touch bitter. “Yes, we all remember how hard you laughed when word got around.”
My eyes rolled. “You opted to eat a dried cricket when you spun the bottle, and it landed on me at Jaxton’s party senior year, so I’d say we’re pretty even.”
Because you know who’d laughed then? Everybody.
He’d gagged while chewing it, and a few of his soccer buddies had jumped in with unnecessary comments at my expense as he’d chugged a can of beer, trying not to hurl.
He hadn’t regretted it. Apparently, it was still more appetizing than pressing his mouth to mine for a quarter of a second.
Dominic’s golden-brown eyes thinned. “We’re getting distracted. I believe you were about to attempt to move a four-hundred-pound fridge using your body weight and candy-colored dental floss.”
Rachel thought I was kidding, but I really was going to poison him. Tomorrow, I’d order enough yellow dragon fruit to keep him on the toilet for a year.
I took a deep breath, gripped the rope with as much confidence as I could fake, and yanked. I tried different angles, redistributed my body weight, and pulled until my body finally caved and collapsed against the kitchen island.
“Are you done?”
I didn’t have enough oxygen left in me to respond.
He let out an insufferably arrogant chuckle before reaching up on top of the fridge for a remote. He hit one button, and Goliath’s hidden display came to life.
Oh. That I hadn’t seen coming.
My original plan had been to call a service to come move the fridge for me if I couldn’t manage it myself, but this was kind of perfect.
“Page two of the manual.” Dominic flipped the remote in his hand, cocky smirk intact as he started to overexplain.
“It was already plugged in. You just needed to press the power button, which is this big one right here that says ‘ON’ in massive capital letters.” He turned to leave just as I mustered enough energy to lift myself off the counter.
“Oh, and as delectable as the salmon smells, I don’t think my stomach can handle that much soot. It’s all yours. I’ll order in.”
Just like that, I’d relieved myself of having to cook him proper meals, convinced him that I’d gained no life skills whatsoever since high school, and bored him enough to leave me alone so I could actually get my chores done.
And he still didn’t know about the coffee dye. I grinned when I heard the front door open, then shut.
This was going to be fun.