Chapter 4 Our Mutual, Imaginary Katie #3
He dragged his hands down to the nape of his neck.
“My brother was right. You know how awful he gets when he’s right?
I almost quit my job for this. I work for the federal government.
I’m remote. I have incredible benefits. I have a pension!
Do you know how many thirty-three-year-olds are eligible for pensions? ”
“Other people who work for the government?”
“But not most other people,” he countered. “And I nearly gave it up to live out the plot of a bad movie.”
She was starting to feel a little guilty.
Which was inconvenient. “Hey.” She looked over at the man whose hands were now under his glasses.
They concealed his face and made him look like a bear cub waking up from a nap.
It was confoundingly appealing. “You can still live out your dream! You have six other cabins.”
“Brad condemned the two that sank in the lake.”
“You have four other cabins!”
“I took on all of my uncle’s debt and back taxes because I believed I owned a Groff property. You know that the first book report I wrote for school was on a children’s biography of Vincent Groff? I idolize that man.”
“I hear he was very gifted, sexually.”
He lifted his head, eyes locked on hers, appearing to consider whether to address her comment or push ahead.
He settled on the latter. “Do you want to know what the best thing I’ve designed in the last five years is?
An atrium for a Social Security office in Maryland that had to look exactly like another Social Security office in Virginia.
This was my chance to make something of my own that could stand alongside the likes of Vincent Groff.
But now, I’m never getting out from under this money pit.
I’ll have to sell the place at a loss. I’m going to have to move to Delaware and live with my religiously conservative brother and his six children.
All of their names start with P, and they think vaccines have microchips in them. ”
“Microchips to do what?” she asked.
He sighed and looked listlessly out the car window. “They never know.”
Lainey forced her eyes onto the highway stretched out ahead of her. Her stomach was turning inside out. She felt…bad for him.
God, she was so weak! But she knew the feeling of being financially backed into a corner all too well. She didn’t wish it on Elliot, who, under very different circumstances, she might’ve liked.
In her late-night research on her options, she’d discovered that her tree sculptures likely wouldn’t constitute “substantial improvements” to the surrounding property.
She’d never be able to sell the place without having rights to the land it sat on, and discovering the amount of admin it would take to Airbnb the place had left her second-guessing her desire to do that on her own, too.
Lainey let out a sigh. “What if I rented the cabin to you? Then you could turn around and rent it to vacationers. No profit shares or revenue percentages. Just a flat weekly rate.”
She allowed her eyes to drift across his baleful expression. Warmth spread beneath her breastbone. It felt damn near heroic, being the source of that look on his face.
“That could work. For, like, two hundred a month?”
A laugh sputtered out of her, and with it went the minuscule amount of sympathy she’d had for this guy. “Okay, I was being serious, but you can fuck right off with that offer.”
“That’s the best I can do! Did you not hear the part about my horrible financial circumstances?”
“You don’t think I have horrible finances? Two weeks ago, I paid a speeding ticket in change. And not just quarters. We’re talking, like, all of the presidents. Where do you expect me to live for two hundred a month while you’re renting my place?”
“You can crash with me when someone’s renting for the weekend.”
“With the turtles? Hard pass.” She scoffed.
“Look. I have my own money issues to worry about. Two hundred dollars a month wouldn’t even cover my insurance premiums, let alone my migraine medication…
” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t need to provide her enemy with her entire medical history.
“I at least need those expenses covered by any financial arrangement. Or else I can’t even afford to consider it. ”
“How much is all that?” he asked her, all hopefulness for their circumstances draining from his voice.
“Basically no plans cover my migraine medication, so altogether, all my meds are, like, fifteen hundred a month.”
“That’s highway robbery.” He said it flatly, and she wasn’t sure whether the robber he was referring to was her or the pharmaceutical industry.
His eyes lingered, making her squirm in her seat. She directed her attention to the road, and only when she could no longer feel the weight of his gaze on her cheek did she venture a glance in his direction.
“Maybe my brother will give me Phineas’s old room. He left for Bible college last fall.” His forehead was pressed against the window, his body bent in a way that made him look much too large for her tiny car. Men must’ve been smaller in the eighties, she reasoned.
“It’s good to have dreams, Hodges.” She pulled off the highway for the candy and cheese store. They were sorely in need of both.