5. Lila #2
As he scrutinized me, my stomach sank. What had gotten into me?
I wasn’t a confrontational person. Had I had these kinds of thoughts before?
Absolutely. But I usually kept them to myself, and I never made bitchy comments.
And here I was lecturing the guy who’d just hired me at thirty dollars an hour.
“Sorry,” I said as hot shame crept up my cheeks. My whole life, I’d prided myself on being polite. I was not the type to rock the boat. Quite the opposite, actually. I’d always worked to make those around me comfortable.
“Don’t apologize,” he said, catching me with those stormy blue eyes. “I deserved that, and you’re right.”
He shucked off his coat, draped it over the boxes on the table, and rolled up the cuffs of his dress shirt, revealing tan, muscular forearms that temporarily distracted me from my righteous indignation.
“Put me to work.”
“Thanks for coming with me.”
“It was worth it for the baby carrots,” he quipped with a wry grin.
I squinted at him. “Don’t forget about the gluten-free crackers and the string cheese. This is a classy establishment,” I said, twirling said string cheese in the air.
Back in the parking lot of the Hebert Timber offices, we sat side by side in my van, listening to Wait, Wait, Don’t… Tell Me on NPR and eating the lame dinner I’d packed. Owen had been a rockstar with deliveries, and even putting Mrs. Revelle’s groceries away since she’d just had her hip replaced.
“I didn’t realize I’d have company,” I snarked. “Next time I’ll pack my finest caviar.”
“I’d settle for drive-through fries. Isn’t there a Wendy’s in Heartsborough now? I’ll buy. Anything you want.”
“Thanks, but I have celiac,” I explained, “so I have to be careful about food.”
He bit into another baby carrot with a loud snap. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I waved him off. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve lived with it for more than a decade. But that’s why I always bring my own snacks.”
I had a strange relationship with food, because it had the power to thoroughly screw me up for weeks, sometimes months.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said, looking a bit awkward, “does it just make you sick?”
The last thing I wanted to do was talk about the ins and outs of my GI tract with the hot dude who was my new boss. But there was so much misinformation, and he was interested in the details, so I took a deep breath and tried to explain without too many gory details.
“If I eat gluten, I experience acute symptoms. Uncomfortable stomach stuff.” I raised one eyebrow, hoping he’d get it so I didn’t have to say the word diarrhea out loud.
He nodded once, thank God, so I moved on.
“But that’s not the worst. If I consume gluten, even trace amounts, my body mounts an immune response that causes malabsorption.
That means I don’t absorb many of the vitamins I consume.
So if I slip up and eat something I shouldn’t, I’ll feel awful for weeks afterward because my body can’t properly absorb nutrients. ”
“Shit, I had no idea.”
“Yeah, people like to make fun of it, and I know that going gluten free is considered trendy, but celiac is associated with a significantly increased likelihood of lymphoma and lots of other scary conditions.” I’d always been given shit for my eating habits.
It seemed everyone and their dog liked to have an opinion on what women ate.
“So that’s why, when in doubt, I don’t eat something. And sometimes, when there’s food I can eat, I eat too much. So it’s a whole roller coaster with me.”
“I hadn’t realized. I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. In rural Maine, there aren’t a ton of options, but here and there, I’ve found places that are very careful and accommodating.”
“Do you miss gluten? Not to rub it in, but it’s fucking delicious.”
I laughed. “Not really. Sometimes I crave Froot Loops, but I survive.” I thought for a moment. “Ooh. But there is one thing I miss more than anything. Pizza. Really good thin-crust pizza. It’s almost impossible to find good gluten-free pizza. Mostly it tastes like a soggy cracker.”
“I’ve seen gluten-free pizza at lots of places in Boston. I’ll try some and report back.”
“Thanks.”
“Least I can do. I can’t expect any sane woman to live without pizza. But this explains your impressive assortment of seed crackers. Thanks, by the way. All I’ve got back at my rental is beef jerky and peanut M&M’s.”
I hummed and shot him a grin. “Delicious.”
“I also have a six-pack and a couple hundred emails waiting for me. I lead a very glamorous life.”
“Then you better finish telling me about the cost reports. I wouldn’t want to keep you,” I teased.
We’d talked as we packed grocery orders and while I drove, and the conversation had continued when we’d made it back to the office. Owen was easy to talk to, and his thoughtfulness and sarcasm only made him that much more attractive, dammit.
He’d spent the evening filling me in on the background of the business, what was left of it, what had already been sold off, and how he had spent most of the last year trying to offload what remained.
He’d gone into all the sordid details about how his father had been working with Canadian drug cartels to move narcotics into the United States via the logging roads their family had owned for generations.
Mitch had finally been arrested last year, and not just on drug charges, but murder, assault, and kidnapping charges as well. I hadn’t been living here at the time, but these revelations had rocked the community.