Chapter 9
E arlier than she had ever been awake—if you could call it that—Kalista dragged herself down the stairs to the basement where she was supposed to meet Tyler for delivery girl training.
Yesterday afternoon she managed to fall asleep, even though the electricity didn’t come back on until eight o’clock.
Viv woke her up for dinner, and when she left the bedroom, Bo was outside grilling steaks while the electric company truck was parked at the end of the driveway working on the damaged pole.
The three of them had a delicious supper, minus the baked potato since the oven wasn’t working. Bo was incredibly nice, and he clearly loved Viv and vice versa. Their dinner was the highlight of her time in Arkansas so far and she’d easily fallen back to sleep.
But getting up at two in the morning was an absolute pain. She didn’t even bother to brush her hair—just put it up in a scrunchie and slipped on shorts and a long-sleeved sweatshirt with UCLA on the front. It wasn’t like she had anyone to impress.
When she reached the last step on the basement stairwell, Tyler appeared in front of her. “Hi,” he said, way too cheery for this hour in the morning.
She nodded and yawned again.
“I know it’s early,” he said, pushing up his glasses. “But you’re late.”
Kalista looked at her watch. “Only by fifteen minutes.”
“When you’re delivering papers, fifteen minutes is a lot. Our customers expect their papers to be delivered on time. I’m sorry, but I have to give you a warning. Company policy.”
“Fine.” She waved him off as he stepped aside.
“Unless you have an acceptable reason, if you’re late again, you’re fired,” he said, with all the force of a golden retriever.
Don’t tempt me. She could already tell she wasn’t going to like this job, and getting fired would be a relief. But she was just as sure that her father would probably apply more restrictions if she lost her first job on purpose. “I’ll be on time from now on.”
Tyler grinned. “Great. Let’s get started.” He headed for the other side of the basement where the huge stacks of newspapers were on long tables against the wall, plenty of pep in his step.
Ugh, he was annoyingly energetic. She shuffled behind him and half listened as he explained which newspapers were for her route.
“Sometimes you’ll have to put flyers inside before you roll them.”
“Roll them?”
He picked up a flat paper and, in a flash, the pages turned into a tube. Sliding a rubber band over it, he said, “You’ll have to roll these before you can deliver them.”
“Doesn’t someone else do that?”
“When we had a bigger circulation, yes.” He grabbed another paper and moved closer to her. “But we’re small now, so we do it ourselves. It’s easy, just watch.”
He stood close enough she could tell his hair was damp, and he smelled clean, like he’d just taken a shower. No cologne, like Ryan always wore—sometimes too much—and her other male friends and guys she dated. Great hair, though. Thick and shiny.
“Now you try.” He handed her a flat paper.
Oops. She should have been paying more attention to what he was doing and less attention to his hair.
Still, how hard could this be? She took the paper and started to roll it.
The sheets slipped out of her hands and separated, floating to the floor.
“Sorry,” she said, cringing that she’d messed up such a simple task.
He bent down and picked up the papers. “That’s okay,” he said good-naturedly. “It takes practice.” He placed the separated sheets on the table and grabbed another flat newspaper from the stack, then stood in front of her. “Okay, watch carefully this time.”
She did and realized the mistake she’d made. She grabbed a paper from the stack. “I think I’ve got it.” When she finished, she’d rolled it perfectly.
“Awesome,” he said. “Try another one.”
Kalista continued to roll up papers as Tyler watched, getting into a rhythm.
This wasn’t too bad, and she was getting used to the smell of ink and newsprint.
When she finished rolling the last paper, she grinned at the neat line of papers ready to be delivered.
“I did it,” she said, feeling accomplished.
Then she looked down at her hands and almost freaked out. “My fingers are black!”
“It’s from the ink.” He handed her an old blue rag with stains all over it. “You can wipe your hands on this.”
She eyed the rag dubiously. “Isn’t there a sink around here?”
“Upstairs in the restroom.” Tyler pushed a cart to the table. “But we don’t have time for that. We’ve got to get these loaded into your car.”
“Truck,” she corrected. Bo had told her she could use it for the rest of the summer.
“I don’t need it,” he’d said, picking up a toothpick after they’d finished supper.
“I’ve got two more I use for work.” He also gave her tips on how to drive it, and she did better on the drive over here this morning than she had yesterday.
Her father had a fleet of cars, and right after he and Bettany had gotten engaged, he’d given Bettany a new Bentley, making Kalista seethe with jealousy. She was stuck driving a Mercedes.
“Great,” Tyler said. “A truck will handle the back roads better.”
Mr. Hudson had said the same thing yesterday.
Exactly how treacherous were these roads?
This was probably the wrong time to admit she’d only gotten her license a couple of months ago— something else her father had made her do instead of his driver taking her places.
At the time she’d thought that was the only thing he was going to force her to do.
Little did I know. She had learned to drive in LA traffic, though, and from what she could tell, Clementine barely had any traffic at all, so that was in her favor.
They loaded up the cart with the papers and went outside the door to the back parking lot, which was empty save for one beat-up looking car. “Where’s your truck?” Tyler asked.
“Up front.”
“Didn’t Mr. H. tell you to park in the back?”
“He might have,” she admitted. Once he hired her, she hadn’t exactly been listening to him.
“No problem, you can do it next time. Just go and bring it around here.” He flashed her another easygoing grin.
Did this guy get ruffled about anything?
After she parked the truck in the correct lot, they loaded up the papers and she got in the driver’s side. Tyler squeezed in on the passenger side. Fortunately he was so skinny he didn’t take up room, but he still had to push some of the papers over.
He withdrew a map from the back pocket of his baggy jeans and handed it to her. “This is your route,” he said turning on the overhead light in the truck.
She glanced at a winding, circling trail that didn’t look too bad.
“You’ll need to memorize this as soon as you can, but while I’m here, I can help you with the directions.”
Kalista nodded, and they were on their way. For the next couple of hours, she drove as he gave directions and showed her how to deliver the papers. Some of them she could put into a box underneath the mailbox, while other customers were fine with the paper being at the end of the driveway.
“We do have five customers that are very picky about where they want their newspapers,” Tyler said.
“They all happen to live near the top of the mountain. You’ll have to get out of the truck to place them where they want them.
We’re coming up on Mr. Jackson right now.
I’ll go with you and show you where he wants his paper. ”
They parked in front of his gravel driveway, and faint streaks of daylight appeared in the sky. When they reached a wraparound porch, Tyler took the paper from Kalista and placed it near the front door. “He wants it to the left of the welcome mat. Not the right.”
“The right,” Kalista said. “Not the left.” Or was it the left and not the right? There was so much she had to remember, she wasn’t sure, even though he’d just given her the instructions. “What if I forget?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve never forgotten, and neither did Daniel. He’s the guy that had the route before you. Just try to remember.”
“But what’s the big deal?” she asked as they made their way down the driveway. “He could just as easily pick it up from the other side of the mat.”
“That’s not the point. He’s our customer and we do our best to make our customers happy, even if it might seem...”
“Ridiculous?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He opened the passenger door. “It’s just their preference.”
Fair enough. Kalista was known to be finicky herself.
When she went shopping, she expected the salesperson to give her undivided and personal attention because she was spending money.
Her father’s money, but the point still stood.
She deserved to be catered to. Apparently Mr. Jackson felt the same way.
They finished the route, and Kalista marked on the map where the other four persnickety people wanted their paper. Then they headed down the mountain and back to Clementine. By the time they got to Main Street, the sun was already above the horizon.
“You did pretty good,” Tyler said when she put the truck in Park. It lurched forward.
Pretty good? Humph. “What did I do wrong?”
“Not wrong, exactly,” he said. “You’re not used to driving a truck, are you?”
She fell back against the seat. “How can you tell?”
“You’re taking your turns too wide. You have to be careful on some of the narrow parts of the route. You don’t want to have an accident.”
No, she certainly did not. She also didn’t want to wreck Bo’s truck. No doubt if she did, her father would make her take a second job to pay for it. Besides, now that she met him and saw how good he was to Viv, she didn’t want to damage his vehicle in any way.
“Now that part of the job is done, it’s time to finish up.”
“I thought we were finished.” She was ready for coffee and then back to bed.
“You have to tidy up the loose papers and get everything ready for Monday.”
“Isn’t Monday a holiday? It’s Memorial Day.”