Chapter 3 How Very Karen-y of You #2
Brad wandered off to her carport, armed with a clipboard and a scrutinizing gaze.
For men like Brad, there was no occasion that didn’t call for stained Carhartt coveralls, and this was no exception.
From time to time, she’d seen him top the ensemble with a reflective vest to walk his Pomeranian in the morning, giving him the appearance of an aircraft marshal shuttling in a tiny, furry plane.
He couldn’t have looked more different from Elliot, in his crisp khaki pants and cashmere sweater.
“Can we make this quick?” Lainey asked. The nausea was starting to crest, leaving her face feeling heavy, like the skin in her cheeks was pulling her to the ground. She wanted nothing more than to succumb to the weight and shove her head under a pillow.
“Are you okay? You’re looking a little…” Elliot hesitated. His weaselly little plan was unfolding exactly as he’d hoped, but for reasons Lainey couldn’t comprehend, the man looked ill. “On second thought…maybe, another time would—”
“You wanted to do this. Fine. Let’s do it quickly,” Lainey said, her tone a scythe. He’d started this fight, and it was too late to adopt a conscience now. Lainey turned to face the man in coveralls. “What’ve you got for me, Bauer?”
Brad launched into a litany of violations. Some were small, easily fixable issues, but others, like her lack of proper drainage, would take time and money she didn’t have.
Lainey kneaded her forehead. “That’s…a long list.”
“I know, but you can probably get that sorted yourself without me having to write up anything official. Right?”
The fist in Lainey’s stomach unclenched. “Thank you, Brad.” She turned to flash Elliot a smug smile, but to her surprise, he seemed…relieved.
“So if that’s it…” Elliot trailed off, all at once appearing wholly out of place.
“You’re the new owner of the Shore Thing, right?” Brad called out without looking up from the clipboard in his palm.
Elliot suddenly looked unsure about his arms—what they were and/or what they were meant to do. He frowned, perplexed. “Uh, yes.”
“Thought so,” Brad said. A hunter laying a trap. “Is that you I’ve been seeing over at EZ Gas?”
Elliot was a deer caught in headlights. Lainey had never before wished for the power of telepathy quite so forcefully.
“Uh, maybe. For gas. And stuff. I got chips one time.”
“Chips.” From Brad’s lips, the word dripped with subtext.
The families behind Bauer Mart and EZ Gas had been embroiled in a blood feud since 1998.
Lainey wasn’t aware of the fight’s origins, but she did know that nothing got done in Timber Creek without a signature from a Bauer.
They had their hands in every layer of local government.
Whereas most of the adult children of the Lindley clan—the owners of EZ Gas—were knee-deep in various multi-level marketing schemes.
There was one side to choose in this feud, and, unbeknownst to Elliot, he’d picked the wrong one.
“Yeah. I heard about the chips,” Brad repeated, lifting his chin. “You know that in two of your cabins, there are about six turtle tanks?”
Elliot’s face went white. Lainey was well aware of her former neighbor’s side business dealing exotic animals.
She wasn’t a fan of it, but after Gil agreed to end his short stint raising big cats like a Midwestern Tiger King, she’d reluctantly acquiesced to the turtles, reptiles, and rare fish that came and went from his property.
“Those aren’t—”
Brad scribbled on his clipboard without looking up at Elliot. “The animals are none of my concern. But those heat lamps are a fire hazard. I have no choice but to write that up.”
“Wh-what?” he stuttered. “But she has a pile of oil-soaked rags inside a firepit.”
“The bowl is cracked,” Lainey piped up. “So I keep the rags there to remind me not to use it.”
“That’s insane!” Elliot was at his wit’s end. “I’m not saying you should write her up for it, but how can you let all of her things slide and then turn around and fine me for a heat lamp I had nothing to do with?”
Brad’s glare was so steely it visibly sucked the air from Elliot’s lungs. “Because Ms. Davis,” he said, slow and deliberate, “…knows better than to get chips from EZ Gas.”
Brad handed Elliot a citation and stomped off to his car.
“Have a good one, Brad,” Lainey called out as the man pulled away.
Elliot finally took a breath. “What…was that?”
With the authority of a woman dictating a commandment from on high, Lainey held up a single finger and declared, “Never shop at EZ Gas again. Also, don’t forget to feed the turtles.
They’re in the cabins that haven’t sunk into the lake.
You should pull those out if you aren’t planning to sleep in water wings. ”
“I’m actually staying at the Lodge Bed and Breakfast—though I appreciate what I’m sure is your sincere concern.
” He slunk back to his absurdly large truck and called out to her through the open window, which had hopefully attracted a swarm of mosquitoes thirsty for blood.
“I’ll bill you for a new phone if I can’t get rid of whatever malware your rideshare app gave me. ”
“You have my number.” She couldn’t say why, but it felt important that she remind him that only a few days ago he’d found her irresistible enough to shyly ask for her phone number under a gas station canopy.
“You must’ve loved that, huh? Was that part of your game, too?”
Lainey pressed her lips shut. She didn’t owe this man answers. According to her lawyer, this was her house. For the first time, possibly ever, someone other than Lainey was the one on the back foot.
She didn’t speak. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Restraint was power.
With a pounding head and two feet planted firmly to the earth, Lainey picked up her chainsaw and stood her ground as Elliot Hodges disappeared into the trees.
After Elliot and Brad left her with migraine pain that rivaled a back-alley lobotomy, Lainey spent all night—and her last two pills—recovering from it. When Lainey woke up the next day, she was in desperate need of a refill.
Rite-Drug was one of the rare stores in town that catered to both “us” and “them.” Lainey didn’t relish patronizing a pharmacy with no zany secondary offering—soft-serve ice cream or phone screen repair perhaps—but Rite-Drug was woefully essential.
“So, the thing is…” She lifted her chin, demanding she be taken seriously by Ernie, the pharmacist, even at her most unserious.
“I need my prescription filled now—and I have the money—but I can’t really use it yet.
It’s ‘pending.’ See?” Lainey held up her banking app for Ernie, who was unmoved.
His eyes remained glued to the giant handheld stapler he was wielding.
“Venmo is still transferring my last woodworking sale into my checking account so it’s light gray on the app, but I have the money.
I just don’t, like, have it yet.” Lainey shifted her weight to her other foot, feeling her confidence spill onto the tile floor next to a puddle of unidentified electric-orange liquid she prayed was Powerade.
“Come on, Ernie. You know I’m good for it. ”
Ernie stapled a receipt to a paper bag with a haughty flourish. “I’m not a bookie who accepts IOUs beside the betting window of a greyhound racetrack. If you need to borrow against your pay, get one of those payday loans.”
“Those are for people with jobs that give you actual paychecks.”
“And the interest rates on those loans are horrendously predatory,” a familiar voice spoke behind her.
Lainey’s body went rigid. She didn’t need to look to know the voice belonged to her newest nemesis (Lainey had more than one, so it was best to specify). Slowly, she turned to find none other than Elliot Hodges.
“Elliot,” he reminded her. He was wearing some quiet luxury athleisure brand, like an off-duty celebrity running errands on location, hoping desperately to be recognized by the unwashed masses.
She, on the other hand, was the aforementioned unwashed.
Though both in sweats, if the casual wealth of his performance fabric whispered, her thrifted cotton was absolutely screaming.
“Yeah, I know. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I saw you last. Are you stalking me now?” she asked.
Elliot lifted an eyebrow over his glasses. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
She scoffed. “Yesterday, you came over to my house.”
“Correction: yesterday, you were squatting at my house.”
Unable to address him with any words aside from expletives, Lainey turned back to the original matter at hand. “Ernie, come on. We both know you’re no stranger to an IOU. You run a poker game out of the back room every Saturday.”
“If you’re ramping up to blackmail, one of the deputies drops in for a hand every other week.” Ernie punctuated his sentence with an assertive staple into a paper bag.
Lainey laughed airily, as though the very thought tickled her. “I’d never dream of threatening you, Ernie. But if I were, it wouldn’t be with a call to the sheriff. It would be to Barb. She still thinks those evenings are reserved for a men’s Bible study group, right?”
Her voice was pure innocence as blood drained from Ernie’s cheeks.
“Uhh…” His voice trailed off. Sweat beaded above his brow, his eyes going vacuous.
She batted her lashes sweetly as Ernie dissociated. “Perhaps we can revisit that idea of an IOU?”
A credit card slapped between them on the counter, making Lainey and her adversary jump.
Lainey’s eyes followed the card up to a hand, then the veins trailing up a bare forearm, until she was eye level with a rolled gray sweatshirt sleeve.
Lainey craned her neck to side-eye the arm’s owner and inwardly cursed whoever had tipped off Elliot on the allure of forearms. Men couldn’t be trusted with that kind of information.
Something wound tight inside her, ready to snap.
“I don’t want your money,” she insisted, but Ernie, the traitor, was already swiping his card through the machine.
“You were really about to blackmail a pharmacist right in front of me? With our pending legal action?”