Chapter 9
Biology Class
Day 11
“Alright, there is now a line on this desk. If your hair crosses it one more time, I’m chopping it off.”
I gave him an annoyed look, pulling my curly brown hair onto my shoulder, away from Dax. I didn’t say anything, just continued to read over the worksheet we’d been given.
“Gross. It’s everywhere. You’re shedding like a cat.”
I looked over at him, unable to help the laugh that came out from seeing his disgusted face dry-heaving while scraping long brown curls off his desk.
“Sorry,” I said in a sweet enough tone that Dax looked at me with a wary expression.
For good reason. I just had a great idea.
T-minus 46 days to exit
Dax hours remaining: 176
THE SENATOR
How many hours do you have left at the mechanic?
???
Ivy. Answer me.
ME
176
THE SENATOR
You’ve only worked twenty four hours? You’ve been here for a week. How is that possible?
ME
I’m working at the cafe too.
THE SENATOR
That’s on a volunteer basis. You need to cut your hours back there and wrap it up with the mechanic.
Ivy?
???
ME
I’m on track to be finished in plenty of time. Leave it alone.
“I’m dying,” I said dramatically, bursting into Dax’s shop a few days later, flinging the top half of my body onto his work bench. I eyed the bag of Sun Chips on the counter and snuck my hand inside for a quick dip.
“I saw that.” Dax finished changing out the battery on a golf cart before wiping his hands on a towel.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I moaned.
“What? Eat my chips?” He made his way toward me, taking a few swigs of a Coke sitting on the counter. I watched his Adam’s apple do its thing while the liquid slid down his throat before flicking my eyes away .
“The Legos. I hate it so much. Why can’t I pay someone to do it?”
“Sorry, Books. If it’s any consolation, I’m having lots more fun this way.”
I glanced around his space, seeing another stack of invoices yet to be filled out. “Do you want me to do some of these while you work? You can just tell me what you did.”
Dax pointed at himself. “Did you just offer to help me?”
“I’d rather do this than Legos. That’s how low I’ve sunk in my life.”
He debated for a moment until a hint of humanity showed on his face. “Alright. Don’t get used to such a cushy job, though.”
I pulled the top invoice and read the name Dax had scrawled on top. “Matt Hall. Are you done with his lawnmower?”
Dax climbed on top of the fishing boat he had sitting on a trailer on the far side of the garage. “I just finished. Put on there that I cleaned the mower and replaced the motor.” He paused while I wrote. “One hour of service time. And then add a line for parts ordered, and I’ll find the invoice for it later.”
I wrote down everything he said before moving on to the next invoice. We did this for a while—working rather seamlessly, I might add—until the pile was finished. Dax had moved from one project to the next, cleaning, bolting, removing, and all with a level of care I wouldn’t have expected of him.
“Quite the stall tactics you have, Books. But since it still benefits me, I’ll let it slide.”
I couldn’t see his smile because he slid under a golf cart, but I could feel it in the air.
Out of things to do, I sighed and began making my way toward the torture chamber when Dax’s voice rang out like a beacon in the dark.
“If you’re still desperate for a break, I was going to run to my house and grab some tools I left there.” He slid out from the golf cart and stood, pulling a set of keys from his pocket. He dangled them toward me. “I’ll allow you to go as long as you can confirm you haven’t taken anything today.”
Like a cat to a bowl of cream, I moved toward him. “You’d trust me to go into your house?”
“No, but I know where you live.”
“You do?”
The words were out before I thought them through. Of course he knew.
His eyebrows raised slightly. “Are you on something now?”
My cheeks grew slightly heated against my will, while he laughed. For the first time since I’d been back in his orbit, he’d brought up the night in the garage, shedding light on something we’d hidden away, and now I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
“Tell me you didn’t forget about your first brush with the law.”
“I was an innocent bystander.” The heat from my cheeks began spreading outward to my neck, and I wasn’t sure how to stop it.
He folded his arms, enjoying himself. “That first dabble into a life of crime is always a special moment. If only we’d known what it would lead to one day.”
Our gaze held, and something flashed across his face. My mind brimmed with the memories I thought I had squashed years ago. I took a step back and held out my hand for the keys.
He brought them closer, almost within reach, before he yanked them back before I could snatch them. “It’s the door on the right side of the house. You are to enter the premises and grab the red toolbox sitting on my table. Do not touch anything else. No trying on my clothes. No collecting locks of my hair. No going through my underwear drawer.”
I put a finger up to my cheek. “I hope I can remember all that. ”
“Books…” he said, his voice low with warning. He held the keys out of my reach as I tried to grab them again. My hand landed on his chest, using him to steady me as I yanked them out of his hand.
Dancing away, I reveled in my newfound advantage. “I noticed you’re almost out of chips. Do you have any at home I could grab for you?”
He rolled his eyes, but I detected the humor. “Bottom cupboard to the right of the fridge. Grab the chips, grab the tools, then come right back.”
“I’ll try to remember all of that.”
“The brake is on the left. The gas is on the right,” he called out, sounding more cheerful than usual.
Fifteen minutes later, armed with chips and a toolbox, I slammed the door open into his garage once more. Dax looked up at the sound. I could only stare at him, my mind a whirl of possibilities. It was amazing what a person could learn about someone in such a short period of time.
I had to figure out the best way to play the game. Straightforward wouldn’t work. If Dax knew how much I wanted it, he’d never let me have it. If it was even something possible to have.
Feigning a calm I didn’t feel, I strode farther into the room and placed the toolbox and the chips on the counter. The chips were half gone, the hazards of eating my emotions during the ride back.
“What’s wrong?” Dax asked, eyeing me up and down before sitting down on his roller.
“When did your house get turned into a duplex?” I asked him, casually taking a sip of his Coke he’d left on the counter.
He moved back under the golf cart, a tool in hand. “Keith helped me do it about five years ago.”
“It didn’t used to be a duplex, though. Right?”
“Nope.”
I inched closer. “Is anybody living there right now? ”
“Nope. I’m planning to repaint and tile the bathroom this summer.” His voice sounded strange, like he was feeding me a line.
“In all your free time?”
“Yup.”
I stood, biting my thumbnail, waiting until he rolled back out from under the cart and stood up. I tried not to show him all my cards, but it was probably difficult with the near feral look in my eyes.
“What’s with the weird?—“
“So, are you, like…looking for someone to rent it? Or help you with painting or something?” My finger reached up to twirl a loose curl before I shoved my hands in my pockets.
Light dawned in his eyes. “Oh… You got something you want to ask me, Books?”
“I mean, if you needed a part-time renter, I could…help you out.” I wanted it so badly I was almost bursting out of my skin. The tension between my dad and me in my childhood home was at an all-time high. My exit plan had been blown to bits by my sentencing, but maybe some form of escape was still possible. “In exchange, I could paint it for you or retile…” My voice drifted off on the last one.
Dax leaned forward with great interest.
“Retile it? Really? I’d love to know what experience the senator’s daughter has in tiling floors.”
“Okay, maybe not tiling, but I’m an excellent painter,” I began.
Side note: I was not any sort of painter.
“I’ll wash the windows. I’ll be the best tenant you’ve ever had.” I leaned forward, my hands in praying position.
He considered me, which lulled me into a false sense of security. “Why do you want it so bad?”
I thought about not answering. I didn’t want to say why, but I didn’t think Dax would accept any answer but the truth. And I think he already knew.
“I’m currently living with my dad. It’s a campaign year, and his daughter just got a DUI. Everything about him is toxic to me. It would just be for the six weeks I have left here.”
Dax eyed me for a long moment before he spoke. “I originally changed the home into a duplex so I could rent half the space out and not have a mortgage. I had a renter there for about a year, but it turned out I forgot one important thing.”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t really like people all that much.”
There was a beat of time when I didn’t know what to say before a small laugh broke free.
Folding my arms across my chest, I asked, “How long have you been telling people you’re going to repaint and retile that apartment?”
He mirrored my stance, arms folded and a smile playing at his lips. “About three years.”
I nodded, resigned to my fate that was the senator’s house. “Okay. I get it.” I moved toward the lobby, feeling awkward at his admission and unsure of what to say next.
“Fifty hours.”
I stopped and looked at him in confusion.
“What?”
“Fifty hours for six weeks.”
My mouth dropped open as I caught his meaning. “Fifty?”
“Fifty hours, extra . On top of the two hundred.” He motioned toward the lobby. “At your snail’s pace, there’s no way you’ll get the Legos done in two hundred. If you want to be my neighbor, it’ll cost you in time.”
“That’s twenty-five percent extra work,” I protested.
“It’s simple supply and demand, Books.”
I could only stand there with my gaping mouth, trying to think .
“Unless you’d rather stay with?—“
“Ten.”
The smile was across his face before I could prepare myself for it. I tamped down the flutters swirling in my stomach.
“Fifty,” he said again.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifty.”
I shot him an exasperated look. “Fifty is too much. I have to be done by the end of July. I’ll help you paint. And retile.”
“It’s a brand-new remodel,” Dax admitted with a sheepish laugh. “Completely furnished. It doesn’t actually need any of those things.”
“What? So you’ve been sitting with it empty and ready to go for three years?” I asked incredulously.
“Three quiet years with no dogs tearing up my yard and no obnoxious neighbors.”
“I don’t have dogs. And I’ll be super quiet.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his face calculating. “If you want to cut a deal, I’m going to need you to prove your extensive tool knowledge.”
“What?” The teasing gleam in his eyes filled me with both hope and dread.
“If you show me exactly how to use a…” he thought for a moment, “torque wrench, I’ll give it to you for forty.”
My body stilled. “A torque wrench?”
A wolf on the scent, he visibly panicked. “No, I meant a?—“
“Nope! You said it!” I took off running toward his workbench where his tools were spread out across a pegboard. I raked my eyes over the tools before grabbing what I was looking for and began walking him through all the steps of using it.
I’d like to thank a broken down car in a sleepy Tennessee town and a sweet old mechanic thinking I cared to know about the tools he was using for that tidbit of knowledge .
“Alright. Double or nothing,” Dax tried, unsuccessfully attempting to hold back a smile.
“Nope. That’s what you get for being a jerk who assumes girls don’t know tools.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t think that about every girl. Just you. But I stand corrected.”
“Forty hours?” I held my hand out expectantly.
“Forty hours, Books.” His hand grasped mine to shake it and I had to keep myself from squealing. We had laid down our weapons momentarily to strike a deal. A deal that suddenly filled my mind with all kinds of exciting possibilities.
“I didn’t know we could bargain for hours. Are there other things I can do to lessen my sentence? Should I demonstrate using a hammer, for five hours?”
“No more bargaining,” he said, turning away from me.
“Come on!” I pressed again. “Just a few things. To give me life. And to help you out.”
“You’re good at wasting time, I’ll give you that,” Dax mumbled. “And distracting me.”
A warm glow burned in my belly at the way he looked at me just then, an expression on his face so much like the old Dax I remembered in high school. I immediately braced myself.
“You want me to think of some things you can do in exchange for hours?” he asked.
The way he said the words some things brought a chill right to my bones.
I held my hands out in protest. “Nothing crazy. Fun. Or even just extra work that doesn’t involve me being stuck in that room for hours on end.”
“Fun…” He trailed off, rubbing his face.
“Why are you looking at me like it’s Christmas morning?”
“I might be starting to catch your vision, Books. You got yourself a deal.”