16.
J ANIS
“What are you doing here? Have you gotten any sleep today?” Zoey asked when I walked into the space that was quickly shaping up to be an amazing store where I was going to spend way too much money. She studied my face before she said, “You don’t look too awfully tired.”
“I took a nap. Sort of.”
“Between batches?”
“Yeah, and then Corey and I were able to really get some quality nap time once the girls arrived.”
“Corey was there?”
“When I drove up, he was waiting for me in the parking lot.”
“He already knew,” Zoey said simply. “Garvey said he wasn’t surprised at all.”
“Yeah, he said he’d known since right before I went down with that flare. The fact that he didn’t throw it in my face that I’d been wrong all this time makes him a much better person than I am.”
“Me too,” Zoey admitted. “Are you still going on a date with him?”
“Yes.No.Yes!Yes, I am, dammit.”
Zoey burst out laughing, and I heard a few other women laughing, too, so I walked over and peered into the other room and found Moe, Farrah, and Fiona sitting on the floor amid a bunch of boxes and scattered pieces of shelving.
“What are you doing and why are you laughing at me?”
“Any woman with functional eyeballs would be jumping at the chance to go out with the guy, and you’re over there hemming and hawing like the cops are interrogating you,” Moe said with a grin.
Farrah was finally able to choke out, “He might not be your lobster, but he’s definitely your kryptonite.”
“You watch too much TV to try to insert yourself into intelligent conversation,” I said huffily before I spun around to walk back over to Zoey. Over my shoulder, I called out, “I hope your shelves are crooked and you have to take them apart and do it all over again.”
“Bite your tongue! I wasn’t willing to pay the extra money to have them come assembled, and I’m kicking my own ass for that right now.”
“How hard is it to put shelves together?”
“Probably not hard at all if you can read hieroglyphics.”
“There aren’t any instructions?”
“Just diagrams and arrows. I tried to put a set of them together earlier and got so frustrated that I had to walk away.” I turned and looked at Zoey and found her grinning. “You want to try to put them together, don’t you?”
“Try? You and I both know that I’m the smart one in this relationship. If you want me to do something, all you have to do is ask.”
“I don’t think you can do it.”
“I know exactly what you’re doing, Zozo.”
“Me?What?”
“You and your crew of gigglers can have those shelves for all I care. I hope they take you forever.”
“You don’t think you can put them together, do you?”
The base of my neck started tingling, and a familiar uncomfortable feeling raced down my spine. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, I just couldn’t. This feeling had gotten me in trouble before, but I’d never been able to deny it.
Zoey knew that would be the case.
“I hope that when you flip your pillow over for the cool side, it’s always fucking hot.”
Zoey grinned before she said, “All you have to do is figure out how to put one of them together, and then we’ll have a model to use for the rest.”
“I hope you forget all of your passwords.”
“That was harsh!” Zoey said angrily.
“I’m so tired that I’m ready to skip caffeine and start chewing on power lines, but I’ve got to put together a shelving unit now just to prove that I can. Harsh isn’t nearly what you deserve.”
“You’re so fun to play with.”
◆◆◆
COREY
When I walked into the building, the first thing I heard was Janis yelling, “Teamwork, ladies! Come on! You can do this! I’ve got faith in you!”
“No, you don’t!” I heard a woman yell back.
“What the hell are they doing in there?” Garvey asked.
“You’re absolutely right. I do not have faith in you, yet here I am spouting some sort of positive, motivational bullshit, even though I can tell that everything is fucked up. See? I’m growing as a person as we speak!”
“So glad I could be of assistance,” I heard a woman say right before I walked around the corner.
Garvey and I stopped short at the sight in front of us. What had sounded like a motivational speech you might hear at some sort of athletic activity was not that at all. Instead, there were teams of women spread around the room, with Janis standing front and center holding a long piece of metal in one hand and a small bolt in the other.
“Remember when I said you needed to sort your shit out? I wasn’t talking about your emotions, I was talking about the supplies you have on hand. Now, find eight bolts that look like this one, and then we’ll move on to the next step.”
“I didn’t know there was going to be a test,” Zoey, who was sitting next to a woman I didn’t recognize, muttered.
Janis glared at her and said, “The test will be to see if the shelves you're assembling hold all of that shit in those boxes over there. Has everyone found eight bolts?”
“What the hell are they doing?” Garvey muttered as he looked around the room.
“Give us a minute to look at the diagram,” Zoey offered.
“Ain’t nobody got time for that,” Janis retorted. “You need to put the bolts in here and here on each corner while holding the beam that goes with that specific corner.”
I watched a woman pick up a packet of papers and stare at it impatiently for a few seconds before the woman next to her snatched it out of her hand and turned it sideways and then thrust it back toward her. The first woman glared at the second before she balled up the paper and threw it at her.
“Now, now, Moe,” Janis said through her laughter. “No need to get testy.”
“Who the hell made . . .”
Janis’s gasp interrupted the women, and my eyes darted over to her as she whispered, “Shut the front door!”
Suddenly, every woman in the room was staring at me, and I took a step back and bumped into my brother. He hadn’t been paying attention and grunted before he stepped up next to me and asked Zoey, “Need some help, babe?”
“It’s like his jeans are hanging on by a string,” a woman said as she stared at my crotch.
“I’ve got scissors!” another woman yelled cheerfully.
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” Zoey asked grumpily, although I noticed that her eyes didn’t go up any farther than Garvey’s chest.
“What? We need an extra set of hands outside,” Garvey answered.
“I’m in!” Janis’ friend Farrah shouted as she got up off the floor.
“What can I do for you?” Moe, one of Zoey’s employees, asked as Farrah helped her up from the floor.
One by one, all the women volunteered and followed Garvey and Zoey outside to help with the chicken coop construction. I knew that was way too many people to have working in such a small area, so I leaned against the doorframe and let Janis look her fill.
When she finally met my eyes, I asked, “What can I do for you, Medusa?”
“Donut, there are so many answers I could give to that question, but I’m trying to be mindful of the fact that just this morning, I told you that I was not going to let you touch me.”
“You’re still holding it against me.”
“Obviously, because you weren’t willing to hold anything against me.”
“Look at the bright side, Grissom. When I do finally get my hands on you, it won’t be impetuous, and it won’t be rushed, but it will be fantastic.”
“You act like it’s a given that I’m looking forward to our date on Saturday.”
“I’m impressed that you could say that with a straight face.”
“Which part?” Janis asked. “That I’ve actually agreed to going out with you, or that I might be looking forward to it?”
“Both.”
“You should be impressed, although it’s not like I asked you to wine and dine me before you bang me like a screen door.”
I burst out laughing and then walked toward Janis. “There will be much more than banging, Grissom. So much more.”
“I’m not holding my breath while I wait to see if you are all that you seem to think you are,” Janis said with a roll of her eyes.
“I have a question.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
I tilted my head before I asked, “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Because Zoey said I couldn’t put these shelves together.”
“And you just had to prove her wrong. You’ve always liked a challenge,” I said as I came to stand in front of her.
“Maybe.”
“What’s it gonna take to get you to go home so you can get some decent rest before you have to go back to the bakery in the morning?”
“These need to be put together so the ladies can start putting products on the shelves.”
“And you’re gonna do that with one tool box, one level, and no directions?”
“I don’t need directions. I put that one over there together, and now I’m trying to show everyone how to do the rest.”
“Let me call some guys over. I’ll have them bring their tools, and we’ll get this done in no time.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Janis conceded.
“That hurt, didn’t it?”
“So much,” Janis whispered.
“You’ve been really nice since I got here.”
“I know.”
“Hit me with spicy Janis before I make a few calls.”
“Spicy Janis?”
“That’s my favorite one so far, although I will admit that nice Janis is growing on me.”
“You act like there are two of me.”
“Oh, honey, the multiple personalities inside the one and only are more than the world can handle.”
Janis cackled and asked, “How many do you think I’ve got?”
“Dozens.”
“On Saturday night, I’ll introduce you to a few more.”
“Words can’t explain just how excited I am to meet them.”
“I know words have always been hard for you, but if you try really hard, I’m sure that you might be able to form a coherent sentence that makes you sound moderately less ignorant.”
I chuckled before I said, “There she is.”
“Call in the cavalry so I can get this shit done for Zoey.”
“Give me a kiss first.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
Instead of arguing, I pulled her into my arms and gave her a soft kiss. Janis kissed me back as her hands trailed up and down my back, her light touch setting my skin on fire. I finally pulled away and caught my breath. Janis took a deep breath, but her eyes stayed closed. The look on her face was almost enough to make me throw out the declaration I’d made about waiting and carry her to my truck so I could whisk her away to either my house or hers.
When her eyes fluttered open, she smiled and said, “You’re pretty good at that, Donut.”
“Just wait, Medusa. Just wait.”
◆◆◆
Just so you know, I’m still pissed that you’re giving me lady blue balls.
First of all, I’m glad you finally admit that you do have balls because I know for a fact that yours are bigger than most men’s.
I smiled as I set my phone aside, and while I washed my face, I wondered what else Corey had in store for me. That man was full of surprises, and I was beginning to look forward to our conversations, whether in person or by text. However, I couldn’t help myself from sassing him. There was no sense in me being the only one caught off guard, right?
Generally, when someone starts out a sentence with “first of all,” there’s something else that follows. You know, like the second thing.
Secondly, smartass, I’m glad you’re still awake so I could talk to you before you go to sleep.
Are you going to tell me a bedtime story, Donut?
Yes, it’s the story of how I pulled into my driveway to find an invasion. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?
Invasion of what?
As if you don’t know.
You seem upset, so I’m going to assume it’s about said invasion.
Off the top of my head, I can list about a hundred bugs that would upset me if they invaded . . . namely ants because they can haul around fifty times their body weight, which doesn’t seem like much until you throw around a word like “invasion,” and I start to try to math so I can figure out how many it would take to carry me.
While I waited on him to respond, I got lost down a rabbit hole researching which kind of ants we had around Rojo and the amount of weight they can each carry, and then I did the math to figure out exactly how many it would take to haul me away. By the time I finished, I couldn’t figure out whether I wanted to gain weight to make their job harder or move to Antarctica, Greenland, or Iceland - three of the places on earth that did not have a native ant species.
When I started getting the creepy crawlies and having flashbacks to that day not long ago when Zoey and I fucked around and found out that ants will attack you and it will hurt - and in my case it could kill me - I refocused and sent another text.
Are you there, Donut? Have you been attacked?
Your deflection makes me think that you had something to do with this.
And your inability to answer my question about what type of invasion you have is beginning to irritate me. So, I’ll ask again. Invasion of what?
My phone started vibrating with incoming texts. Pictures of Garvey’s yard came up one after another, and by the time I opened the third one, I was laughing so hard that I could barely breathe.
Don’t your friends know that even though your first interaction with a gnome in the wild didn’t go over very well, they’re actually thought to bring prosperity and good luck? That’s why people keep them in their flowerbeds. Maybe whoever is playing a prank on you was really doing you a favor.
They’re everywhere, Medusa! How did you pull this off?
I’m wondering how you think I could have! You know exactly where I’ve been ALL DAY LONG!
Good point. You have a pretty solid alibi, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t guilty by association. My guess is you know more than you’re letting on.
You’re such a cop sometimes.
I have to figure out who did this. There will be retribution.
Avenge me! (That’s a quote from Red Dawn , in case you were confused.)
Now, tell me a bedtime story so I can stop thinking about ants.
You do realize that when we’re naked, you won’t be bossing me around, right?
Whatever, Donut. Being bossy is one of my finer traits.
It’s kind of cute, but it’s not gonna fly in the bedroom.
If you weren’t such a prude, I’d know that already.
I could feel his outrage coming in waves from his house across town, and it made me smile.
I’m gonna spank your ass, Grissom.
I can’t wait to see you try.
I know that a good night’s rest is good for your health, so I suggest you get to bed. Tomorrow night is our date, and I’m going to be keeping you up late.
As far as bedtime stories go, this one was a dud. I didn’t even get a happily ever after.
That starts Sunday morning.
We’ll see, Donut.