9. Ruby
My little power nap in the car was needed, and it also helped to ignore James’ horrible driving skills. As soon as we arrive back home, I take my bags out of the trunk and rush inside. James keeps on sitting in the car, probably waiting to park it until I’m far enough away that I don’t hear it when he rams one of the other cars in the process.
It’s not that I wouldn’t prefer it if James carried my stuff upstairs to my room, but he was surprisingly pliant today and I don’t want to test his patience any further. I put the muffins I bought for James on the kitchen counter, grab a few strawberries from the fridge and go upstairs to my room.
The weird feeling in my stomach didn’t vanish, not after my milkshake and also not after I had a few strawberries. I don’t want to accept what I fear it is, so I decide to keep a bit of distance from James for the rest of the day. That’s all Richards” fault, for even planting such a ridiculous idea in my head.
For the rest of the day I stay in my room, interrupted by James asking if everything is alright only twice. It’s probably just to check if I didn’t run off, but it’s still kind of sweet.
With a frown, I realize I need to stop thinking about the things he does like that. It’s his job to look after me.
A little after midnight, I reach the point where not even the most boring documentary makes me fall asleep and I stop trying. I promised James something in return for going to the mall with me, so I put my hair in a ponytail and head down to the kitchen.
I hate cleaning up with a passion. Before the big fight between me and my father, back when he was still around most of the time, we had different housekeepers who took care of everything. But there’s no one living in one of the guest bedrooms apart from James anymore, and the only thing waiting for me down there is a ton of dishes in the sink.
I roll up my sleeves and get to work. Sandwiches and snacks don’t leave behind a lot of residue, so I have to give most of the dishes just a quick wash before I put them into the dishwasher. After I made my way through the mountain of plates in the sink, I spot a pan that looks like it was hidden underneath them.
Whatever had been in there must have burned for a good while and it takes me half a podcast and an almost broken nail to scrub it clean enough to get it dishwasher-ready.
After I’m done with the kitchen, I walk over to the living room area. I fluff up the pillows and fold my blanket while the host of my podcast talks about the new plants he bought.
I was never much of a podcast girl and preferred to listen to music most of the time, but during the last few months, I got the appeal. The house feels less empty when I hear someone talking.
A small part of me wants to do a good job cleaning up. Maybe James will be happy when he sees I kept my promise. Maybe he’ll even praise me. I realize that I’m horribly starved for positive attention. Any kind of attention, to be honest.
I want to make sure that he’s more than satisfied with my efforts, so I walk back upstairs, remembering that he told me to do his laundry. Since I’m already up and in cleaning mode, I want to cross this off my to-do list right. Now.
The washing machine is on the first floor, far enough away from our bedrooms so that it won’t annoy James while he’s sleeping.
Maybe it is a slightly dumb and invasive idea to sneak into his room to fetch his clothes to wash them, but my intentions are pure. Really.
His room is so clean that it doesn’t even look as if someone lives there. I know he has only been here for a week, but he seems to have some kind of tidiness fetish. He would probably die if he saw how hotel rooms look like after I had to pick out my first outfit for the night.
No clothes are strewn around, no candy wrappers are lying on the nightstand and no half empty water bottle rolls around on the floor. The only thing that stands around is an almost empty whiskey bottle right next to his bed. Even his worn stuff is neatly put together on the couch. I’ve never seen anybody fold their clothes like that, especially not clothes that belong in the laundry.
He shuffles in his bed, and I catch myself staring at his exposed back. He looks like a piece of art with the way the moonlight shines down on him through the window. His left hand is shoved underneath the pillow, his face mostly hidden by his biceps, the fluffy pillow, and his messy hair.
I sigh as a cloud ruins my good view of James, way too focused on being a creep so that I don’t hear the beeping that alerts me that my headphones run out of battery. A few moments later, my podcast blares at full volume in the pocket of my hoodie.
“Put your hands where I can see them,” James yells while pointing a gun at me.
“I just—”
“Hands up, now,” he bellows and I let the clothes I just picked up fall to the floor as I raise my shaking hands.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yell back. “And why do you have a gun?”
I’m pretty sure that my last bodyguard did not sleep with a gun underneath his pillow. Somehow, questions are not what James wants to hear from me because soon we just scream nonsense at each other until none of us can understand a single word. My podcast is still blaring, adding to the cacophony of unpleasant sounds, and I finally get myself together enough to put my phone on silent.
But then we both hear another sound. And this one doesn’t come from one of us, instead from the first floor. James signals me to stay quiet, pointing at his bathroom as he walks towards the door, his gun still drawn.
I could tell him that I have a few cameras on the first floor, because I am not a dumbass like my father, who places them so obviously that they are begging to be destroyed, but I don’t.
Instead, I look after James, who sneaks out there like a goddamn special forces agent, albeit in sinfully hot gray sweatpants and without a shirt. Makes it even better.
Frustrated, I realize that this would have been the perfect opportunity to see his face, but I was too focused on not getting shot. Apart from that, it was too dark to really make out anything. The moonlight only graced me with a marvelous view of his back muscles, as if to mock me.
James told me to stay in his bathroom, probably because he thinks that there’s a burglar in the house, but I know that it’s just my father. I sneak back to my room, leaving the door slightly ajar so that I can hear them.
“Hello?” James yells into the darkness, his gun probably still drawn. It would be kind of hilarious if he would shoot my father, thinking that he’s an intruder.
“Mr. Mills?”
Through the camera in the living room, I see James hastily shoving his gun in the back of his sweatpants.
“Oh, Mr. Barron, I’m sorry for surprising you like that. I thought you planned on returning next week?”
My father laughs and says something about how it’s a good thing that James is so attentive and keeps his property safe. He heads straight towards his bedroom and I see how James breathes a sigh of relief.
“We can catch up tomorrow morning, Mr. Mills. I had a long drive.”
Silently, I close my door, already knowing that I won’t leave my room in the next few days. The cameras prove to be a brilliant investment over and over because that way I can see where my father is in the house and I immediately know when he’s gone.
I can barely sleep for the rest of the night, not after the whole rollercoaster of things that have happened. I keep the surveillance app running the whole time, and just when I doze off, there’s movement on the first floor.
James walks down the stairs, definitely more put together than last night. He switched his sweatpants for dress pants, and he’s wearing one of those black polos again. He reminds me a bit of the kids at the country club where you can clearly see that grandma got to dress them today.
He always seems so stiff, like none of his actions come naturally. A carefully crafted facade, and I wonder if it’s because he has a military background.
James should be more careful with his dog tags. Or at least wear them underneath his preppy polo shirts. Okay, in his defense, he only forgot to tug them away one time, but sometimes, once is enough.
My father is already in the kitchen, a tiny cup of espresso in his hand. The coffee machine is the only thing he’s able to use.
He’s holding his free hand out to greet James. The watch on his wrist is way too big, and I repeatedly told him they look tacky back when we still talked, but he refused to listen to me. Some people will never be classy, no matter how hard they try, and Jay Barron is the poster child for this phenomenon.
“Did you clean up?” my father asks James.
“No, that was Ruby.” It’s not the direct praise I had hoped for, but there’s still a warm feeling spreading in my stomach.
“I’m impressed, how did you get her to do that?”
“I didn’t, she did it on her own accord.”
I wish I had a replay button because I surely must have misheard that. My father makes an acknowledging face, drinking another sip of his espresso.
“Well, Mr. Mills, I hope the little princess isn’t tormenting you too much?”
I roll my eyes and from the way James” posture changes, I’m pretty sure he’d do the same if he wasn’t standing in front of my father. With the way they are standing in the kitchen, I can only see James back. As if God himself doesn’t want me to see his damn face.
“We get along all right, I expected worse,” James answers with a forced laugh.
“Did she try to run off?”
“No, Sir. She behaves well, spends most of the time in her room anyway.”
Now I’m really sure that I’m sleep-deprived and hallucinating because why the hell is he lying for me like that? I thought I was “so annoying, a spoiled brat he can’t stand?”
I’ve heard enough, certainly enough to make me question a few things, so I close the surveillance app and try to sleep for a few more hours.
The next time I wake up, it’s because my father knocks on my door. He’s talking to me in that fake sympathetic tone of voice I know so well, the one he isn’t able to hold for more than five minutes. The one he uses when he wants to trick me into thinking that he really changed. That he cares for me and that he’ll listen to me from now on. I may have fallen for his tricks back when I was still a kid, maybe also when I was still a teenager.
Back when I thought behaving like the pretty, silent little thing he desperately wants me to be would get me his approval. Back when I was so dumb that I thought he had something resembling empathy for me. Not love, because I may have been na?ve, but I was never that stupid.
I’m nothing more than a pawn for him. A pretty accessory to bring to business meetings and the country club, an asset that can and will be used as soon as the right business opportunity opens up. When he finds a gentleman who offers enough money or business benefits to my father in exchange for my hand in marriage.
But after all those years, I know better than to fall into his traps. So I stay inside my room for the whole day, and then another one. From time to time, I check my security cameras, just because I want to see if he’s still there and not because I want to catch a glimpse of James.
Watching him proves to be interesting. Because James is on high alert, monitoring my father as if he’s guarding Fort Knox. I also don’t miss it as he subtly gets a hold of my father’s phones. One after the other, fidgeting around with them until he places them back where he found them.
It takes my father two long days until he finally leaves again. Relieved, I watch his car roll out of the driveway, waiting until the gate closes behind him before I make my way down to the kitchen.
I rummage through the fridge like a starved raccoon, because while I had tons of cookies and other snacks in my room for exactly this reason, my body longs for some real, nutritious food.
After I downed a bowl of salad that was so big that it could have fueled someone twice my size, I walk towards the room of a certain someone that is twice my size. Apart from real food, I also crave real human interaction, and spying on people over hidden cameras does in fact not fulfill this need.