Chapter 5
Five
Thou shalt not stress over the opinion of an evil bitch.
—Bernice’s secret thoughts
Bernice
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You’ll have to learn how to run the forklift and get it done.” Vera pointed at the 18-wheeler driver and said, “He should have a list of the product. Compare it with our list as you take it off. If there’s anything missing, that’s on you.”
When I still hesitated, she said, “It’s not that hard.”
If it’s not that hard, then why aren’t you doing it?
“I’m not comfortable with doing this,” I pointed out. “If I mess something up, that’ll be on me. And this also wasn’t in the job description.”
Vera looked at me like I was a major disappointment.
“Listen, this was part of the job description when I hired you,” she pointed out. “I said ‘lift over fifty pounds and be able to handle heavy equipment.’”
“When you said ‘be able to handle heavy equipment,’ I thought you meant ‘be able to lift heavy things.’ Not drive heavy equipment! Can you see how that would be confusing?”
“No,” she said with a resolve that made me realize that she wasn’t going to budge on this.
Great.
Fucking great.
I gritted my teeth and wondered how the hell I was going to do this job.
I mean, seriously, who just threw a person to the wolves on their first day? And she couldn’t come out and at least show me which one was the freakin’ forklift?
When I got into the garage area, there were two very large pieces of equipment that could seriously be considered a forklift.
I mean, they both had freakin’ forks.
With no other recourse, I called my brother.
He sent it straight to voicemail, then sent a quick apology text.
Creed:
I’m really sorry I declined that, but I’m in the middle of something.
I sighed and did the next best thing.
I called Mable.
I’d met her a few times, and I loved everything about her.
She was a heavy equipment operator, and generally used the really big machines that cleared trees and things.
She would know how to do it.
I queued up her number and hit dial, biting my fingernail as I waited for her to pick up.
She didn’t answer, either.
Which had me groaning.
The next best thing?
I got on Duck Duck Go and searched up what a freakin’ forklift looked like.
When I determined which one was which, I pulled up a video on how to operate a forklift.
After watching several videos, I finally decided to open the huge bay door that the truck was parked behind.
Only, the freakin’ door was massive, and it took every bit of my strength to get the damn thing open.
By the time that I was done, I was seconds away from an asthma attack.
At least I was warm, though…
When the trucker came up to me with a clipboard, I held up my finger and reached into my pocket for my inhaler with the other hand.
The trucker looked at me with wide eyes, panic filling his features.
I did the whole inhaler thing and closed my eyes as I waited for it to do its job.
Luckily, my body decided to react well to the medication today and my asthma attack stalled before it could become full-blown.
“You okay?” the trucker asked with more concern than my boss had.
“I’m dandy,” I admitted. “Today’s my first day, and they’re saying that I need to use the forklift to unload you. I watched a couple of YouTube videos…”
His lips twitched. “Is that why you’re having an asthma attack?”
“Probably partially. Stress isn’t any kinder to me than physical exertion, and that door was huge and heavy,” I admitted. “However, if you’re comfortable with a brand new, never driven a forklift before person unloading you, I’ll do my best.”
His eyes were kind when he said, “That’s all anyone could ever ask for.”
I smiled, my first genuine smile of the day, then nervously got into the forklift.
I started it up and patted myself on the back for being able to do that.
I then put on my seat belt and pulled up YouTube again, pausing it frame by frame, as I figured out what to do and what buttons and levers to push.
Eventually, I backed it out, but immediately stopped when the screamy beeping started.
“That’s normal.” The trucker grinned.
I blew out a relieved breath, but still it came out through tight lungs.
Not fully gone yet.
Great.
I backed up, then pulled forward, happy now that I’d managed to maneuver it without breaking it.
And that it was cooperating with what I wanted it to do.
As I slowly drove into the back of the man’s truck, I breathed a sigh of relief when I was able to get the first pallet off.
However, when I got to the area that Vera had told me to put it, I realized that it wasn’t going to work.
Not with my inability to maneuver in the tight spaces that the other pallets forced me to do.
So I put them in a different spot, being careful and slow the entire time, right next to a shiny motorcycle that had to belong to Huxley.
It was on the last such trip that I got cocky.
I turned a little bit too hard and fast, and the motorcycle toppled over.
I stared in shock at the bike lying on its side and felt fear slither down my spine.
“Shit!”
“Whoops,” the trucker drawled.
“What. The. Fuck?”
I looked over to find Huxley, dressed in a huge plastic apron with rubber boots on, a knife in his hand, and blood up to his elbows, staring at me like he would like to murder me.
“I’m so sorry!” I cried. “I didn’t mean to!”
Harvey wheezed.
Hux elbowed him in the belly, forcing him to bend over to catch his breath.
Then Hux looked at the driver and frowned.
“JohnBoy, why didn’t you just do it for her?” Hux grumbled, looking pissed as hell as he stared at his bike lying on the ground.
I bit my lip, trying not to cry.
“Because Vera’s a bitch, and she’s going to make her figure it out anyway.
Plus, like always, it’s not my damn job to unload.
It’s y’all’s job. And Vera can unload it her damn self, but she’s too good for manual labor.
Yet she has this poor girl out here doing it.
You’re lucky all she did was hit your bike and knock it over. ”
True.
I could’ve done way worse.
Like piercing the gas tank with one of my forks, trailing gasoline throughout the store, and accidentally setting it on fire.
But that was the bane of a chronic overthinker’s existence. Worst-case scenarios and me were BFFs.
Harvey and Hux walked to the bike and got it standing again.
Luckily, it didn’t look worse for wear.
“Sorry,” I repeated for the fourteenth time.
Hux snorted and walked back into his shop, slammed the door closed, and locked it.
I looked at JohnBoy. “Okay, let’s finish this.”
“I think maybe you should stack the things over there, away from Hux’s bike,” Harvey admitted.
“I can’t,” I grumbled. “Because there’s a shit ton of stuff over there, which she asked me to go through before I came to ask y’all for help. There’s nowhere else for all this stuff to go.”
“I thought she hired you to work inside the store?” JohnBoy asked.
“She did,” I grumbled.
“Then why are you out here?” he asked.
“Good freakin’ question,” I said. “I told her that I couldn’t do anything physically exerting when I took this job.” I patted my tightening chest.
Harvey frowned. “What?”
“She has asthma,” JohnBoy informed him.
Harvey looked over at me. “You do?”
I nodded, heart pounding and lungs seconds away from fucking up my entire day.
“Ahh,” he said. “Hop off, let me do the rest.”
I was more than happy to hop off.
When Harvey got on, he drove it like he’d been doing it his entire life.
He rearranged everything in minutes.
Only when he was done and the forklift was stowed did JohnBoy say, “My sister is a complete bitch. Don’t let her run all over you. You’re going to have to stick up for yourself. You have laws on your side.”
That surprised me. “Your sister?”
He nodded.
“Lucky you.”
JohnBoy snorted. “She’s been a bitch all her life.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
He handed me the clipboard with his signature and said, “Remember what I said. Don’t let her run all over you.”
Except, by the end of that day, I was run ragged and still on the verge of an asthma attack.
When I laid down in my bed that night, thirty minutes after I got home, windows wide open because I’d forgotten that there were no blinds, I thought…maybe Creed was right.
Maybe moving here wasn’t the right thing after all.