“Here she goes again with this shit,” he muttered.
“Yeah, here I go again, because you’re never here,” I snapped. “You never help. I’ve had those light fixtures for five months, asked you so many times to put them in, I’m saying that crap in my sleep. And there they sit.” I swung an arm out to the corner of the study where boxes were piled four high and three deep. “So excuse me if I’m not big on listening to you complain about toss pillows when you’ve barely lifted a finger since we got here. This is my gig. I’m doing my gig and not listening to your crap. You want out, you’re out.”
His expression deteriorated as he asked, “What does that mean?”
That was when I stood. I was wearing jeans, a sweater, and had bare feet. But even with Grant only hitting five foot ten, he still mostly towered over me.
“It means I’m sick of this,” I hissed. “I’m sick of fighting. I’m sick of doing everything by myself. I’m sick of working all day and being exhausted all night and hitting an empty bed. I’m sick of keeping the books…by myself. Cleaning the units…by myself. Washing the sheets…by myself. And somehow in all that by myself, I’m still managing to be sick of,” I stabbed a finger his way, “you.”
He put his hands to his hips. “And I’m sick of you carin’ more about sandin’ a bunch of fuckin’ floors, gettin’ on my ass all the time about fuckin’ light fixtures.” It was his turn to swing an arm to the boxes. “Whinin’ all the time about how I don’t help, how I’m never here. Every wakin’ minute is about those cabins, Cassidy, and not one is about givin’ a single shit about your man.”
“Tell me,” I leaned back and crossed my arms on my chest, “how exactly do you want me to give a shit about you, Grant?”
He responded immediately.
It just wasn’t a good response.
“A blowjob once in a blue moon would be appreciated.”
My eyes grew huge and my voice grew loud. “You can’t be serious.”
“I didn’t come up here to bust my hump cuttin’ and layin’ countertops and patchin’ roofs and feelin’ my woman crackin’ the whip. I came up here to live a good life and, newsflash, babe, a good life for a man means he gets head on more than the rare occasion.”
I uncrossed my arms so I could mimic his posture, putting my hands to my own hips.
“Sorry, darlin’, when you stumble in at three in the morning and wake me up because you’re in a certain mood and I’m exhausted from having a hammer or a paintbrush or a wrench in my hand all day, up a ladder, on my back under a sink, in town bleeding money on water heaters when my man’s at the slopes bleeding money, living,” I leaned toward him and shouted, “the good life, I don’t have it in me to suck your cock!”
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” he pointed out, his voice rising.
“Oh, I’m hearing you,” I returned, my voice already loud. “And by the way,” I kept yelling. “To get the good life, you work for the good life. And you were not unaware that that was exactly what we’d both be doing when we made our way up here. It’s just that it’s only been me who’s been working for it and it’s only been you who’s been living it.”
“You don’t ever take a fuckin’ break!” he shouted.
“That’s because I can’t!” I shouted back. “Grant, we gotta get these cabins shaped up! We need to rent them for double what they brought in rundown so we can afford lift tickets and nights in town listening to live music and a decent mattress that isn’t lumpy.”
“Yeah, babe, that’s another thing. Every unit has a better fuckin’ mattress than what we sleep on.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation and screamed, “People are not gonna come back for lumpy mattresses!”
Half a second after I finished screaming, we both heard a knock at the front door, and Grant, being Grant, walked away from his angry girlfriend in order to answer it.
I stalked after him, the study right off the foyer, and stopped dead the instant I stepped foot into it.
This was because John Priest was standing at the door.
He didn’t look at me. His eyes were pinned to Grant. He hadn’t been back since his last stay but he hadn’t changed. Except to be scarier (if that could be believed, but there it was, right before me).
I also knew he’d heard and I had a feeling he’d heard more than just me shouting about lumpy mattresses.
“Cabin eleven?” he asked, his rumbling but hollow voice filling the foyer.
Grant turned to me. “Seems this guy doesn’t give a shit about lumpy mattresses.”
He had to be joking.