Page 15 of Summer Ever After
“Have a good day, Anne,” I called to one of the women who worked on the factory bathrooms with me.
“Not much good about it if you ask me,” Anne grumbled.
When I first met her, the grumpy-old-lady attitude really got to me, until I realized that it was her ‘thing’, and I had a theory that she enjoyed being a grouch – so I went with it.
“Have the worst day ever. I hope your car doesn’t start,” I grinned.
Anne hacked out a laugh. “That’s better, flower girl.”
I pulled on my raincoat and blinked as I stepped out of the big gray building. Now that it was spring, the sun was rising earlier and earlier, and I no longer had to go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. The pink of the sunrise over the mountains meant that summer was coming – and that Max would likely be back in Windswan.
I started up the car and navigated out of town to Sunflower Lane. I couldn’t pass by the spot on the road where Max and I bump started his bike, without thinking of the way he had made me feel that day. The orgasm was incredible, but that man had made me feel something better. He didn’t look at me like everyone else did – with pity or indifference. He saw me for who I was, he gave me the gift of being myself for an afternoon, and I wish that I could tell him how much that meant to me.
The car bottomed out as I splashed through a puddle. I gritted my teeth, hoping that I hadn’t caused any damage.
“Shit!.” I hissed and turned down the radio. I shut off the car and opened the door as slowly as I could, but the hinges still squeaked. With the harshness of the Windswan River behind us, I was planning on moving back into my garden shed bedroom. The light flicked on in the master bedroom, and I hoped that it was a coincidence.
I hung the keys on the nail by the door. changed into my fuzzy leggings and
t-shirt and crawled into my sleeping bag on the sofa, turning my back to the rest of the trailer.
Somewhere deep in my subconscious, I heard the shower shut off and the bathroom door slam. I didn’t open my eyes but could feel Christina towering over the top of me. “Hey.” She nudged my ass with what I assumed was her foot.
Ignoring her, I kept my eyes shut.
This time she put her foot on my lower back and jiggled it so hard there was no way I could’ve fake slept my way through it. Rolling over I squinted into the fluorescent light above her and shaded my eyes with my hand. “What is it?” I didn’t have to try to make my voice sound groggy.
“Don’t get too comfy, you’ve got a job interview at ten.”
“Ten?” I sat up and looked over Christina’s shoulder to the microwave, the only correct clock in the house. It was nine-fifteen. I felt like I’d been asleep for three minutes, not three hours. “But I already have a job.”
Christina sat on my feet. I tried to pull them out from under her, but the slippery fabric of the sleeping bag was firmly trapped underneath my stepmom. Christina slammed a print-out of a job description on the coffee table. She patted the paper and pointed to the address with her freshly manicured fingernail. “I knew working at the land registry office would pay off.”
She picked up the paper and pressed it onto my chest. “You have to get this job, Daisy.”
I took the paper and scanned the job description. “It’s a maid job. What’s so great about this one?”
“Look at who it’s for.” Her bright pink lips made her grin look comical.
I returned my attention to the paper. “It’s a numbered company. It doesn’t pay any more than the factory.” Folding the paper, I dropped it on the coffee table and tried to shimmy back down to a sleeping position.
Christina huffed. She jumped to her feet and pulled the bag right off my body. For a small woman who only did pilates and barre workouts, she was remarkably strong. “That numbered company belongs to Yates Petroleum.
I inhaled, the pieces falling into place. “A corporation has a cottage on Windswan Lake?” I didn’t mind cleaning for rich people, but the idea of cleaning up for a company that needed to clean up their environmental actions made my blood boil.
“Don’t get all high and mighty, Daze.” She shortened my name when she was irritated. The one time I told her that I didn’t like being called Dazed or Dazer was a mistake. Both Christina and Chloe called me Daze often accompanied by an eye roll. “It’s not a corporation. Yates Petroleum is owned by two brothers. One of them lives out east, and one spends his summer – here.” She spread her arms, they spanned half the trailer. “We could get out of this dump. I just need to find a way to get an invitation.”
“An invitation to what?” I was talking back, but this was a new low, even for Christina. She knew how passionate I was about the environment, and I had yet to find a petroleum company whose values leaned even slightly in my direction.
Christina tossed a towel at me. “Get in the shower and stop asking so many questions.”
The thin bedroom door slid open and Chloe padded into the kitchen. “Where’s the coffee?” She pulled out the carafe and held it upside down.
Shit. The clock on the coffee pot was flashing. “It looks like the power went out. The alarm clock didn’t go off.” I got the coffee ready in the evening when I went to work. “We will have to reset the time.”
Chloe slammed the coffee pot on the counter. “Do I have to do everything around here?” She jabbed at the buttons with the tips of her long pointy nails. The machine beeped at her and Chloe groaned. “Daze. Get over here and fix this.”
I dreamed about the day that I would be able to tell Chloe to fuck off and tell Christina that she was the worst person I’d ever met, but until I had enough money to go out on my own – or was able to get Christina removed as the trustee of my inheritance, I was going to have to bite my lip and just keep working.
