“Yes.”
“Of a construction site.”
“Yes, I…” I pause, not liking his tone. “Okay, look, Mr.—”
“Callum.”
“Callum,” I repeat. “I know, okay? I know what I look like right now. I know what I sound like right now. And that?This?It’s because of you. Because you have woken me up every morning for the past three mornings several hours before I’m meant to, meaning I don’t get any sleep, meaning I am…” I gesture down at myself, ducks and all. “This. This is who I am now. And I’m not usually like this. I am usually normal. Like, to an embarrassing extent normal. But right now, I can’t be. Instead, I have become the ranting woman in her pajamas who forgets to remove her eye masks.”
“Thought you said you meant to—”
“I lied. You’ve also made me a liar. Happy?”
His lips twitch. Real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stuff, but, judging by how dry my eyes feel, I don’t think I’ve blinked once since yesterday, so I see it just fine.
I’m nothing but a joke to him right now.
Which, alright, fair, I guess.
I fight to maintain my newfound bravado, feeling a headache forming. “Can you just give me the number of someone I could—”
“I’m sorry about the noise,” Callum interrupts. “It sounds like hell. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I disagree. There are lots of things you can do. For example, do you have to start work at seven in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“We need to maximize daylight and good weather. It’s a tight schedule.”
“Oh, you want to talk about schedules?”
“Not particularly,” he says with a straight face.
“I don’t finish work untilone a.m.,” I say, ignoring him.“And then it’s not like I just magically fall into bed ten minutes later. I’m not even in my deep sleep stage when you guys come screaming down the road. Do you know how important deep sleep is?”
“No.”
“Well, I do,” I snap. “I know all about it. It’s when my immune system strengthens. When my bones repair themselves.Mybones.”
“Sounds important.”
“It is! It’s extremely important. And I’m not getting enough of it, and you’re just…you’re…” I struggle to find the words, so exhausted I might cry, which would be the embarrassed cherry on top of this crappy morning, to be honest.
Around us, the world has started to lighten, gloomy blue giving way to dull gray, and the pounding in my head begins to beat in time with a nearby hammer as everyone else gets on with their lives, paying no heed to the lone dissenter in her pajamas.
I can’t believe I’m still wearing my freaking eye masks.
“I’m sorry about your bones,” Callum says, when I just stand there. “But I’m going to have to ask you to leave before you trip over something, and I have to fill in a lot of paperwork.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” I mutter, but he just motions back to the gate I came through and starts walking. When I fail to come up with a brilliant new plan, I have no choice but to follow.
Maybe I just won’t sleep.
I’ll be the girl who doesn’t sleep. That can be my thing.
Or I could get really into micro-napping. That’s what tech bros do, isn’t it? They record bad podcasts and they micro-nap? I could micro-nap. I could…
