She stares back at me through the patio screen, sitting with a paperback, pretending to read. “Excuse me?” she barks, snapping the book shut. “You’re making rules now?”
I don’t look up from the counter. “Ground rules.”
“Without me?”
“Pretty sure dictatorships operate faster than committees.” I smirk to myself and mutter, “Good one, Mav—you’re hilarious.”
Suddenly she’s up and out of the chair, the sliding door screeching on its rusty rail, and standing with her arms crossed, eyebrow raised. “This isn’t a dorm, Maverick. You don’t get to slap a passive-aggressive list on the fridge and call it diplomacy.”
No one said anything about being diplomatic. Literally no one.
I calmly tape the list to the fridge with a strip of painter’s tape I found in the junk drawer. “It’s not passive aggressive. It’s straight-up aggressive aggressive.”
She bumps into me so she can scan the list. “‘Rule one: No threats of homicide before coffee’?” she reads. “You wrote this withcrayon.”
“It was the only writing instrument I could find.”
Her nose scrunches as she continues reading. “‘Rule two: Shared spaces are for quiet activities only’? So now you’re dictating the volume of my voice?”
“And your phone. And the TV.” I nod. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Glad she understands.
Then I watch as she rips the list off the fridge and crumples it up like a drunk dude at a bar crushing a beer can.
Rude!
Then—of course—she pivots to face me, hands on her hips like she’s the sheriff of this rental cottage. “If we’re doing rules”—she notches her chin up—“we’re doing them together.”
“You just threw away the list,” I gasp.
“Because it was unfairly biased.”
“Yes? And?”
We’re in a standoff overrules. This is my nightmare.
“I’m serious,” she says, marching over to the counter and dragging a notepad toward her. Manages to find an actual pen. “We need to establish mutual expectations.”
I roll my eyes, pulling out a stool and sitting. “That’s what I was doing.”
“No,” she says, uncapping the pen with a flourish like she’s about to sign a declaration of war. “What you were doing was dictating terms like a cranky landlord.”
I notch my chin up, too, uttering the words I know are going to piss her off. “You are aguestin this cabin.”
“I’m a co-renter,” she fires back. “Equal stake. Equal say.”
I lean against the counter. “Fine. But just so we’re clear, if you start labeling the fridge shelves, I’m walking into the lake.”
“No need. I already licked the hummus.” She doesn’t look up, just casually tosses that out like we’re not in the middle of a territorial standoff.
I blink. “You what?”
“Relax, Yeti. I’m joking.”
Yeti? Is she talking tome?
She scribbles across the top of the pageCabin Rules and Regulationsin bold, blue letters.
