As they entered the cabin, Nat shrugged, looking around at my progress, running a finger down the wood framing, admiring my craftsmanship. It wouldn’t be too long before she could move back in.
“What’s up, Leo?” Nat asked. The anticipation was also killing me.
“As you know, tomorrow’s Camp Wars competition is the obstacle relay, and it ends in a mud crawl.” He said this like we didn’t already know. The whole camp was excited. “So I decided that you two are going to go set up the mud pit. Call it your penance.”
I figured I’d be the one to do this, but I wasn’t expecting to do it with Nat.
I sighed. “Come on, Leo.”
He gave me an unamused look. “I’m sorry, did you not ruin someone’s engagement? Or am I misremembering?”
“You could argue that two people did end up engaged, so was it really ruined?” she tried.
I nearly laughed until Leo’s eyes narrowed. He was still disappointed. Of course, he was. And he was not having it. He waited for an answer from us.
I let out a disgruntled, “Fine,” at the same time as Nat.
Leo clapped his hands. “Great. And I know you’re going to do a great job because you promised me you two would get along, so what could go wrong?”
Turned out,a lot could go wrong.
An hour later, Nat was frustrated with this as much as I was. “I don’t know why he thinks we have to do this together. We can be around each other fine.”
Was she delusional or just a liar?
“You’re right,” I lied. “And I’d be much more effective working on this alone.”
That got under her skin. She stiffened and turned her head slowly at me as we walked to the location of the pit. “Adding me into the equation does not make you less effective. I can get my hands dirty. You know I can.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?” she said, aggravated to the point that I regretted saying what I’d said. She grabbed one of the buckets we’d brought and angrily dunked it into the lake and poured it onto the dirt. I did the same once, then twice. It wasn’t enough time to get my thoughts in order, however.
“The point is, this is a one-man job. One-person job,” I corrected. “You’ll just get in the way.”
And if I hadn’t shoved my foot in my mouth before, she made it abundantly clear that I had now.
She dumped another bucket of water, this time way too close to my feet. I picked up my heavy-duty rake and tried mixing the water into the dirt. We were lucky that it had rained overnight, because there was already some mud. We were just making it a little bit better.
“You think everything is a one-person job, and that’s why it takes you forever.”
I glared. “If you’re talking about the cabin, that’s entirely out of my control.”
She threw her hands up, dropping her bucket in exasperation. “I’m talking about everything. You won’t even delegate something as small as changing a lightbulb. Your place is falling apart, but you don’t care because you’d rather help everyone else. And no, you don’t want my help withmycabin. Did you ever think I’d be interested in learning a new skill?”
“And when would you have the time, exactly? When you’re working here or working on content?” This argument was going off the rails. “You don’t stop to take a breath.”
“And neither do you,” she practically screeched, stepping toward me. “You are a textbook hypocrite.”
Steam had to be coming out of my ears. “Don’t call me that.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” She grabbed the bucket, gathered more water, and poured it near me again.
Why was her defiance so hot?
She turned away, slipping slightly before regaining her footing. Then she gathered more water and poured it near me. Again. I ignored her display and kept raking, which was a lesson in patience if I’d ever seen one. I should have been studied.
“You know what your problem is?” she accused ten minutes later, as if she’d been ruminating on it this entire time. “You think you’re the only competent person. You think you’re better than people.”
