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A small load of laundry was probably prudent at this point.
Once that was going, I noticed that there was stuff in the dryer. Jade had probably started running laundry, and this was the last of it. I hoped.
I returned to the kitchen to find that she had turned the music off. That was an improvement, for sure.
“I’m sorry if the music startled you,” Jade said as she continued to dump ingredients—measured carefully—into the mixer. “I didn’t think…”
“I forgot something when I left for my shift,” I replied gruffly. Her head snapped to look at me, her face wore a frown. I sighed and tried to make an attempt at stereotypical pleasantries. “Have you had dinner?”
“I ordered pizza. You’re welcome to the leftovers if you wish,” Jade said, motioning to the fridge with her head. “It’s a simple cheese pizza. I had a friend over to look at what we wanted to do for our store. She’s just as much in shock as I am that I’m only paying this much for rent here, with utilities included.”
“She can’t move in.”
Jade rolled her eyes. I didn’t know how I felt about that. It had sounded like a hint that she wanted to add a roommate, but I was not prepared to havetwoJades living in this house.
“We wouldn’t be good roommates, anyway,” Jade continued. “So, how was the shift?”
“As good as one can hope it would be,” I replied. “I decided to run some laundry before going back to the ranch.”
“Oh! I have stuff in the dryer. Let me get that out of your way.”
Jade appeared to be a little scatterbrained, just as she had been when she called me to see if she could move in. I wondered how she could be running such a successful online business if this was the case, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I walked to the freezer.
She could keep her pizza. I wanted every topping on mine after such an intense shift, and there was no way I would fudge a supreme while waiting on laundry and the sunrise. Instead, I heated up some water on the stove to make the last of the ravioli.
I made a mental note to buy more ravioli.
Jade returned, lugging her large laundry hamper behind her and quickly disappeared up the stairs. When she returned sanshamper, she pulled a spoon out of the drawer and stuck it into the bowl of the mixer.
When she pulled it out, she had a good clump of cookie dough on the spoon.
“Would you like to try some?”
“Raw cookie dough makes my stomach upset,” I replied.
“Oh… all right. More for me.” She shrugged and ate it off the spoon.
I wanted to leave so badly because this is not how I planned to spend my time… but with my laundry going, I was stuck.
Chapter eight
Eight: Jade
Iwatched as Jesse sat, defeated, at the counter. It looked like he was ready to do something else,anything else, but had decided it would be much better to stay at the house until morning. When he had first walked in, I caught a whiff of smoke. As if he had sat at a bonfire for hours. I vaguely recalled him mentioning what he did for work, but now I couldn’t recall it off the top of my head. That wouldn’t do at all if I was going to be his roommate.
“Remind me what you do?” I looked up from the bowl of cookie dough as I spooned a good heap onto the cookie sheet.
Considering I had found the two I owned, and he had one, I had enough cookie sheets to make all of the dough without needing to wait for batches to rotate through the oven. However, now that I thought about it, I probably couldn’t fit them all in the oven at once. These were too large to turn sideways, and I knew from experience that the cookies didn’t bake as well if there were two large pans on the racks. So, it’d have to be one at a time tonight.
At least I could at leastprepareall of the cookie sheets at once, I thought.
“I’m a firefighter,” Jesse said curtly.
I remembered now. But his voice had a defeated tone. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to me. I felt a surge of anger flicker.
Calm down, I chided myself.At least try to figure out why he sounds annoyed. It might not be about you.
