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“I have a bag that I keep in my car. I must have brought it inside meaning to do laundry and never got around to it until tonight. Not that it’s any of your business,” he snapped.
“Geez. Calm down. I’m just making light conversation,” I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “it’s not like I’m asking to rifle through your drawers. I like to save that until at least our fourth conversation.”
He didn’t laugh.
I rolled my eyes. “Why is making conversation with you like pulling teeth? It’s not like I’m trying to get your social security.”
“Because it’s a fluke that I’m even home tonight!” Jesse revealed as he stood up from his seat rather abruptly. “I only came home because I forgot something, and I only forgot it because you’ve interrupted my normal schedule. Now, leave me be!”
He walked out of the kitchen. A few moments later, I heard the master bedroom door slamming shut.
I could feel my face, hot with anger and some form of embarrassment I couldn’t quite name. I’d just been trying to be friendly. If he hadn’t wanted to make conversation, he could’ve retreated to the master bedroom the moment he’d started his laundry. Why sit in the kitchen unless he wanted to talk?
I sighed heavily.
The oven timer dinged at me. As I pulled the first sheet of cookies out and put another batch in the oven to cook, I was beginning to feel like I had made a mistake renting from Jesse Delaney. The rent was fantastically priced, but there were drawbacks that had not been entirely apparent on the listing.
In the interest of fairness, I supposed that it wouldn’t have been something he would have wanted to disclose, especially since he had been entirely upfront about not being home often.
I mean, how do you put “landlord is the absolute worst” on a rental listing?
When he’d said that he would be gone most of the time, I thought it meant that I would only see him for a few minutes each night and from there, we could make the conversations that would lead to an amicable acquaintanceship. I hadn’t realized that he never, ever wanted to interact with me.
“It’s not like I’m asking to be your girlfriend, you grump,” I muttered. “Why are you like this?”
I had such an urge to ask him who in the world had hurt him so irrevocably, so deeply. Surely, he had been hurt by someone close to him at one point for him to be so grumpy. So mad at the world.
The desire to listen to my music at the loudest volume I could stand suddenly disappeared. Instead, I headed upstairs and grabbed my Bluetooth headphones. Funny little contraptions they were, since they used bone conduction technology to do their work instead of functioning like a normal pair of earbuds.
They worked wonders for hearing what was going on around me. They allowed me to watch a show while still listening for the timer. My laundry could wait until the cookies were all done in the oven—which would only take another twenty or thirty minutes since each batch took about fifteen minutes total to cook.
“If you want to be like that, then we don’t have to be friends,” I muttered as I turned my phone on again to listen to a show as I put dishes away. “But I’d like to be treated civilly. It’s not like I’m breaking any rules by simply trying to make conversation.”
If he tried to make the rule that conversation with him, unless it was about the rent and his duties as landlord, was off-limits, I was out of here. The only person I knew in town was Maria, and it was so disheartening to literally be living with someone who very clearly didn’t want anything to do with me. I needed to be able to enjoy something about the place, and so far, his personality was not the winning aspect of the property. That was still by far and large the commute to the store that Maria and I had leased out.
Since Jesse was set on being such a whiner tonight, I started texting Maria to figure out when we wanted to open the store. We’d have to do some decorating, of course, and I had to put some jewelry up for display. We’d need a case or shelf for earrings since those were my best sellers.
I’d probably be spending the night beading. There was nothing wrong with that. I’d spent a good portion of the afternoon beading, too. If we were going to be at all successful, I needed to increase how much I was producing so that we had stuff we could sell at the store in addition to the commissions I took online.
And I’d have to update the description on my online shop. If people were in the area and wanted things now, they could come to the store instead.
Chapter nine
Nine: Jesse
The next morning, I was out of the house before Jade even woke up. It was rather easy to do since I had already packed everything after getting her off my case about what I do and why I was home for the night. With my laundry already done, all I’d had to do was pack my little bag and put the rest of my laundry in my room – to be dealt with later after I returned home, but before my next shift.
On the drive to the ranch, I couldn’t help but think of how the night before had gone. Jade had wanted to know some specifics about my job that I wasn’t willing to share withanyone –whether or not they had seen the burns we could get from the fires we fought. The fact that she was a nurse before coming here should have taught her that there were just some careers that lent themselves to danger. Firefighting, police officers, military, and others all took specialized risks that others – such as jewelry makers – wouldn’t understand.
I shook my head as I continued to drive along the highway. If she hadn’t learned last night, I’d keep emphasizing that I liked my privacy. It was why I wasn’t home all that often. The area Ilived in had neighbors who liked to get together and get to know each other. If she was all interested in making friends, she could make her stupid ‘small talk’ with them.
A couple of hours later, I arrived at the ranch. The dusty road reminded me of all the hours that I had spent keeping track of the cattle in my childhood, but nowadays, I preferred work with the horses.
My father waved to me from where he stood, glad to see that I had finally made it. I walked over to him, making sure to lock my truck on the way. It was less about not trusting anyone on the ranch and more about being sure everything would be safe. I had my good work boots in there. If those got stolen, I was going to have to find another pair in a hurry. And it wasn’t easy to accomplish that.
“I wasn’t sure you were coming after I didn’t hear anything last night,” my father said as I got closer. “What kept you from getting here?”
“I didn’t get my laundry done in time, and I decided freshly cleaned laundry would make the drive easier,” I admitted. Silently, I chided myself for forgetting to text my dad.
