Feral

by Teagan Kade

  She looks up, irritated. “I’m busy. If I’m going to work here, I’m going to be useful and that means making my way through all this… mess. Seriously, you’ve been open barely a week. How is this such a disaster already? Do you have any system here for deliveries and ordered parts or do you just drop them where you stand and leave them there?”

  And there’s the shrew…

  “Well, actually, my plan was to…” I start.

  “And this,” she says, grabbing the rag, “I’ve found like ten others up here in random places. Where are you washing your shop cloths? And how about the receipts for your business purchases?”

  “What about them?” I ask, irritated now too.

  “Where are they?”

  I look at her deadpan, “Everywhere. Happy hunting.”

  She’s shaking her head, sighing in exasperation as she gets up and walks to the rack and wall where the retail accessories hang.

  “How about your merchandise? You’ve got windshield wipers over here and fluid all the way over there. You’ve got rims in three different places… Is there any rhyme or reason to this? And the computer!” She’s bouncing all over the place, a flurry of judgement as she tears the store apart, hurling questions at me with a side serving of criticism.

  “Alright, alright, I get it. There’s a lot to do. Isn’t that why you’re here? Can’t you just calm the hell down?”

  From her expression, she doesn’t seem to like that response.

  “Well, enjoy your lunch. I have neither the time nor appetite right now,” she’s says, huffing back to the desk and turning her back to me.

  Okay, that didn’t go well.

  I remind myself that maybe she’s under stress and I’d rather have a civil working relationship than a hostile one.

  “Look, we can work on this together after lunch. I’ll show you the programs in the computer and how I’ve been organizing things so far,” I tell her.

  “I’m only here to pay off the work on the GTO. I’m not here for social time,” she replies.

  “Well, you don’t have to be here for either, since I already told you that you can just pay me back over time…”

  She rises and comes over to me, green eyes flashing, getting so close I can smell her shampoo.

  “And I already told you I don’t want strings attached. I don’t need you expecting any other kinds of gratitude for your charity.”

  What in the hell?

  “How exactly is a payment plan charity?” I ask, frustrated.

  “Don’t try to twist words here. I’m not here for your social time. I’m here to do a job and that’s it!”

  “Fine! Do what you want. I’m going to lunch!” I finally shout, snapping.

  *

  I storm out, frustrated and irritable. What is it going to take for her to get over this stupid belief I’m going to demand some kind of unsavory payment from her? My temper can withstand a lot—nearly a decade in the courtroom has given me nerves of steel, but this complicated headache of a girl is inexplicably testing the limits of that control.

  I rake my hands through my hair, unable to take out my frustration any other way.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, momentarily relieved for the distraction.

  Selena’s name pops up above the message, “Hey Big Boy, gimme a call soon as you can, it’s important -S”.

  I reach the diner and pick a booth in the back, away from everyone, and order a burger and fries from Maggie before I dial Selena back.

  “Big Boy Beckett,” she answers, “finally calling back. Long time no talk. You know I’ve texted you like five times already.”

  I snap a little, impatient. “Yeah, well, you’re the one who told me to get out while I could, so what’s so important?”

  “Alright, chill out. Don’t go getting lippy with me. I’m doing you a favor here.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I got a call from some guy named Buddy asking about you. Somehow he knew that you and I used to do the dirty and he wanted to know if I had any info on where you’d disappeared to. I told him I don’t fuck and tell. He gave me a bad feeling, though, so I’m asking, whose cornflakes did you shit in?”

  Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

  “We have history… It’s complicated,” I say, wanting to leave it there.

  “Tsk, tsk, Mason. Aren’t you supposed to be simplifying? Wasn’t that the whole point of your grand adventure into podunkville?”

  “That was the idea, but even out here I’m a fucking magnet for problems.”

  “What’d you get yourself into now?”

  “Oh, just that I’ve hired an employee who hates my guts and thinks all I want is to get into her country cotton panties. It’s such a crock of bullshit too. She came to me, wanting to get a car repaired, but couldn’t afford the work. I try to suggest a payment plan but somehow that makes me a jackass and then I get my fucking head bitten off because I made the mistake of saying she was pretty, like it’s some kind of freaking mortal sin!”

  “I thought you said you hired her…”

  “Yeah, well despite her rabid hatred, she came back and offered to work off the cost. But now all she does is complain and nag about how disorganized my shop is and pick apart everything I say… It’s like the first year of law school all over again. It’s driving me freaking crazy and she’s barely started working.”

  “I’m confused…”

  “About what?” I ask.

  “Why aren’t you fucking her?” Selena asks in that smug voice of hers.

  I nearly spit out my coffee. “Are you insane?”

  “What? You clearly want to… I don’t think I’ve ever heard you this worked up over a chick.”

  “Well, clearly you just don’t know me as well as you think.”

  “Yeaaah… okay, whatever. I’m busy. Suffer in celibacy hell if that’s how you want to play it, but what are you going to do about this Buddy character? I heard he’s called a few other associates asking about you too.”

  I shake my head at myself. “Hell, I don’t know. He wants me to come back and represent his nephew, but the last thing I want to do, now that I’ve finally gotten set up here, is to go back to that. Besides, Buddy is a classic piece of entitled Connecticut shit-baggery.”

  There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that, but I can’t explain it to Selena, not without revisiting my own carefully guarded demons.

  Damn it, why can’t the past just stay in the past?

  “Well, he seems persistent and well-connected. Maybe just take the case and get him off your back? Is it worth him causing problems for you?”

  “If I cave and take the case, it’s a matter of time before there’s another one. I can’t get dragged back into that.”

  “So you’re going to blow him off then?”

  “Yes… no, fuck, I don’t know. If I piss him off he has the means to make things very difficult for me to continue here.”

  “Well, all I can say is you were never this indecisive when you were gettin’ some on the regular. Anyway, I have to go. I have a pretrial conference in twenty. Do me a favor—check in from time to time, just so I know you’ve haven’t been swallowed up by the Clampetts completely.”

  Hanging up with her, I’m thinking about the last thing Selena said. It has certainly been the longest dry spell I’ve had. Starting up the shop, all my time has been wrapped up in the business and I haven’t really gotten out or met many women who aren’t married or in their eighties… aside from Jeanie.

  And that sweet ass... those long legs wrapped around you.

  What the hell am I thinking? She wants nothing to do with me, and besides, she’s almost certainly a little bit crazy. You never fuck crazy. It’s the golden rule.

  Crazy chicks are the best lays, though, my head counters.

  I breathe deep, trying to not think with my dick. It’s as bad an idea as letting a client with a criminal record testify at trial. That didn’t work out so well.


  I need to deal with one problem at a time. Maybe I’ll call Buddy tonight, confront this thing head on before it gets out of control.

  As I’m finishing my burger, feeling contentedly full, my mind wanders back to the shop again. It’s true. I feel a bad about snapping, especially given Jeanie is back there working while I’m sitting here brooding and eating.

  Maggie brings the check over, but I stop her. “Hey, you know Jeanie pretty well, right?”

  “Sure, since she was frying-size. Why?” she asks, a twinkle in her eye.

  “She’s working for me part time over at the shop.”

  “Yeah, I heard something about that,” she says, smiling.

  “I want to take her something to eat. She didn’t want to stop working, you see, so I was hoping you would know what she’d want and maybe box it up for me?” I pile on the Beckett charm.

  “Well, aren’t you just sweeter than stolen honey. Sure, I’ll get something out here for her.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it,” I say, Maggie hurrying off to the kitchen.

  I’ll apologize when I get back and maybe then we can finally be on civil terms. If there is one thing I feel certain of, it’s that I can’t go a couple of months tiptoeing around the shop like this.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JEANIE

  Two weeks into working together and, day by day, it gets a little easier. I’ve got the storefront in better shape, though there is a backlog of contractor invoices and other paperwork still from the months of construction on top of all the incoming business.

  Mason seems intelligent, but he clearly has little to no experience keeping books or tracking expenses. He stands behind me, one arm leaning on the counter as I show him the accounting program I downloaded onto the computer.

  “So, from now on, make sure that all invoices go in this file so I can do the data entry and we can track this information electronically. It’ll make taxes a lot easier.”

  He’s looking at me like he’s impressed. “Why are you working at the diner when you know how to do this sort of thing?”

  I look away. “I guess because I don’t have a degree. Who would trust me with their books when I have no formal training?”

  Other than you…

  “Well, I did. Besides, you obviously know what you’re doing, so you’ve gotten some kind of training, right?”

  I smile a little as I remember Lola’s insistence I be self-sufficient and capable of handling money. After she watched my momma hand over all her money to my daddy just to have him squander it down at the Canteen, it was no wonder.

  “My great-aunt, Jerry’s late wife, her daddy was the bank manager and she kept the books for a few local businesses. She thought it was important for a woman to be able to budget and track finances.”

  “Smart lady.”

  “Yeah, she really was,” I say, and realize this is one of the first non-hostile conversations we’ve shared.

  “Well, formal training or not, you’ve done a great job getting all this set up. I’ve got my strengths, but this,” he says, gesturing towards the computer, “is definitely not among them.”

  A guy who can acknowledge a woman is superior to him in something? Maybe he’s not quite so terrible, I think.

  “Thanks. I’m glad we could work out a way for me to be useful to you…” I trail off, realizing how little space there is between us, how close his face is to mine. It’s close enough I can make out the light blond dusting of stubble on the angular planes of his face. He’s looking at me with those intense icy blue eyes behind half-lowered lids. My skin feels tingly. I try to swallow away the nerves.

  Say something. Change the subject!

  “I need to call Danny back,” I blurt out.

  Something in his eyes seems to shift. The corner of his mouth tilts, showing off that dimple.

  I fumble awkwardly. “It’s about the Blazer he towed in last night.”

  “Alright.” Mason smiles. “Whatever you say…”

  He walks back into the garage and I exhale, realizing I’ve been holding my breath.

  Settling into a routine with Mason, just the two of us in the shop most of the time, I keep reminding myself to keep him at arm’s length. I definitely don’t need this kind of distraction, and what’s the point?

  Most men are exactly like Clint, just after the conquest. To my relief, he hasn’t been back in, but I’ve seen his truck parked outside the diner. Though I can’t see past the tinted windows, it gives me the heebie jeebies. He’s stopped texting me lately, which is a relief, but I’m not holding my breath it’ll last forever.

  Maybe Mason isn’t entirely like Clint. Mason has been entirely respectful, plus he hasn’t made any kind of obvious move on me.

  Too bad… Wait, no, that’s good. That’s what we want. Right?

  I’m not so sure.

  Jerry’s upcoming chemo treatment has me all out of sorts. Still, it’s getting harder to deny that, at the very least, I enjoy looking at him… Or that I don’t want to see if those muscles are really as hard and firm as they look.

  I busy myself with projects like cataloguing the inventory, including the back-up supplies in boxes in the back-storage room.

  Apparently, Mason erred on the side of caution when stocking his retail inventory because there are boxes and boxes back there I doubt we’ll be getting to in the very near future. It seems like as good a project as any to put a bit of distance between us.

  I’m sorting through boxes of brake pads and wiper fluid when I come across two unsealed boxes that look a little more banged up than the rest.

  I open the first one up to be greeted by Mason’s smiling face, only much younger and resplendent in a high-school graduation cap and gown. He’s surrounded by three young boys, each of them a good six inches shorter than him. It looks like maybe his family. I feel a streak of guilt.

  This is clearly personal stuff, Jeanie. What are you doing?

  I quickly close up the box and start to turn away, but stop.

  There’s no harm checking the second box, though… You don’t know what’s in that one—not for certain, anyway.

  I open the panels of the second box and find more picture frames, but these are different—artistic black and white photos, mostly portraits. They’re beautifully composed, matted and framed with care.

  “Jeanie?” I hear Mason call, as I hurriedly try to put the box back together. “Oh, there you are… What’re you looking at?”

  Caught red-handed. You’re in it now, Miss Nosy.

  I swallow before speaking. “Um, nothing. I was just trying to go through all these boxes for inventory,” I say, despite the frame in my hand.

  He’s raising a brow and looking from me to the frame and back, his voice deep and edged. “Really? Because it kind of looks like you’re snooping through my stuff.”

  Crap.

  “Sorry, I just saw these boxes and didn’t know what was in them. I just glanced, I promise. I wasn’t trying to snoop.”

  Liar, liar…

  “So the label on the side that says ‘Personal Effects’ didn’t give you a good enough idea?”

  Double crap.

  “What? There’s no label…” but as I’m speaking I turn the box and see it on the side facing away from me. “Oh.”

  Well, nothing to do now but charge on ahead.

  “They’re really beautiful.”

  He takes the frame from me, shaking it between us. “This was a long time ago.”

  “I’m surprised you’d just have them stuffed in a box.”

  He shrugs. “They’re just some old photos I took at college. I don’t really have any use for them.”

  “You? You took these?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. You don’t know everything about me.”

  Clearly…

  “Sorry, it’s just… you don’t strike me as the artistic type.”

  His voice is deep and a little gravelly as he says, “I guess you could say I like capturing beautiful thin
gs.”

  There’s a wistful fluttering in my stomach. I can’t help but look at his mouth, his lips so full for a man. His eyes are intense and I realize my pulse is racing.

  “Hello? Is anybody here?” An elderly female voice comes from the next room, dragging me back to reality.

  That was close, Jeanie. Snap out of it.

  I spend the rest of the afternoon struggling with the realization I’m growing attracted to Mason. He’s obviously good looking, any halfwit would notice that straight off, but the more I interact with him, the more I realize he’s got more going on than a hot body and the ego to match.

  Part of me wonders if I haven’t been aware of this all along. If maybe that’s why I’ve had my hackles up and been so short with him. The thought leaves me feeling guilty.

  I look over through the windows to see he’s under the hood of Jerry’s car. My chest tightens slightly.

  It’s getting close to my shift at the diner, but I know Mason has a long night ahead of him as he’s found himself in greater demand than expected. I go over and start a pot of coffee for him.

  I start getting my things together as it’s brewing, thinking about the fact this attraction doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  Problem is, he doesn’t meet many of the items on my list. He’s good looking, sure, intelligent, handy, and now, apparently, it turns out he’s also creative. On the other hand, I know virtually nothing about his past, where he came from, what he did before this. I have no idea how stable his life is, what his values or goals are.

  He’s like one big question mark in a handsome package.

  Might be fun to unwrap him…

  I blush at the thought and remind myself if I let this go any further I could just be setting myself up for disappointment.

  But, if I don’t, am I just short-changing myself?

  Either way, I’m determined to be a nicer to him.

  The coffee is done. I pour a cup and take it out to the garage on my way out.

  “Hey, I’m heading out, but I brought you some coffee. Don’t forget, you’ve got Mrs. Strait coming in with a timing belt issue. She does Meals on Wheels, so she needs her van working ASAP.”