“What if I don’t want mac and cheese?” He heard the words as they left his mouth, and too late, he realized he sounded like a child.
Laughter. She was laughing at him. Quietly, yes, but she still laughed.
Oh, great.
“Then you don’t have to eat it,” she said, the smile clear in her speech. “But I will have done my job.”
Gray rolled his eyes. “Leave it to Baxter to find the most dedicated personal assistant on the planet.”
She was silent for moment, and Gray wondered too late if he’d offended her. He was about to apologize when she responded.
“He said you might be a challenge.” She didn’t sound offended. In fact, she still seemed amused.
A challenge?
“And, frankly, that’s fine. This job is saving me from a truly horrible fate, so you won’t hear me complaining,” she said. Her words had him sitting up again so he could hear her better. “Besides, I can already tell you’re a lot better than my old boss.”
Gray had so many questions he didn’t know where to start. “Wh— How am I better than your old boss? Who was your old boss?”
“I worked at Champagne’s in the Oil Center. My boss, Mr. Simmons, was this crabby, paunchy, old— Wait a minute…wait a minute,” she repeated. Then she stopped talking completely.
Gray leaned forward on the edge of his bed, trying to listen harder.
“I… don’t think it’s a good idea to rag on my old boss to my new boss. Then you might think that I’d do the same thing to you.”
Gray found himself chuckling. “Well, wouldn’t you?”
Meredith laughed, too. “Not if you didn’t suck, and, trust me, on my first day at Champagne’s, I already knew that Simmons sucked.”
He laughed outright. “Please, I’m dying to know. Why was Mr. Simmons so horrible?”
“Well, first of all…” Her voice drew nearer, so Gray knew she’d stepped back into the pantry. “…he’d lose his mind if you took a sick day. And if you forgot to clock out, he’d dock you a quarter of your last hour on-shift, sure you’d knocked off early and were trying to scam the system.”
Gray frowned. “Sounds like an asshole.”
“Definitely. But the thing that drove me nuts about Mr. Simmons was that he wouldn’t look at you when he was talking to you.”
His stomach seized. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean, he’d stand in front of you and talk with his eyes closed.So. Annoying.”
If a boss who made eye contact with her was high on her list, he was going to disappoint her.
“I don’t think I’m much better than Mr. Simmons at this point,” he admitted. “You can’t even see me.”
At this, her laughter rippled through the space separating them, and Gray smiled, glad he’d made her laugh even if he hadn’t meant to.
“That’s true. I don’t even know what you look like. Do you look like your brother?”
Gray’s response was immediate. “What? No. I’mfarbetter looking.”
It was what he would have said if Baxter was around. It was what he would have said three months ago. And Gray found himself surprised to hear his joke echo through the room. Meredith’s renewed laugh made him forget his mounting headache, and he lay down on his bed, listening to her.
How could someone who laughed like that have been crying in his back yard just a few minutes ago? What had she meant when she said that this job had saved her from a horrible fate? How could she make him so easily forget that he’d spent all day on the same two pages, waiting for his meds to wear off?
“That’s it. I think I’m going to have to Google you,” she said casually.
“What?!” Gray propped himself up on his elbow.