He snorted derisively. “You were more grown up at eight than I was at twenty-eight.”
“And thank God you weren’t,” I whispered. “I was grown up at eight because I didn’t have a choice,” I said, poking him in the chest. “You had a choice. You got to have a childhood. You get to keep those memories as special and something you can tell your children about! Stop pretending you have to have all your crap together at eight, twenty-eight, or even thirty-eight. For God’s sake, Mathias, you’re so entitled sometimes it hurts to even have a conversation with you about what it means to struggle in life.”
“That’s not fair,” he hissed.
“You’re just angry because you know I’m right,” I exclaimed, throwing up my arms. “Let me tell you about struggling. I’ve gone days without food. Have you ever gone days without food? I’ve lived in a house where there was no heat, no running water, and no electricity. Have you? I’ve worn dirty clothes for days because no one washed, ironed, or folded my shirts. Have you? No, you haven’t, because you had Birgitte and Theo to dote on you since the day you came wailing into this world. I’m forever grateful to them, and you, for taking me out of that hell I lived in for eight years, but those experiences, not to mention so many others that I have to repress just to function in this world, forever molded me into the person I am today. I’m sitting here in the kitchen of a house I’ve dreamed about owning, but it was bought for me by my best friend. The best friend I’ve been in love with for twenty years!” I yelled, totally worked up into a tizzy now. “That’s about as far from grown up as you can get! It’s pathetic that I let myself rely on you day after day, and yet I can’t seem to stop it from happening.”
I dropped my arms, stood, and pushed the chair back, tipping it over. “Maybe you’re right,” I said between clenched teeth. “Maybe we do need to grow up. Maybe we need to grow up and see that whatever this is between us—whatever we’re trying to repress, hide, covet, or ignore—was a childhood thing that doesn’t belong in the lives of grown-ups!”
Tears were running down my cheeks by the time I turned and ran. When I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a coffee mug hit the wall. I suspected it was mine.
♥
By the time I finished my shower, his bedroom door was closed, and when I walked down the stairs, the coffee mug had been cleaned up. I busied myself making toast, but he never reappeared, which meant he went to bed and left me to figure out the day for myself. I had no problem with that. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to him about what I’d said. It might have been the truth, but when faced with the knowledge that you had utterly embarrassed and humiliated yourself not once, but twice in twelve hours, you were more than willing to not bring it up again.
That was hours ago, and I’d been working in the honey shack ever since. I wiped the sweat running down my cheek onto my shoulder and took a breath. The place was starting to take shape as I threw out old, sticky honey buckets. It was starting to look like a usable garage again.
“You know I can pay someone to do this grunt work,” Mathias said from behind me.
I spun around, and he handed me a cold lemonade, which I gratefully accepted. I took a drink before I spoke. “You’re paying me, Mathias. That’s the point, right? You pay me to do the work you don’t want to do.”
He shook his head slowly as if to say,No way are you going to goad me into getting angry again. I know that’s what you’re doing. “No, that’s not the point. I’m paying you to help me come up with a feasible business plan for three local businesses, not toss buckets around on a hot afternoon.”
“Well, that would have been good to know three hours ago.”
He motioned me into the shade and sat at the patio table, leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and grabbed his ankle. I hated how together he looked when I was sitting there as a hot mess. “I never said you had to do the grunt work, honeybee. I thought you knew.”
I lowered my head to the table and banged it a couple of times. “Damn it, Mathias. What are we even doing here?”
There was silence until I raised my head and found him staring straight at me with his icy-blue eyes. “We’re having fun, honeybee.” He added his signature wink probably because he knew it always got him what he wanted.
Not this time. Okay, maybe this time, but whatever.
“Is that what you call this? Feels like manual labor to me.” I stood up and motioned for him to follow me to the honey shed. “I’ve been trying to talk to you about my idea for days now, but we haven’t had a free minute. Now is the time.”
He followed me into the garage but gently grabbed my arm before I could disappear inside. “Don’t think for a second I’ve forgotten about what happened this morning. I decided sleep was what I needed, so I didn’t say something I shouldn’t again. That said, we will talk about it when we’re both in the place to do that. For right now, we’ll work.”
I nodded once in acknowledgment, and he let go of my arm to follow me through the small side door. “I have the garage cleaned out now.” I cleared my throat of its residual weakness from his statement. “Save for the buckets in the back.”
“Wow”—he spun in a circle—”you’ve been busy in here.”
I leaned against the sink and folded my arms. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks now.”
He copied my posture by leaning on a counter. “As I said before, I don’t pay you to do manual labor. We could have hired someone to do it.”
“We could have but doing it myself made it easier for me to picture what I wanted to do with the space.”
He gazed around the two-car garage. “What’s to picture? It’s for extruding honey and packaging it.”
“Maybe it was,” I agreed, pushing off the sink and walking to the side wall where a bank of fridges sat. “As you can see, these refrigerators and the sink are the only equipment left at this point.”
“Do the fridges work?”
I gave him a look of consternation.
“Is that a no?”
“They’ve been sitting here collecting dust for years. Did you really think I was going to plug them in and test them out? The junkyard is coming to haul them away next week.”
