SONG : DON'T BLAME ME - TAYLOR SWIFT
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"Heads, I go in. Tails, I don't,"I muttered to myself as I pulled out a coin from my pockets.
It had been eight thirty when I left the main building and all I had been doing for the past fifteen minutes since getting to Building X was pacing in front of the front door like it was a treadmill.
The main reason was because I was indecisive as to whether I should have feigned illness or not and the other was because I was mustering up the courage to walk in there and tell him to his face how wrong he was.
After getting home yesterday from the hotline yesterday, I had stuffed down my cold meal with anger as I remembered the accusations Ethan Clarke had laid against me.
After he had dirtied up the living room, shattered glass and gory blood everywhere, I had, like any reasonable person, done the best I could with the situation. I saw the blood and I ran for the first aid kit, where Diana had told me it was.
Then what did the ungrateful, egomaniac, conceited idiot accuse me of?
He accused me of being a gold-digger that thought could seduce him because I was being nice to him.
Whoever Laurel Richards was to him, I hope she made him suffer enough, the way he was making me suffer lately.
I remembered her appearing on America's Next Top Model but getting eliminated before the Top 10 were chosen. Then she disappeared from the main scene only to appear 2 years later being the main model for brand such as Gucci or Yves Saint Laurent. One and half years later and she was the most sought out model, gracing most of the billboard in New York City.
I didn't know how exactly Ethan Clarke and Laurel Richards were affiliated, not that I cared to know. But I wouldn't be surprised if they were.
Of course, the courage and determination that had been burning through me last night had died down when I woke up this morning.
In fact, if anything I stalled, dragging the time it took me to get out of bed because I didn't want to get out and face the sure, ever-present fact that I was stuck with Ethan Clarke for the next month in close proximity and that he would do everything it would take to make me quit.
Maybe, I hoped, he changed his mind and didn't want me to come over anymore.
That was before I got dressed and went out to meet Diana.
"Mr Clarke expects you there no later than nine a.m, Ashleigh," she said with an almost grimace as if she still found the idea distasteful before she walked off.
I almost stopped her and begged her to go to him and convince him to let me off because we both didn't like each others company.
I almost got down on my knees and told her that I, too, didn't like the idea of being left in a room alone with Mr Grumpy, especially when he would rather throw me out of his house and his family then let me wash his tighty whities.
But then I realized that I shouldn't do that because if I did, I was basically admitting defeat. That was until I got to the front door and my nerves started again, leaving me to the inevitability of leaving my fate to a simple, mundane flip of a coin.
I tossed the coin and covered it as it lands on my palm.
"Heads, I go in. Tails, I don't..."
***
Ethan Clarke looked up as I dragged myself into the living room of Building X as soon as the coin revealed itself, heads smiling up at me with no shame.
Diana had given me the extra key yesterday this morning because she said that, in her words, "The Master of Building X doesn't want you inconveniencing him unnecessarily."
I was about to let her know how much he was the one inconveniencing people but held myself back.
We simply stared at one another for what I concluded to be far too long before he broke the tension by turning back to reading the newspaper in his hand and drinking his coffee.
I stood there awkwardly before I remembered that Diana had mentioned that the list of things I was to do today would be on the counter and that I shouldn't disturb Mr Clarke unless I was addressed first.
At first I was insulted and a more pissed than necessary by the set rules he had laid out and how childish his actions were being. But then I realized that this was working more for me than against me.
After all, if we didn't communicate, I wouldn't have to suffer through any insults he would have obviously made against my education and financial situation.
Neither will I have to suffer through any need to put up any pretences because he was my employer and in effect had a hand in my status of employment here and lastly, I didn't have to push down the urge to pour detergent in his coffee.
The last one was the one I was most grateful for avoiding given the situation. I didn't want, nor need a criminal record.
The note greeted me with a short and simple,
'Everything you didn't do yesterday'.
I felt my lips curl up into a grimace reading that as if he was accusing me of not finishing up what I was supposed to finish up yesterday. As if I had any say in leaving early yesterday. As if I was to be blamed for getting chased out of the house with the promise of not being allowed back into it.
Instead of turning around and staring all of this, I grabbed a pen from the counter and started listing down the things I still had left to do from yesterday, only realizing that even though he had let me continue on yesterday, I wouldn't have been able to finish it all.
He listed down a list that even three people wouldn't have been able to finish in a day if they worked together.
As the pool was draining, I grabbed all his shirts and started ironing it, picturing his face as I pressed the hot iron against the creases.
The only sound that existed in the house was the one of the pool draining out and the sound of the paper turning. It was as if we both had taken a vow of silence.
I soon realized that my desire of telling him how wrong he was had diminished to the point where I wanted to exist in this world with no further exchange of words with Ethan Clarke.
Once all the shirts and shoes were pressed and polished respectively, I put on the cleaning gloves and grabbed the pool vacuum and chemicals needed to clean the pool floor properly.
Honestly, I had never cleaned a pool once in my life. Hell, the only pool I'd come close to had been the community one back home and that one time we had gone to Finn's summer house at the Hamptons because his parents had gone to Australia for the summer.
In our entire three year relationship, not once had he ever introduced me to his parents. I'd asked several times and most of those times his reply had been, "Not now baby."
It got to the point where I just concluded that it would eventually happen. Although it never did.
Other than those irregular visits to the community pool and the summer house, I didn't really use the pool, nonetheless clean one.
And those times I even deigned to get into a pool, I usually made sure it was shallow enough for me to stand in. Even though I knew it was much safer than a lake or the open sea and much more controlled, I didn't like putting myself to or testing my fate. Everytime I got to a point where it was too deep that my feet couldn't touch the floor, my parents tragic fates flashed through my mind.
This limited my contact with pools or a huge body of water in general. Thankfully, while I was taking a short break yesterday, I had looked up how to clean a pool and when I checked in the storage room everything that was needed was there, ready and available.
Initially, I was hesitant about getting into the pool even with no water in there but once I talked myself into doing it, I started vacuuming the pool floor of any grime that stuck there.
There wasn't that much grime though and if anything the pool seemed like it had just been cleaned recently.
I wouldn't put it past Ethan Clarke to just adding that to the list as an additional load.
Once I had finished, I got out of the pool and pulled out the list in my pocket before crossing it off the list and circling the next one.
Cleaning the china and polishing the silverware.
I wiped away the drops of perspiration clinging to my skin as I started towards the house.
As if a shockwave had hit the house, a clear laugh rang out in the living room, towards me.
That was the first human sound that had echoed since I got here.
I neared the house before stopping when I see Ethan Clarke heading towards my direction, most likely heading to the kitchen. He was on the phone.
This calmed me down because I had been worried that we would have to communicate. Since he was on the phone, this would keep him occupied while I finished my work.
"Yes, I was just looking over the proposal yesterday," Ethan Clarke's voice reached me, louder than normal as if he was taunting me for being able to speak while I had to sneak around on tiptoes around him.
I walked through the door, trying to keep my shoulders straight and steadfast when I felt his eyes on me, studying, judging and whatever it is he did when he watched me.
"I think this would be a good venture and I think that it would bring Clarke Industries and Hammond Corp an impressive return."
I stopped short as if my legs were wedged into the floor and my body had lost all mobile function.
Hammond Corp?
I turned around and stared at Ethan Clarke. He stared back at me before he smiled darkly as if he knew my deepest and darkest fears and secrets.
It couldn't be. It couldn't be. Out of everyone in Hammond Corp, it was senile to think that Ethan Clarke was talking to Finn of all people.
The possibility of that happening were one to a million.
However, even with those chances, I stared at watched Ethan Clarke continue.
"Yes, I am looking forward to meeting you tomorrow, Finn," he said, his lips spewing out that name as his lips pulled up even higher, forming a Cheshire cat smile.
After a couple of seconds, seconds that echoed with my mind rushing with endless questions, my heart racing thunderously and my skin feeling like an army of fire ants were marching across it, Ethan Clarke finally hung up the phone.
Again, we were locked in a quiet, tense filled stare. And again, he was the one to break it.
"Well, Finn Hammond had a lot to say about you, Ms Bishop."