It was like Cinderella’s rodent friends had visited. Everything was different. The balloons were gone. There was not a singleproject material or tool in view. The mail was separated into neat piles on my coffee table.
I walked into the kitchen, where the counters literally sparkled. The last place I remembered throwing my car keys was on the counter, but they weren’t there. I went into my room and found an equally clean place, except for a basket of laundry I’d been meaning to get to sitting at the end of my bed. The winter clothes I’d been ignoring were placed in the bins at the end of my bed, all of them labeled. Where did she get a label maker?
I searched my nightstand, and they weren’t there either.
I rushed out to find Nat with a new pile of mail she’d obviously picked up at the office.
She was playing “Home,” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, an indie song she’d been obsessed with, on her phone’s speaker. The song made my hackles rise. It was okay the first dozen times I’d heard it, but now, it contaminated this place. That and the smell of lemon cleaner.
“Nat,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Jack.”Her voice was equally gritty, directly mocking my tone.
“What did you do?”
She walked into the living room and put the mail into the sorted piles, holding three envelopes as the song repeated itself. She whistled the opening to the song as she opened one letter and focused on it instead of looking me in the eye. “I can’t live in chaos, Jack.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Maybe I was blowing this out of proportion, but all I could think about was that nothing was where it should be, and it would be a pain in the ass to find anything.
“If you can’t get there with context clues, I guess I’ll spell it out. This place was a mess, and you told me you don’t have time to do anything about it. I was going out of my mind, so I fixed it.”
“You fixed it.” My cheeks heated. Why was this bothering me so much? Oh yeah, because she was overbearing.
“I couldn’t live like that. My ADHD won’t allow it.”
That had me shrinking just a bit, but only enough to prevent me from blowing my top.
“Where is everything?” I sifted through a basket of miscellany that was sitting in my entryway, sifting for my keys. How did I have so many loose batteries and pushpins? I definitely hadn’t bought those. It put things into perspective when they were gathered together like this.
She scoffed, leaning over the little entry table to place everything back in the basket. “In the place it belongs.”
I lifted my chin, glaring at her with the fire of a thousand suns. “I don’t have time for this. Where are my keys?”
“Where they should be.” Why was she making this so difficult? “On the hook. Near the door.” She pointed at the hooks I’d clearly forgotten about.
I reached for them, right beside that damn frog keychain, muttered, “Thanks a lot,” and burst through the door, which slammed into the siding. I really needed to fix that.
She rushed around me, blocking my exit down the porch. “If you think you’re going to be pissed at me for helping, you’re out of your mind.”
“You’d deserve it,” I barked. “Get out of my way.”
This angered her even further. She was about to blow a fuse, I could see the signs as clear as day. Her breaths came in short, rapid-fire bursts, and she was practically vibrating. “No,” she spat back.
I picked her up by her biceps and lifted her to the side of me, while she looked on in shock. That didn’t stop her, though. She kept pace as she followed alongside me.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”
“You’ll get over it. Or you can yell at me on the way. Your choice.”
And man, did she yell.
I drove down the highway and learned that I was a slob. A bad roommate. A general drain on society. She was obviously tired from doing all that work, because her insults were not as impressive as usual. Honestly, I expected more from her.
She was annoyed at me for not being grateful and for, in her words, throwing a fit. She worked up a sweat and squared her shoulders as if prepared to go into battle. But I seemed to surprise her, because I didn’t fight back. I let her get it all out.
Nat tilted her head at me as I parallel parked next to Jamie’s office. “What are we even doing?”
I didn’t answer. It was none of her business.
