The One Without Words

❀ chapter nine | the mess we made ❀

"What the heck happened here?"

Long story short, I was screwed. Talia, hands filled with baskets of flowers from our latest shipment, stared in horror at the mess Jack and I had made last Friday. The pink walls looked great despite our amateur paint skills, but pink paint covered the floor in huge, angry smears, the rollers we'd been sword fighting with left crusty on their trays. A forensic crime scene investigator could probably analyze all the splatters and trace the trajectory of our fight down to the fated moment I'd first dabbed Jack's cheek pink.

"He spilled some paint," I said.

"He?" Talia demanded, face contorted in a cartoonish expression of rage so unlike her I almost burst out laughing.

"Jack, of course."

"And why didn't you clean it up? Why didn't you tell me, Romy?"

I shrugged. "Thought I'd use it as evidence for why Jack should be fired. You wouldn't have believed me otherwise."

"And here I was thinking you'd matured." She shook her head, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. "How could you?"

I pointed at the black-haired woman standing in the doorway of the shop and replied, "More like how could you accept her money without telling me first. All those years you and Dad told me I wouldn't have to see her again. Now just because she's loaded she's suddenly part of the family? Sounds pretty sociopathic to me."

Grace cleared her throat. "Danielle told me about what happened. Jack wasn't the only one responsible. You two were... wrestling in the paint."

I gave her a death glare. "Oh, now you're friends with Danielle, too?"

Talia joined me in the glare and asked her, "Why wouldn't you tell me what happened?"

Grace surveyed the empty shop. "I thought it would be better if you saw it for yourself."

"You're really bad at setting an example for your daughter, aren't you?" Talia spat, pointing a finger at her. "And then you wonder why she's turned out just like you."

Grace's expression remained unchanged, but I gritted my teeth and said, "Don't even try to pull that card, Talia."

"We literally have a shipment coming in!" she exclaimed. "We can't afford this. We left the shop closed for a few days so the paint could dry, so we're already off schedule, and now we have a new batch we need to sell this week except we're nowhere close to ready for our re-opening!"

"Get Grace to make up for the losses," I suggested as I stared her down. "Don't tell me Tetsuo left me no money. Since you took it all, I'm sure you can afford to pay."

Grace sat herself down on a foldable chair she'd brought for whatever reason. "In the mean time, you can clean up the mess. If anything I think this deserves a grounding. Especially after you snuck out to go that party on Friday, isn't that right?"

All I wanted to do was pull a Jack and tell her: leave me alone please :)

It was like they released the woman from prison for the sole purpose of pissing me off.

"Call Jack," Talia said. "Tell him to come now."

"But he's not working today," I said.

"I don't care. He's going to help you clean this shop by tonight or else I'm going to lose it." She looked at Grace. "And you? You need to leave."

"Technically, it is my shop now, too," Grace declared. "I have every right to be here."

"I don't think so. It's called Greta's Flores for a reason."