Page 30 of Baby, It’s You (Clairesville #1)

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O nce I get inside, I silently curse Tripp.

If I didn’t have to play nice for the bar’s sake, I would have cussed him out vividly already.

I feel like I am going to be up against a mountain by trying to get him to sell it to me instead of the investors.

The B he’s just playing coy.

He stares at me and takes a long sip of his coffee, enjoying that I’m riled up by this. “Oh, I took them down. They were dusty, and it was bad for my allergies. I kept sneezing while I was trying to work and it was distracting me. They are in the dumpster if you want to fish for them.”

“How could you throw those away? Your mom loved those photos.” I step closer to him.

“Are you so unhappy with yourself that you want to make everyone else miserable, too?” My voice raises and I can't bite my tongue anymore.

“You had no right, Tripp.” I push past him and grab a pair of disposable gloves from the prep station before I walk out the back kitchen door.

I hear him calling after me that “we need to have a talk,” but that can wait.

My blood is boiling. Only Tripp can take one of the best mornings of my life and destroy my mood in seconds.

I know that I shouldn’t let him get to me, but a person can only take so much crap before they explode.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he took down the memories that I shared with his mother.

It was a big screw you to me, a power move.

I make it to the large green dumpster out back and cringe as I take a peek inside.

The trash hasn’t been picked up in almost a week, so it's full.

The stench is overpowering. I slide the gloves on and pull my weight up over the side of the dumpster.

I assume he must have just tossed the pictures in here this morning before I got back, because the photos were on the wall when I left last night.

I spot one small photo of Seymour in a wooden frame and lean over to grab it. Successfully retrieving it, I hold it under my arm and begin to search for the next one. I find two photos of Jane and me under a bag of sour trash, the frames sinking down between the crevices of the bags.

After spending fifteen more minutes rifling around the top piles of garbage, I realize if I want to find the rest, I’m going to have to go further into the dumpster.

I crawl out so I can gently lay the three frames I found on the ground and then get back into the mounds of trash.

I whimper as I push through the bags. Old coffee grounds and rotting leftover ham slide in between my shoes and after minutes of gagging, I realize I can’t do this anymore.

I’m covered in trash and sweat is dripping down my back at this point.

I climb out, defeated, and apologize to Jane in my head for the fact that I couldn’t find the rest of her photos.

Pushing open the back kitchen door, I see Tripp leaning out from the office in the desk chair. “How did it go?” He stifles a laugh.

I hold up the three frames I found and don’t make eye contact. “I’m going home to shower; I’ll be back before the lunch crowd.”

“Yeah, good idea, do that. You smell horrible.” He sneers as I walk past.

Before I get to the door he adds, “Oh, I forgot to mention, I saved some of the pictures. They are in a box in the attic.”

At that, I continue to walk out of the bar quickly, pretending I didn’t hear a word. He doesn’t deserve the satisfaction of a response.