Page 25 of Cakes for the Grump

ME

What do you mean by why? Why what?

LUKE

Why do you care? While you may have never said this outright, I am under no illusion that you don’t find my company and everybody involved in it disdainful.

Is he trying to trap me into agreeing with him? Once again, I’ve got no clue about his motives. Is it crass to reply with YES, I THINK YOU MAY BE THE WORST?

Instead, I settle for:

ME

That specific person might be innocent.

LUKE

How naïve of you.

I release a frustrated noise whilst mixing greens up for a plain, boring, dressing-less salad, unable to stop thinking about the fired employee. Did he really have no other reason to fire him? If so, am I similarly at risk to the whims of my employer’s unreliable mood?

ME

Please don’t patronize me. Also, are you capable of any decent human feeling? Asking as someone who is forced to play this strange friendship challenge with you. Did you really fire someone for no real reason?

LUKE

If it helps your misplaced concern, he was falsifying business records, and tried to get out of it by bullying another member of my staff. He’s fortunate he only got fired and cried.

If I weren’t so busy, I would have made his life infinitely worse.

Truly, the differences between Luke and I could fill oceans. He’s able to hire or fire anyone, and I come from a run-down dot on the map in Mumbai. Even these gifts he’s been giving me don’t make a dent for him, but are once-in-a-lifetime experiences for me.

Part of me wants to yell thank you.

And though well aware of Luke’s self-servicing motives, I also can’t help but think how these gifts have already impacted our working relationship. Emails flow a little easier between us, and the sarcasm we lob less loosely resembles white-knuckled expressions of anger.

Have I softened?

And, more importantly, is my employer softening around me?

I receive another text from him later that night.

LUKE

Start work an hour earlier from now on.

No, he hasnot.

This is inexplicably an order, not a request.

On the positive side, at least I have no need to rebuild any defenses against him, for his own actions do the work of barricading even the smallest drops of good will accumulated.

I go to sleep feeling confident that there is no way I’ll get caught unaware thinking he’s a good person, or to take it even further,my friend,when it’s clear Luke Abbot’s true nature is like a damn slingshot.

It ricochets between pretend-good and not-so-pretend bossy.

NINE