Keith’s arms dropped from around mine and he cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, Mr. Evans. I was just teaching Ms. Jenson how to cook Baltimore Coddies.”
“Good luck with that,” he said, looking over at me.
“She’s actually doing great,” Keith vindicated.
“That should actually be on the news,” he rejoindered.
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure the news would be more interested in showing what happened during your meeting the day before yesterday. I mean wouldn’t they want to know why it got cancelled?” I shot back at him.
His lips stretched upwards in a coprophagous grin. “Even better would be showing what had happened just yesterday in my room.”
My cheeks reddened. “S-shut up.”
“What happened, sweetheart? Don’t you agree with me?” He asked.
“Get out.”
“Okay,” he obliged.
Once he was out of the kitchen I released a breath. Why did he have to bring? that? up?
Okay I was the one who brought that other incident up but he was the one who started it by commenting on my cooking skills. He didn’t even know just how good of a cook I was, well at least in some certain recipes.
“What was that?” Keith asked.
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t want to know. Let’s get back to this, shall we?”
After an hour, we had finally managed to make some delicious Baltimore Coddies. It was so amazing. I had made enough for everyone, of course with a lot of help from Keith. He was actually so good and I was so glad that I had made a friend who was so different from certain pricks I regrettably knew. He was very sweet and patient with my slow cooking, everything I needed in a good friend.
Everyone tasted the Coddies and complimented it. I even took them to the guards at the gates to let them taste it. Samara and the other maids seemed to love it and Olivia nearly gobbled up the whole thing and I had to stop her before she started eating the plate too.
“Wouldn’t you give some to Mr. Ethan?” Keith asked as he eyed the leftovers.
“Sure,” I happily obliged. “Samara!” I called out to her. “Take these leftovers for the dog to eat. I mean-I mean Mr. Ethan Evans.”
I could see that Samara was trying to control her laughter and I chuckled as she took the plate from me to give it to the dog, I meant Ethan. Damn it, I always confused his name with words like dog, prick and whatnot.
“You don’t seem to like him very much,” Keith commented.
I fake gasped. “Oh my God, why would you think that? I’m absolutely in love with him!” I said, my voice laced with more sarcasm than I had ever used in my entire nineteen years of existence.
“Okay, scratch that. You utterly hate him,” he tittered.
“That’s more like it,” I nodded. “And hey, I’m going to hound you everyday to teach me how to cook more delicious food.”
“I don’t mind.”
Ethan, as I had expected, didn’t say anything about the Coddies I had cooked. But his opinion about it didn’t matter anyway so I didn’t care about it.
The rest of the day was spent talking to Keith. I introduced him to Olivia and they hit it off instantly.
In the evening, we three along with Samara played table tennis. Keith and Samara were actually good at it.
Initially, they were hesitant to play but after a little persuasion, they finally agreed and we all had a blast.
It was a perfect day and I was so happy. Not even Ethan with his handsomely ugly face and sour comments could damper my mood. I couldn’t remember the last time I was this happy.
***
The next day I was scouring for ideas. It took me the whole morning to come up with something,? anything but I just didn’t know what to do.
Keith and I had made yet another dish, that of consommé and it turned out to be amazing. I was really starting to like our time in the kitchen. I wouldn’t have gotten a better chef than Keith to teach me.
But that was not what I was worried about. The thing that I had been itching to do since yesterday was to retaliate. I wanted revenge. Like I always did. And I wasn’t stopping until he was.
I had been stressing myself over this thing ever since morning and still couldn’t come up with a good plan. That was until I saw Ethan sprawled out on the couch in the living room.
I was so shocked to see him there. When he slept, he nowhere looked like the demon he actually was. He looked innocent and slept like a baby. He must be pretty tired all the time from the amount of work he did everyday. I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to constantly keep working. I couldn’t do that for the life of me.
But that didn’t mean that I was going to let him off the hook. I wouldn’t even if he was tired as hell. Not even if he looked harmless and adorable sleeping on the couch. No. I wouldn’t let that affect me.
So I ran out to the pool where I saw a big inflatable pool a few days back. I dragged it into the living room and right in front of the couch and put the hose into it. It was pretty long and reached the pool easily. I then connected the hose to a tap just outside the living room which was around the swimming pool.
I silently filled about half the pool with the water. Ethan was still sleeping soundly with his laptop on the tabletop just next to the couch.
After the pool was half filled with water, I grabbed Keith from the kitchen and lugged him into the living room all the while explaining the plan to him.
But he refused to do that with a “no thanks, I choose to live.” I pleaded to him for quite some time before finally giving up and coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to help me at all.
I huffed and ran to Olivia who initially was hesitant to do it but finally agreed.
So we both stood behind the couch, staring at Ethan and waiting for a perfect opportunity to attack. He was still in a deep sleep and looked like he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon.
“Okay, you grab that end and I’ll grab this one and on the count of three, we push it forward and tilt it, got it?” I whispered so as to not wake him up.
No one was around and even Keith ran back to the kitchen to hide himself.
“One, two, three, go!” I whisper shouted and we pushed at the couch at the same time. It took a lot of effort but we finally managed to tilt it towards the water in the inflatable pool. We heard Ethan land into the water and so we pulled back the couch so that it wouldn’t land over him.
He woke up with a start, splashing around in the water before he finally came back to his senses. He stopped and looked around until his eyes landed on us, busy chortling at him.
He groaned and growled before glaring at us as he tried to splash us with water, missing his mark each time.
He got up from the pool, his body completely drenched and pulled something out of his pockets. He slammed the thing onto a tabletop and it revealed to be his iPhone. My eyes widened.
“My third fucking iPhone in three weeks.”
Without saying anything else, he stormed out of the living room.
“Oh my God, that was hilarious. The next best method to wake someone up,” Olivia chuckled.
“You guys are so going to be dead,” Keith stated, shaking his head. “What’s going on between you and Evans?” He asked, looking at me.
“Long story,” I replied.
“You do know, right that he wouldn’t let you pass easy?”
“Of course I know. He will do something to me too and then I’ll do something to him. It never stops.”
“You guys are crazy.”
“I’m not. He was the one who started it all,” I defended. “Whatever, what’s for lunch?”