An After School Affair (Haddonfield High Book 3) Page 2

  After lunch she would return to her bedroom where she had me read to her. Sometimes she drifted off. Sometimes the story held her interest. Either way, by two or three in the afternoon she was done with my services for the day.

  She had three private nurses who were always in the house on rotating twelve-hour shifts. From what I could tell, all they did was oversee her as she took her meds and monitored her blood pressure a few times a day.

  Still, given the persistent absence of her son and daughter-in-law, the nurses’ presence must have been reassuring.

  It’s not like Edward would be able to do anything if something went wrong. From what I’d observed, he and Mrs. Rochester barely exchanged words despite living in the same house. They acknowledged each other’s existence, but there wasn’t much affection or engagement beyond that.

  At least not on Mrs. Rochester’s side.

  There was this sense I had that Edward had done something to disappoint her recently. She kept remarking on an incident. Something people at The Club were talking about and not in a good way. Of course, I wanted to ask what had happened, but it was decidedly none of my business.

  But I knew this. Whatever it was, Mrs. Rochester cared more about people talking about it than what had actually happened.

  Maybe he’d failed a class? That felt like something that might embarrass the family name.

  Quietly, I retreated from her bedroom, shut the door behind me and made my way downstairs to the kitchen.

  I was starving and excited about what I would be having for lunch.

  One of the perks of the job. After preparing Mrs. Rochester’s lunch, sitting with her while she ate, then getting her settled, I could help myself to any leftovers.

  My diet with Mrs. Fairfax was pretty consistent. A piece of fruit for breakfast. A peanut butter sandwich for lunch. And usually some kind of macaroni or rice dish for dinner with a side of vegetables—mostly from the stock dented cans that she bought from the discount rack.

  Meat was a rarity, but if we had it, it was either tuna fish from a can or chicken that was past the sell-by date.

  We’d gotten sick consuming that only once.

  Today at the Rochesters’, though, it was fresh chicken salad with mayonnaise, finely chopped celery and onion, with a hint of tarragon, on whole wheat bread.

  It was like Christmas every day here.

  The only downside…

  “Hello, Janie.”

  Edward Rochester.

  I rolled my eyes. There was something about the way he said my name, like he was teasing me about it, but that didn’t seem possible. It was a pretty plain name. Jane. Janie. Not much to make fun of there.

  He was standing in the middle of the kitchen shirtless. Swim trunks falling low on his hips.

  It seemed this was his particular uniform for the summer.

  I couldn’t help but notice the ridges of his abs, the outline of his upper ribs, and the beginning of that V low on his stomach that always seemed to draw my eyes downward.

  So much so, I had to force myself to look away.

  Except this time, I couldn’t look anywhere but at him because Edward was standing in the middle of the kitchen with an overstuffed chicken salad sandwich in his hand.

  He never ate what I prepared for his grandmother. He always went out for lunch instead. Cheesesteaks and hamburgers. Chicken sandwiches and hot dogs. Crappy, greasy food that didn’t have a single negative effect on his amazing physique.

  But today, he was eating my chicken salad.

  MY CHICKEN SALD!

  With tarragon.

  “Did you eat all of the chicken salad?” I cried out, racing to the fridge to check. But of course he had. I’d made only enough for Mrs. Rochester and myself.

  “It looked good,” he said, with a casual shrug. “I like chicken salad.”

  “It was my lunch,” I snapped.

  And then the unthinkable happened. I could feel tears welling in my eyes.

  No, no, no, no! I couldn’t cry. Not about this. Not over a stupid sandwich.

  “Hey, wow, what is happening?” he said as he approached me, obviously seeing the sheen in my eyes. “There is plenty of stuff in the fridge. You can make anything you want. I’ll go get you something. I’ll get you anything.”

  I dipped my head and crossed my arms over my stomach. “I’m only allowed to have the leftovers from lunch. That’s what Mrs. Rochester said. I don’t have the run of the kitchen. I was just… I was hungry and looking forward to chicken salad. I’m sorry for snapping. It’s your house, your food. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Here. I’ll cut it in half. The part I didn’t bite. I promise I don’t have cooties, no matter what you might have heard.”

  He moved to pull down a plate from a cabinet and his swim trunks seemed to threaten total disrobing. Again, I had to force my eyes to look away.

  He pulled out a knife from a drawer, cut the sandwich in half and slid the plate across the kitchen island counter towards me.

  There were four bar-sized stools tucked against the island for the purpose of casual dining. I pulled one out and stepped up into the seat. Glancing down at the sandwich, I felt so silly now. Crying over food.

  “You probably think I’m a freak, right?” I asked him.

  He stood on the other side of the kitchen island across from me, his lips twitching into a smile.

  “I think you have a serious case of hangry. But no, I don’t think you’re a freak. I basically stole your lunch. If someone had done that to me, I would have flipped, too. Are you going to be okay if I offer you a bag of chips and a soda? If Gram asks, I’ll say I ate them both.”

  I nodded tightly. He turned to the fridge and pulled out a few Cokes. Then he opened a cabinet next to the refrigerator and grabbed a small bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and set both in front of me.

  He didn’t know, he couldn’t know, it was like offering me the greatest treat I’d ever been offered.

  “Cool Ranch is my favorite,” I swallowed. “Thanks”

  It was something I said, because other people said it, but I truly had no idea. I didn’t eat Doritos very often. The only time I was ever even exposed to snacks like this was at the Bennets’ and Mrs. Bennet wasn’t a big believer in what she referred to as “fattening” treats. Just my luck to be friends with the one Snob in school who didn’t have access to junk food.

  I pulled open the shiny bag and took out a chip, crunching on the edges in careful slow bites so I could really savor it. At one point, I might have closed my eyes.

  “You weren’t kidding about liking Cool Ranch,” he said.

  I popped my eyes open and tried to keep my expression neutral.

  “I can make you lunch,” I offered. “You know, when I make your grandmother’s. If you want.”

  He shrugged, then seemed to think about it. “Yeah, you should do that. Make enough for three in case I want it. Then if I don’t, I can send you home with the leftovers.”

  I tilted my head and rolled my eyes. “I’m not a charity case, Edward. I don’t need your leftovers.”

  “Didn’t say you were, Janie. But I don’t ever want to feel like I robbed someone’s lunch again, so let’s just make sure we’re covered. Deal?”

  He put his hand out for me to shake. I didn’t touch people a lot. I was reserved by nature, but also, when you grow up in a state home, you’re super protective of your space. Including the personal space around you.

  However, rejecting a handshake felt like a bitchy thing to do. He’d tolerated my food freak out. He gave me Cool Ranch Doritos and a Coke. He was making sure we would never have this problem again. All things considered, he’d been pretty cool about the whole thing.

  I stretched out my arm and took his hand to shake it. It was crazy how big his hand was. I felt enveloped by him. Then suddenly warmer than I’d been only a second ago.

  His calluses scratched against my palm a little, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

  I s
tarted to pull my hand away, mostly because I kind of liked it. Maybe too much. Then he gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “Does this mean we’re friends?” he asked me.

  “This means I’ll make sure you have some lunch in the refrigerator if you want it.”

  I tugged my hand free from his even as I gave him a small smile.

  “Can you make hot dogs?” he asked with a cheeky grin.

  “I’m fairly certain your grandmother will not want to eat hot dogs for lunch.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  The question just popped out before I could think about it. I’d been coming here for a week and hadn’t seen them at all. It didn’t feel like they were home. Maybe a vacation, but not a family one, obviously, since they’d left their only son behind.

  Edward shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Seriously?”

  He sighed. “Maybe France? Maybe Italy? They’ll shoot me an email eventually.”

  “So they’re on vacation,” I concluded.

  He chuckled at that. “Their whole life is a vacation. They don’t work. Or have jobs like we think of them. My dad just plays around with his investments. My mom works on herself. So they go and do stuff. This is home, but they’re only here a couple weeks out of the year.”

  My jaw dropped. “But…but who watches you?”

  “I’m seventeen. I don’t need watching.”

  “But that’s…”

  “Fucked up?” he finished for me. “Maybe. But that’s how it is. Mom and Dad have their thing. Grams has hers. I have mine. For the most part we all get along pretty well.”

  “Yes, but that’s not a family,” I explained. Then quickly covered my mouth with my hand.

  I was sort of obsessed with families. How they worked. The inner dynamics. How they all interacted. The Bennets were an awesome example of noise and drama and also a lot of love all the time. Things I’d never experienced directly. So it was like I knew what I was talking about even though I really didn’t.

  He frowned then. “What the fuck do you know about families? You’re an orphan who grew up in a state home. I asked around about you. You’re a Thornfield kid.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted quickly. “I don’t know anything about families. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Wait, you asked about me?”

  “Hello?” he said, like I was stupid. “Strange girl from my class hanging around in my house for the rest of the summer. Of course I asked around about you. Don’t be flattered or anything.”

  Now that was humorous. “Yeah, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not concerned that Edward Rochester is going to flatter me. In regards to anything.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean it that way…I…uh. Sometimes I struggle with how to say shit. I’m not great with words.”

  “Tu pourrais peut-etre le dire en francais.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s French,” I said. “You take French. We were in class together last year.”

  “I take it,” he agreed. “I don’t speak it.”

  “What’s the point of…never mind,” I said. “Well, you split a sandwich with me when you didn’t have to. And you offered me a bag of chips and a soda you didn’t have to, so I would say we’re good.”

  “Really?”

  The fact that he seemed concerned about my good opinion was, in itself, a little flattering. Edward Rochester cared what I thought about him.

  “Really,” I said, honestly.

  We finished the rest of our lunch not saying much to each other. But it was strange in that way where you didn’t feel like you had to say anything. We were just two people, isolated from the rest of the world, eating Cool Ranch and drinking soda.

  “I should be going,” I said, as I walked both our empty plates over to the kitchen sink.

  I rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher, which no lie, I loved doing. Mrs. Fairfax didn’t have a dishwasher, so we had to clean up by hand after every meal. This not filling the sink, not washing, not drying always felt a little decadent to me until I actually learned it was more water efficient to use a dishwasher than it was to hand wash. So I was cleaning dishes and helping the environment. Win!

  “The chicken salad was really good,” Edward said.

  “I looked the recipe up online. It’s not like I know how to cook or anything.”

  “What about Sloppy Joes? Do you think you could look up a recipe and make those?”

  I smiled again. “After hot dogs, I would imagine Sloppy Joes would be second on your grandmother’s no list.”

  “What if I get the stuff?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t get—”

  “Look, I’m tired of eating out all the time,” he said over me. “This was nice. Just real food. But I know Gram and you’re right, I won’t eat half the shit she’ll make you cook for her. But what if you told me what ingredients you needed, and I bought the stuff? You could make it for us and maybe I could have something besides fast food.”

  I hesitated. Splitting a sandwich this one time didn’t seem like a big deal. But if this became a regular thing for us…

  “I’ll pay you.”

  There was an urgency in his voice. As if a homemade Sloppy Joe really meant something to him. I thought about him in this huge house with only his disapproving Gram and her nurses as company. All this luxury, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t alone.

  It made me remember that a person could be lonely anywhere.

  “You don’t have to pay me. I’m not the biggest fan of the cucumber sandwiches your grandmother had me make. So it would be cool if there was something else to eat. I’ll look up a recipe online and let you know what you need to get.”

  He smiled, and, when he did, it made my stomach flutter.

  I would never call Edward cute. There was nothing cute about him. But when he smiled, he was really pretty striking.

  He pulled his phone out of a back pocket. “What’s your number? Oh shit, do you even have a phone?”

  I rolled my eyes as if his question was preposterous.

  “Yes, I have a phone.”

  Although it was a much older model, and my service was extremely limited. But I only ever really texted Reen or Beth so it wasn’t a problem.

  Now Edward Rochester would be one of my very limited contacts. That seemed a little surreal.

  “Cool, cool. Digits please.”

  I gave him my number and he plugged me into his phone. I heard the ding sound from the phone in my back pocket and pulled it out. I hit his number, hit the add contact button and added Edward Rochester into my phone.

  I couldn’t imagine what Reen and Beth would think about that, but it’s not like I had to tell them. This wasn’t the start of anything. I was going to make the poor guy Sloppy Joes.

  “See you tomorrow?” he asked me.

  I nodded and told myself I wasn’t at all excited about that.

  3

  August Before Junior Year

  Janie

  “Oh, man! That was so fucking good!” Ed exclaimed.

  “It was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with cut up hotdogs. I think you’re overselling it,” I said.

  “I’m not! That was like the best thing ever. I’ve had the Kraft before at the Fitz’s house. This was better. Why?”

  I'd made it with sour cream instead of milk, so it was a little creamier. There was absolutely no reason to explain that though. Besides, it wasn’t like he was praising me. He just happened to really like homemade junk food.

  I picked up our empty bowls off the kitchen island to clear them away as usual. Edward and I had been eating lunch together basically every afternoon for the past week after Mrs. Rochester was in bed for her afternoon nap.

  Homemade Sloppy Joes. Fried Chicken Legs. Tuna Noodle Casserole, which he did not like. It had been hysterical watching him pretend to like it, even though I could tell he hated it. Three bites in and he broke down saying h
e was done. He apologized and explained he’d only eaten the second and third mouthful because he hadn’t wanted to hurt my feelings.

  Which I thought was sort of sweet.

  “Secret recipe,” I said, with my back to him as I rinsed out our bowls. “Can’t share. But you know, there is a recipe on the back of the box. You could make it yourself.”

  He shook his head as if I’d said something ridiculous. “Never going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a guy. The minute I think…I should make that for myself, I think about the effort of doing it and decide to hit up a drive-thru instead. But someone making it for me, the work is already done, that’s next level. What are we having tomorrow?”

  I rolled my eyes at him, which I did a lot. We’d literally just finished eating.

  That was another thing I discovered. Edward was a bottomless pit that constantly needed injections of food. It was a good thing he came from money.

  Mrs. Fairfax would never have been able to feed a teenage boy on state money.

  “I don’t know,” I said over my shoulder. “I need to think about it.”

  Which, in a way, was the fun part. Because not only was I getting to eat what I wanted, I was also basically getting all the food for free. All I had to do was cook it. For me it was a win-win.

  “Whatever. Just not the tuna thing. God, that was gross.” He shuddered. “So did you bring it?”

  I bit my bottom lip. The other day it had been crushingly hot. New Jersey got like that sometimes in the summer. Heat and humidity combined to make August miserable most days. Edward asked me to jump in the pool with him to beat the heat. Of course, I’d said no. I hadn’t brought a bathing suit. I was here to work, not to play.

  “Bring one with you tomorrow then.”

  As if that was something I could just do. Bring a swimsuit. Wear it in front of him like some Snob might. Show off my body…or lack of body, I should say…casually. Like it was something I did all the time. Swimming in some fancy outdoor home pool.

  “You brought it,” he surmised. “I can see your brain running in circles. Which means you have a suit, but you’re freaking out about changing into it. Janie, we’re going to hop in the pool. What is the big deal?”