Page 38 of Always Salty

I then got up and unscrewed the lightbulb.

When I was finished, I sat back down and twisted slightly to the side so that when he came out he wouldn’t see me unless he was looking.

And he did come out about ten minutes later, a pack of hot dogs in his hand.

The door opened, and he flipped a switch inside only to curse.

“Hey, Dorie. Do we have any lightbulbs?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said. “That was on our list of things to get the next time we went to a home improvement store.”

“Shit,” he said. “Light’s out.”

“Use your phone.”

He did, shining the phone on the grill in front of him.

He started to twist the knob to turn it on, then cursed. “Hey, Dorie. We’re out of propane.”

“How?” she cried. “We just got some like two weeks ago.”

“The knobs were left on.” He tried to light the grill and nothing happened.

I smirked as he went back inside and shut the door.

For the next two hours I listened to them talk and Keely pretty much add in her two cents every once in a while.

After observing her over the last two weeks or so, I’d realized that she was a pretty quiet and reserved person. When she felt passionately about something, she was quite a bit more animated. But mostly, she stayed to herself and didn’t say all that much.

But when she did speak, what she said held substance.

I liked that she didn’t feel the need to add a lot of mindless commentary like her friends.

Every once in a while, I’d find her staring out into the darkness at me, but she never made a move toward me, always pulled back into conversations by her work friends.

By the time that the night had ended, I was more than ready to go home.

Dorie had worn on my last nerve, and I’d realized about two minutes into the night that Cutter had done a good job leaving her ass behind.

It was good to know that my brother-in-law had a brain in that thick skull of his.

“I’ll walk Kara down,” Dorie’s boyfriend, Michel, said as he got up.

A look passed between Dorie and Michel that had my eyes narrowing.

“Oh, I’m gonna go ahead and go…” Keely trailed off when Dorie said, “Wait. Could you come look at this in my room?”

I frowned and waited for Michel and Kara to leave before heading into the kitchen to get a better listen.

“…Wanted you to look at my new scrubs. They’re fantastic. Feel the fabric,” Dorie said.

“They are very nice,” Keely agreed. “Did you get them online?”

“Yeah,” she said. “These are a size too small for me, and they’re going to charge me fifteen dollars to send them back, so I was wondering if you wanted to keep them.”

“Sure, I’d love to,” Keely said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Dorie said as she came out of her room, Keely on her heels with a pair of what had to be the scrubs in her hands.

---