Page 10 of Ruby Mercy

“I told you to stop doing my dishes. I can take care of those.” I toe off my shoes, scattering sand across the welcome mat.

The sand is another tick in the “that really happened” column. But I’m still not convinced.

Natalia shrugs. “Yuliana wanted to take a bath tonight, so I’ve been sitting here for an hour while she soaks in the tub. I got bored.”

“Wow. You got her in the bath? Score.”

“Can I have another bath bomb?” Yuliana suddenly calls from the bathroom. “Mine is all fizzed out.”

Well, that explains it. My girly girl loves nothing more than expensive beauty products.

Natalia snorts and shakes her head. “One per bath, Miss Diva! Those bath bombs should last you an entire month.”

“Where did she get bath bombs?” I ask.

“Oh, it was some PR package Genevieve got in the mail.”

I pause, waiting for the usual rant that almost always accompanies any mention of Natalia’s pretentious boss. She keeps scrubbing dishes.

“Well,” I sigh, “that was nice of Genevieve. Tell her Yuli says thanks.”

“It’s no problem for her. She gets sent so much shit she never opens.”

Ah. There it is.

“I saw the package sitting next to the trash can and I asked if I could take it.” Natalia rolls her eyes. “You should have seen the nasty look she gave me for wanting to take a package from next to her trash. As if I was eating scraps from her dinner instead of taking home a perfectly good package of bath bombs.”

“That’s resourceful. She was the one being wasteful.”

Natalia spins around, soap suds flying around the room as she illustrates her point with her hands. “Right? It is! She tells her followers on social media that she donates everything she doesn’t use, but as the person who takes out her trash, I call some serious bullshit.”

“She’s the worst.”

“The fucking worst,” Natalia growls. “She and her boyfriend are trying to have a baby, so I don’t even want to think about how miserable she’ll be when she’s pregnant. She already makes me bleach the entryway tile twice a week. Like, who bleaches theirfloors?”

“That’s almost as weird as knowing when your employer is trying to have a baby,” I say.

Natalia shrugs. “It’s not like I’ve set up cameras or something. I saw the ovulation tests in her bathroom. She didn’t even have the decency to put them in the trash. They were just sitting on the counter.”

“Now,thatyou’d want to bleach.”

She nods. “I did, believe me. Right after I checked for job openings in the area.”

“Check again tomorrow,” I mutter. “You might get lucky.”

“What does that mean?” she asks, dumping the water out of a baking dish before she places it in the drying rack.

I’m not sure how to say it, so I just come out with it.

“Kirill is back.”

Natalia reacts exactly the way I wanted to at the beach. She whips around, eyes round as saucers, and screams, “You’re shitting me!”

There’s splashing from the bathroom as Yuliana jolts up. “What happened?”

“Nothing, honey,” I call. “Everything is fine.”

“But Natty screamed.”

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