Started With a Lie

Chapter Eleven

Started With a Lie – Chapter Eleven

After dinner, I try to convince Lee to do the dishes while I clean up the tables and set up a place to sleep but he refuses. He says he’s never washed a dish in his life and doesn’t plan on it any time soon.

            “You have to do your part of the share!” I say to him, while I hold a rag so I can clean up the table. “It isn’t fair that I clean everything and set up a place to sleep.”

            “Well, then I’ll set up a place to sleep! I loathe washing dishes. Anything but that,” Lee says, crossing his arms. His eyebrows are knitted together and his bottom lip is pushed out in a pout. If this were any other situation, I would’ve gushed over his cute expression, but right now—he was just plain irritating.

            “No! You don’t even know where the air mattress is!” I retort. “If you don’t do the dishes, you won’t get a place to sleep.”

            Lee sits down, crossing his arms. “Fine with me.”

            I throw the cleaning rag at his face. “You are so irritating! Fine, I’ll do the dishes. You do the table. It sure as hell better be sparkling clean.” I turn and head to the sink.

            We quietly cleaned up for the next ten minutes. I wipe my wet hands with a towel and indicate Lee to follow me as I leave the kitchen. The air mattress is in the closet in the hallway. I open it and rummage around useless things that Mom and I just throw in there.

            “That’s strange,” I say as I rummage through some tennis-related things in a box. I push the box aside and look in the next one.

            “What is?” Lee asks, standing behind me.

            “I can’t seem to find it,” I frown. I go through ten-to-fifteen boxes but I find nothing. I could’ve sworn Mom had thrown it in here after Uncle Jim had come to stay over. I can’t think of anywhere else it could be in. “I guess you’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

            “The couch?” Lee says, like it’s a foreign word. Here we go again, I think as I shut the closet door. “I am not sleeping on the couch.”

            “Well, that’s all you’re going to get.”

            He scoffs. “I don’t think so. I am not going to sleep on,” he points back to the couch, “that hideous thing. It will kill my back!” Lee scrunches up his face. “I’m the heir to a hotel business. If you break my back, you’re breaking the entire business. All my customers will blame you and the employees will—”

            “Okay!” I put my hands up in surrender. “I get it. Save me the speech, would you?” I close the closet. “You can sleep in my room.”

            “Your room?”

            “Well, yeah. Where else would you sleep?” I ask, turning to face him. His wet hair seems to be drying from his shower. His hair looks silkier than mine. I scrunch up my face in a tiny fit of jealousy. 

            “What about your mom’s room?” Lee suggests. “I mean, she’s not going to be here for a while.  Why not use her room?”

            I start laughing. Lee gives me a why-are-you-laughing look. “I am not going to let you sleep in my mother’s room! That’s just creepy! Even I barely go in her room. You are definitely not going to sleep there.” I walk to my bedroom and open the door slightly, sticking my head in to see if there’s anything weird in my room.