A Many Splintered Thing / Day 24: "Caleb is mine..."

So while running errands before coming home to post, I was dive bombed by a bird in the grocery store. You heard me. In the store. He came in for a landing in the mint and gum rack. Girl child tried to get a picture but he was scared so it didn't work. But ya know...wildlife in the checkout line...or as I like to call it: Monday.
Here we are on day 24. How time flies...Get it? Flies? Bird? Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all day.
XOXOSommer~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
She stood there waving like an imbecile. Smiling like one, too. When he finally turned to put his free hand back on the roof she watched him. She didn’t want him to fall but she had liked him waving. It made her feel as if they were connected and she liked that. After the night they’d had—and, Christ, the morning too—she wanted that feeling. Which was odd for her.
“All girly and shit,” she mumbled under her breath.
He was easy to feel attached to, which was also weird. Upon meeting him the first time she’d found him a bit prickly, annoying and standoffish. Now…not so much.
Dahlia followed the path along the side of the house to the side garden. She carried a flower basket and clippers. In the garden she ran her fingers through all the various flowers. She considered going for Harrison’s favorite just to watch Jasmine grow apoplectic. But then she moved on. Cutting bright blossoms of flowers she didn’t know the name of. She just knew they were pretty. When Caroline, who worked the kitchen, asked her what she’d cut today she’s tell her the truth.
“The blue ones, the yellow ones, the purple spikey ones and the stripe-ty red ones,” she muttered, laughing as she cut. “Because the mistress of the house could afford for a florist to come every damn day but prefers to pillage her own garden.”
That wasn’t being fair and she knew it. Why not use what you have? In this one instance Jasmine was being sane. She wasn’t blowing a few hundred bucks a day to have someone arrange and deliver flowers, she was utilizing what was on her property. But maybe Dahlia didn’t feel very generous toward Jas at the moment.
She’d obviously decided that Caleb was a puppet for her to manipulate. And who the fuck was she to—
“I knocked this morning,” Jasmine said, coming around the corner. She passed the bench that was set up near a small fountain so that a guest could sit and admire the flowers and the sky and the water. It was very picturesque, but for the pissed off Jasmine flitting out of it like a vengeful ghost.
“Jesus Christ, Jasmine, you scared me,” Dahlia said, gathering the flowers that had slipped from her hands when she’d startled.
Jasmine just continued coming like some pretty, expensively clad, runaway Mack truck. Dahlia stood and took a step back, putting the flower basket between them. She knew she could take Jasmine just fine, thank you very much. The point was, she didn’t want to.
“I said I knocked,” Jasmine hissed, hands on her hips.
“Good for you, you knocked. You learned your manners in preschool. What the hell is your problem?”
“Don’t be insubordinate with me, Dahlia, just because you think we’re…familiar. I’m not your friend. I’m still your boss and I don’t have to put up with you or your dramatic, emo bullshit.”
Dahlia snorted. “Emo? How very progressive of you to even know what that is.”
Jasmine leaned in. “No one answered.”
Dahlia forced a shrug. Part of her just wanted to say it. To say whatever she wanted. To tell the truth. That’s because we were fucking, Jas. Sorry, Dahlia and Caleb can’t get to the door right now, they’re busy screwing, please leave a message and they’ll get back to you. Beeeeeeep!
A small laugh tried to work its way out of her and she clamped her lips together. She forced another shrug and tried to look nonchalant. “What time was it? I might have been in the shower.”
“And Caleb?” Jas’s green eyes were narrowed with suspicions. Dahlia had the urge to throw her utterly off guard by leaning in and kissing her. It would bring back memories. Bring some color to Jasmine’s carefully color-controlled skin. And fuck up her entire I’m-in-charge-you’re-just-a-peon mindset, too.
Instead she said: “I have no earthly idea what your trained monkey was doing. He’s not my problem, right? At least not in reality. He’s just a prop.”
“That’s right. You remember it, too. Just a prop.” Jasmine selected a red flower from Dahlia’s basket and began to pull off the petals one by one. Dahlia wasn’t surprised. Hell, she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d captured a bug and began to pull the wings off.
“Why didn’t you just come in?” she asked. Curiosity killed the maid, she thought wildly.
“I just didn’t,” Jasmine replied, looking uncertain for the first time.
Dahlia laughed. “Harrison was with you? Or he was watching. And how would you explain simply entering a home that contained to newly-united love birds?” She shook her head. “God, I love that man.”
Jasmine sighed. “That makes one of us.”
“What is wrong with you? Can’t you see how much he actually loves you?” She couldn’t help herself. She’d always marveled at what passed as a relationship between Jas and Harrison Day. “Despite all odds and all the reasons you give him not to, he loves you. Even the stupid shit he does is to get your attention.”
“Don’t defend him!” Jasmine said.
Dahlia shook her head. “I’m not. I’m simply making an observation. But you…do you love Caleb?” She feared the answer but asked the question anyway.
There was a long pause and Jasmine’s eyes flickered from angry to unsure back to angry in that instant. “I…yes. I do.”
Dahlia rearranged the flowers, not looking at her employer, “Gee, that sounded so certain and sure.”
“Mind your own business,” Jasmine spat.
Dahlia tried to swallow her words but she’d always been stubborn, sometimes to the point of stupidity. “This is my business, Jasmine. You made it my business when you roped me into your ridiculous story line and presented me and Caleb as a couple to your husband. It became my business when you put him under a roof with me and left it to me to make sure he knew what was what around here and all that other shit that comes with stepping into this alternate reality of rich, spoiled people.”
Jasmine caught Dahlia’s wrist and it was everything in Dahlia not to take a swing at her. “You leave him alone. He’s mine. Do you understand me? Caleb is mine. You don’t touch him or you’ll be unemployed with the worst references in the history of job seeking.”
“He’s yours, hunh?” Dahlia said, her words clipped, her body humming with energy. Angry energy.
“You heard me.”
“You’re telling the wrong person, then. Tell him. Not me.” She yanked her wrist out of Jasmine’s grip, held the flower basket close and hurried back to the house. Before she did what she really wanted to do and lay Jasmine out like a bag of wet cement. And then found herself unemployed with no house and no prospects.
photo credit: Sommer Marsden 2014 "Donald's Forget Me Nots"