I needed to clean something.
I stopped in the teacher’s lounge to grab my half-eaten lunch bag from the fridge and frowned at the crumb-topped tables and dirty dishes piled in the sink. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, there was a group of older teachers, all male, who refused to eat their lunches in their Tupperware or take-out boxes like the rest of us. They preferred to use a plate from the school’s 1960’s collection in the cupboard, completely bypassing the stack of paper plates I purchased and put in front of said cupboard. Then, they would either finish and leave their plate in the sink for “later” or cover their half-eaten scraps in plastic wrap and place them in the fridge where they were left to die and grow fur until somebody (me) couldn’t stand it any longer and washed them. Glancing back at the still-empty hallway, I hesitated. I needed to get out of here, but my hands itched to do something. To make something right again. I didn’t want to get caught by anybody, but maybe I could just wipe the counters down really quick.
Yes. Just the counters.
I was forearm-deep in dirty dishwater at the sink when Miles strode into the room.
He stopped when he saw me and raised his eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
By this time, I had worked through a sufficient amount of my feelings by way of plunging and scrubbing. So, I looked down at the plate of crusted-over sweet-and-sour chicken in my hands and then smiled sweetly back at Miles. “Why don’t you give me your best guess.”
“Taking out some deeply hidden aggression on dishes that you shouldn’t be washing.” He strode to the refrigerator and took out a small lunch cooler.
I ignored the jab. “If I don’t wash them, nobody will.”
“But that’s not your problem,” he said, leaning against the counter.
I gave him a frozen smile. “If everybody had an attitude like that, nothing would ever get done. Some of us have to put in some elbow grease. It’s how the world turns.”
Turning back to my scrubbing, I tried to ignore him, which was a little hard to do when he just stood there, watching me. Fine. I was happy to play this game.
“Congratulations on your award, by the way. Are you going to make a special shelf for it?” My attempt at sarcastic humor fell flat, even to my ears.
Still, he said nothing. I rinsed off the dish and placed it on the drying rack. He was still looking at me, but his eyes seemed deep in thought, which was, honestly, more unnerving than him just criticizing me. I reached for another plate.
“You know, Olive, the awards don’t mean anything. Nobody voted. It’s just for Pamela and Harris to feel good about themselves, more than anything.”
My fingers dropped the plate in my hands, and it splashed into the water, sending droplets all across the front of my shirt. He called me Olive, maybe for the very first time besides our initial meeting nine months earlier. I wasn’t sure he even realized that he had.
“I know,” I said as I grabbed the plate once more. “I’m not upset about anything.”
He nodded his head toward the sink, where I was attacking the dish with hostile fury. “I can see that.”
“I’m serious.” I slowed to a carefree scrub before rinsing the dish and placing it on the drying rack next to the others, then picked up the washcloth hanging on the faucet and began wiping the counter. Maybe if I said it slowly and with conviction, he would believe me. Most people didn’t want to dig too deep; that usually just left everyone feeling uncomfortable. Not Miles. He was watching me with his arms folded like a puzzle he seemed vaguely interested in piecing together.
“Well, that’s good because I almost feel a moral obligation to contest the whole thing. If I showed them the love note you sent me, they’d take away your trophy for sure.”
I gave him a scowl, which only made an annoying grin spread slowly across his face. “That was a casual email to a friend, not an English paper. And I was in a hurry when I wrote it.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “When I saw that our very own Grammar Queen didn’t even know the difference between the possessive ‘your’ and the contraction, I felt a deep sense of worry for the education of our students.”
“It was probably spell check. It’s always getting it wrong.” I wiped the counter, boldly moving closer to force him backward to wipe in front of where he stood. He chuckled and took a step back.
“Whatever you say. I’m not the one that has the whole school fooled.”
Ironic. He most certainly did have the whole school fooled.
I opened the refrigerator door and wanted to cry at all the plates and old Tupperware containers filled with leftovers. I knew for a fact most had been in the fridge for weeks. Why were people like this at work? It was disgusting.
Miles grabbed my arm, moved me aside, and pushed the fridge door closed. “You’re not cleaning in there.”
Extracting myself from his grip, I responded with a mature, “I can do whatever I want.” Suddenly, I wanted to clean the whole room. I’d clean all night if that was what it took.
He looked at me incredulously. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll go to the office, get on the intercom, and tell everyone to come grab their crap from the kitchen and wash their own dishes. It’s not your job.”
“I don’t mind doing it.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “It’s a little game I like to play. First I imagine that every dish has your face on it, and then I get to half drown it in water.”
I didn’t have to look directly at Miles to know that his mouth lifted in his trademark (annoying) grin. “I knew you liked me, deep down.”
“How did you get that from what I just said?”
“You’re thinking about me while doing mundane tasks. I think my heart just melted.”
Miles Taylor was looking at me as though something amused him, and it made me want to claw his eyes out.
“Want to know what I think?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“You’re a martyr.”
I folded my arms as I glared up at him. “I like things clean, so sue me.”
He shook his head, mirroring my body language as we leaned our hips against the counter, facing off. “Just like in the staff meetings when suddenly you’ve been assigned five more tasks than everybody else, and you act like it’s Christmas morning. Or when Harvey asks you to edit his master’s thesis for free in all your spare time. Or when Davis stole your idea for the spring project. And you just smile through everything.”
“You smile all the time,” I accused, fully aware that that particular burn sucked.
“Yeah, I’m a happy guy. But that’s probably because I’m not bending over and letting the whole school spank me while I do all their homework.”
“Ew.”
He laughed, which only made me angrier. I leaned closer, my fingers clenched with fire. “I help out because I’m a team player. And you don’t know anything about me.”