“We’ll give it fifteen minutes,” she reached for the chain and held it. “Takes about that long for it to wear off.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t need you here. If you want to be useful, there’s a shovel by the door. You can go pick up the shit in the short grass over there.”
I guess it’s something to do while waiting for a huge dog to get smaller.
“Fuck you,” the words spilled out of my mouth before I could censor them. I wasn’t positive I wanted to censor them, but it bugged me that I’d done it without thinking it through.
Hehe.
Honestly, I think there’s a decent chance Rachel isn’t going to take offense here. This is Taylor not showing weakness – Rachel might appreciate that.
“What?” she growled at me.
“Fuck you,” I repeated myself, “I came to help. Thought maybe I was helping, by pointing out what was wrong with Sirius. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be your slave, or that it’s an excuse to give me the worst jobs. You want me to pick up the poop? Cool, but I’ll do it when you’ve got a shovel in your hand too, and you’re working beside me.”
Ehh, fair enough.
“You told me I could hit you, free and clear, if you pissed me off,” she threatened me.
I think Taylor’s cool with that, Rachel.
“Yeah, but if you do it here, for this reason, I’m hitting back,”
Heh, nice.
I didn’t move my eyes away from hers, even as every awkward part of me twitched to look away and leave. If she really did default to interpreting social interactions in dog terms, then eye contact was important.
Yes, keep doing this. Standing up to her might actually get her to respect you more.
I didn’t know much about animals, about dogs, but I did know that it was the submissive dog, the dog lower on the totem pole, that backed down.
“I’ve got Brutus, you wouldn’t win the fight,” she told me.
Can she actually assign Brutus to a different task right now? He might be stuck keeping the other dogs at bay.
Almost definitely true, I thought. But I couldn’t give in. I resisted the urge to look at Brutus and told her, my voice low, “You want to go there? Try it.”
Man, I hope this ends in Rachel laughing, to Taylor’s surprise.
She set her jaw, stared at me for several long moments. Then Sirius made a noise, a smaller version of that whimpering howl he’d made earlier, and she turned her head.
Ah, or she can get distracted. Fair enough.
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