Happy Reading

James POV-

I did finally get a tour of Greta's house a week after the Martin's Thanksgiving. It really is a beautiful home and she even had a guest room for me to sleep in so I don't have to stay in hotels (even though I rather liked my hotel).

I don't remember much of anything that happened in the few weeks we've been back from Texas except the few days I've stayed with Greta in between. Jim has been feeling a lot better with Greta around. Of course, I'm going to regret ever thinking this, but I think he's grown rather fond of her, which makes me feel better about my choice to stay with her. We had a deal, one he's never broken without reason to, and one I'll have to do the same for.

And it's nice to know that he goes by Jim now, that way I don't have to fully affiliate myself with his business. Before, I had only referred to him as myself, which is true. I'm a special case of MPD, they said. I'm one of the few fully aware of my personalities and to only have one is extremely lucky.

Well, one for now. The problem with my disorder is that any new personalities can resurface at any second. I may not actually be fully aware of my...others...just the one that is most active.

As I woke up from my recent slumber, the sun blinded my night-sensitive eyes. It's always very sunny in Greta's part of Salt Lake City. My eyes adjusted all the same and I got out of her huge guest comforters.

Walking downstairs, I could hear sizzling and smiled to myself.

"Early riser, huh?" I called from her hallway/library. The kitchen was in plain sight as I made my way to where Greta was cooking something on her stove. Wrapping my arms around her, I buried my face in the crook of her neck from behind.

"Mhm." She replied, with a smirk and swatted me away, "Shoo! I'm making breakfast."

I chuckled and sat on a bar stool and watched her closely as she cooked what smelled like bacon. Her eyes were focused on the task in front of her, her arms moving back in forth, the spatula scrapping against the pan.

"Is it alright if I read something?" I asked, pointing to her library which was only a few meters away.

"Please do! I only really have classics but whatever you can find, nothing is off limits." Greta turned around and smiled at me, walking with me to the library.

My eyes were doing a poor job of scanning through all the books she had for I was watching her pull out books and occasionally gasp and say, 'I love this one!'. When she pulled out another book, and caught my eye, her breath (and my own) seemed to settle in the middle of her throat.

It was almost as if I was being possessed of controlled by something when I leaned down to her face and slowly and desperately aimed for her lips but I was interrupted by a finger making contact instead of my desired target.

"Nuh, uh, uh. You have terrible morning breath." She handed me the book and raced to the kitchen again, her tongue in between her teeth in a playful manner. I shook my head with a smile and looked down at the book in my hand.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I raised an eyebrow at her choice. I had never read it before, though I never really wanted to. It was always so confusing to me when we were forced to read it in school back in my last year. I didn't pay much attention.

"If I brush my teeth," I followed her lead but sat in the very same counter and pulled open the book, turning pages to the very first one, "then can we finish?"

"I'll think about it..." She replied with a smirk, returning to her bacon. I tried to keep my eyes and mind on the book in front of me but I couldn't help but think about her. God, I was obsessed.

When she turned around, I quickly averted my eyes to my book, hoping she wouldn't catch me admiring her.

"Here, James, try this." Greta handed me a spoon full of a brown-tan liquid. I raised an eyebrow at it as I took the spoon in my hand.

"What is it?" I asked her, a somewhat repulsive expression on my face, putting my book to the side.

"Syrup. For pancakes."

"Oh!" I plopped the spoon in my mouth,tasting Greta's syrup. It was smooth and almost...cinnamon like.

"It's good, right?" She asked me, leaning on the marble counter.

"Yeah, but it doesn't taste like normal syrup."

"It's Cinnabon syrup." She confirmed with a smile. I couldn't help but laugh.

"Of course it is." I handed her back the spoon that she threw in her kitchen sink across from the counter and by the window that looked outside of her porch. Her dog, Freddie, was bigger now that five months had passed by and sat sleeping on the porch swing.

"I can't cook anything of my own invention. You should know." She smirked.

"Alright, alright." Getting back to the book I was reading was hard enough, but to get back to reading while Greta's humming? That's a whole different scenario. Her voice in general always distracted me.

Finally, breakfast was served only after a few songs and the mouth-melting smell of American breakfast delights surrounded me. I walked after her into the dining room on the right of the kitchen, sitting in a seat on one side, Greta setting a plate full of bacon and what looked like eggs right in front of me as she took a seat on the end of the table nearest to me.

The table wasn't all that long, and had an oak color finish. It was, truly, a nice table. It seemed like everything in this house was nice, which wasn't something you always found in a house with one person living in it.

Greta dove right into her food, spreading jam on a piece of toast. I stared at the food with a troubled face.

"What's wrong, James?" She asked me softly. I looked up at her.

"Oh, nothing, I just...I was just wondering how you maintain this house with-"

"With a job like a book shop keeper?"

"Well, yes but no."

"With no other income to help me? All by myself?" The corner of Greta's mouth turned upward to a friendly smirk.

I nodded my head, cutting into an egg finally.

"Well," she struggled to say her answer but showed no sign of tears, "before my parents died, my father wrote his will on a napkin one day, just to be funny with me at a restaurant we went to when I quit college, and I was living in my own apartment at the time. Here," she raced out of the dining room and came back several moments later with a spotless napkin in her hand, "here it is."

"Give it all to her, huh?" I read off the napkin. The writing was slanted to the right and reminded me of Greta's.

"Yup." She nodded her head, solemnly. "The house, their cars, everything." Greta sat back down and began to eat. "So that's why I'm able to maintain this entire property." It was a semi-quiet rest of the breakfast. Greta told me more about stories of her childhood in the very room we were sitting in.

In a sudden burst, I jumped up from my chair and quickly walked to the huge bathroom she had. Greta laughed as she saw my sudden eagerness.

Quickly grabbing my toothbrush, and spreading the blue gel on the bristles, I furiously brushed my teeth with great speed. Rinsing, spitting, mouthwashing, you name it, I did it all.

When I did a breath test, which came out positively great, I race back and grinned at Greta, who was putting our plates away and placing them in the sink.

"Guess what?" I smirked, and walked closer to her. She turned around with a smile and stabilized herself by holding onto the edge of the sink.

"What?"

"I brushed my teeth." I put my hands over hers so I was leaning over Greta.
She smiled and lightly laughed. "Could we maybe finish what we started?"

"Maybe later, but for now," she reached over my arms and grabbed a stray dish towel, waving it in front of my face, "we have some dishes to do." Greta smirked and somehow slipped from beneath my arms with ease, looking back as she began to place dishes upon dishes in piles away from the kitchen sink.

Sighing, I followed her lead, placing stray dishes that were situated on the table to their matching piles. Greta quickly jumped from her spot and ran to a huge wooden record player that was on a coffee table in between the living room and the kitchen.

"Aha!" She cried out when she pulled out a certain record from the stack of dusty cartridges sitting like ducks next to the player.

"What?" I asked her as I opened the shiny metallic dishwasher. She looked back at me, mischievously.

"You'll see," Greta placed it in the open player and moved the tone-arm to the black disc. A static-like sound followed soon after as she made her way back to the kitchen were I began to place dishes in what I had believed where the correct order. I had never really done the dishes in a long time, I always had other people to do so.

The crackling sound stopped and the sound of big-band music boomed through the old speakers. The trumpets, saxophones and other instruments of variable types banded together to create a jazzy-folk feeling to the melody that Greta was one-stepping to while she corrected my dish-washing mistakes. I sheepishly laughed and she scoffed at my house-cleaning abilities.

"It's that bad, huh?" I stepped away from the machine for a moment, taking in all the stupidity I radiated. Greta nodded her head to the music as a male voice began to sing from the player.

"Yeah, it kind of is." She admitted, putting a plate in the bottom drawer. "But don't worry, you'll get in the," she hip-bumped me in rhythm, "groove of things."

I laughed lightly, and followed her lead in putting the plates in the right way I had watched Greta do. The music was extremely catchy, and I fought everything in me not to just dance right there. I had no idea who this was or what song was playing but the part of me that was fighting, gave up quickly when Greta grabbed hold of my hands and began to dance around with them, singing along with the music.

"Somewhere, beyond the sea," She mimicked the man who was singing through the player quite accurately. She really was a good singer. "somewhere, waiting for me," She moved my hands out and then back in, as she kicked around like the dancers from the way-back-60's. I chuckled as I twirled her around my finger.

What seemed like hours went by with no work being done. We didn't realize how long we've gone on just fooling around with the suds from the soap water that we were initially using to rinse the dishes, dancing and singing along with the swing music until the record suddenly went back to just static signaling that the whole album was over. We were covered head-to-toe in suds and water that we sprayed at each other.

"Yay, productivity." Greta mumbled. I laughed lightly.

"Now we have more work to do than before."

"Now you have more work to do than before. I have to get ready for work." Greta smirked, sauntering away from the kitchen.

"Wha-? But I don't even know how to clean!"

"Learn to, my kind sir." She turned her back, whistling a tune and walked into her master bedroom.

Staring at the abundant mess set out before me, I knew it was going to be a long day. Making sure Greta wouldn't walk out on my next embarrassing action, I pulled out my phone and unlocked it, clicking the YouTube icon.

"How...to clean...the dishes." I mumbled out loud as I typed. The first video that popped up seemed good enough and I began to clean myself up as it was loading.

"Hi, guys!" A man with a thick Australian accent and a blue long sleeved polo appeared behind a green screen. "Are you tired of your kitchen being a mess and having no idea what to do about it?"

"Yes!" I shouted at the screen, rolling my eyes.

"Well, today's your lucky day. Hi! I'm Peter Buckingham and welcome to SuperClean EasyPreem, the only dishwasher that goes beyond the cleaning and into the hands that do the action!" The voice, Peter Buckingham, really annoyed me. All I really wanted to do instead of clean was punch his face.

"This is a waste of time-"

"Now before you begin to think this is a waste of time-."

"Too late." I exited out of the video and onto the next one which was just a crappy camera shown over a pair of hands in front of a sink.

"Hey everybody, this is Startracker666 with a new video on-"

"Nope." I quickly exited the video, missing the exit button several times so I had to furiously tap my screen.

"Woah! Something going on there?" Greta emerged from her hallway, wearing a short-sleeved collard dress and drying her hair with a towel. I turned my focus away from my phone and onto her, throwing the phone on the counter like I was never using it. Greta's eyebrow shot up in confusion.

"What was going on?" She prodded. I shook my head, playing it cool.

"Nothing, uh, nothing." I tried leaning on the counter to hide my guilt on my latest actions. Having to look up how to do dishes on YouTube is not exactly a woman-getter.

"Didn't sound like nothing." She challenged and then began to look back and forth between me and the phone as if planning something in her head against me. Once I realized what she was going to do, it was too late. She grabbed the phone with split-second action and quickly looked at it.

"James!" She cried, teasingly. I shifted uncomfortably in my stance. "Come on, let's get to teaching you some things." Greta walked past me into the kitchen grabbing stuff and starting everything. "Do they not have dishes in England? Do you just eat on the ground?"

I laughed lightly.

"Ha! Sort of." I joked. Greta looked back at me from the sink.

"What do you know how to do?"

"Well, I know how to do everything you're doing for me right now." I put my hands in my jean pockets.

"Good thing I'm doing that for you!" She laughed then motioned for me to come closer. "Come here, you ain't gonna learn from 20 feet away from the sink."

I raised an eyebrow at her speech. "'Ain't'?" I tried to repeat.

"Yes, I'm an American, you're in America, that's how things go here." She then proceeded to sing a song in a really rough voice that only consisted of one word, and a word I didn't know existed: 'Meeeerica' with emphasis on the 'Meeeer' part.

Smiling at her tactics, I walked next to her at the kitchen sink.

"So," Greta began, and turned on the fountain with a flourish, "you start with warm water and then, naturally, you put soap in the water."

"Well, I know that already." I snorted, and looked down at Greta who was glaring at me.

"Shush and let me teach." She lightly pushed me around. I laughed.

"Alright, alright. Teach me, Ms. Levine."

She smirked and nodded her head. "So, after you've put the soap in the water, and make sure it's warm, you scrub the dish in the soapy water, like this," she grabbed my hand and placed over the dish towel, her hand guiding mine over a dirty dish.

The sensation of Greta just being near me and holding my hand was near-blinding. I was practically trembling with emotions that were put off for so long, a part of me that was never allowed for over ten years.

The back and forth motion Greta guided me in began to soften and slow down. I felt Greta's heartbeat quicken as well as my own. Thinking of something, anything, to say to hear was the most difficult task as she made my words run dry.

"Gre-"

"I have to go to work. I'll be back by lunch and I'll bring home something to eat or something." She quickly let go of my hands and raced away from the kitchen.

"A-Alright, see you-" the sound of a door slamming interrupted my speech, "later."

Left alone in my own thoughts of what I did wrong, I tried to reimagine Greta's hands guiding mine over the dishes, and watched as her Monte Carlo drove away from me.

I should have known right away I wasn't the only with demons, I shouldn't have been so selfish in thinking I was the one who needed all the help.

I'm. So. Sorry. Guys. I cannot issue enough how sorry I am to leave you in the dust without a chapter, believe me it was not intentional, I just needed too fire out some things in both my life and with the story, I have much more plot I want to add so I don't want to spend too much time with Greta and James' relationship.

Anyways, thank you all so much for your consideration and patience again, I apologize deeply.

See you in the next chapter (which won't take 27 years to write)

Love you all, sincerely

-Barb