Noah pointed to the passenger seat. “Yeti, come.” The wolf-dog didn’t move at first, alternating glances between the two humans.
Noah got in on the driver’s side and put the key in the ignition. The jeep rumbled to life with a sound like logs fed to a wood chipper. “Now, Yeti. Let’s go.” The wolf-dog leapt inside the Jeep, tail wagging anxiously and head cocked like she was trying to assess what was wrong.
“I’ll tell Victoria Sterling!” I played what I thought was my trump card, wielding the LuxeLife executive’s name like a corporate get-out-of-jail-free card.
“While you’re at it, I’ve got a few other things you can tell Victoria.” Noah stomped his foot on the clutch and yanked the transmission into reverse. “And if she’s got a problem with any of them, instead of sending one of her LuxeLife lackeys, tell her to come up here herself so I can tell them to her face.”
“LuxeLife lackey? I’m not a LuxeLife lackey.”
Noah raised an eyebrow. “You said you worked for them, right?”.
“Well, yes, technically. But …”
He pressed his foot to the accelerator, the Jeep lurching backward, and the mud splattered tires kicking up dust.
“Wait, what are you doing?” It didn’t seem like the way bluffs were supposed to work.
Noah jammed the gearshift into drive, the Jeep emitting a sound like a bowling ball falling down a full flight of stairs.
“You can’t just leave me here.” I said, raising my voice over the clunking of the engine.
For a split second, Noah’s hands stilled on the steering wheel, and something flickered across his face. His jaw muscle ticked, and I caught the way his knuckles went white against the worn steering wheel, like he was gripping it to steady his resolve. But then his shoulders straightened, and Mr. Mountain Mc’Grumpypants returned. “Oh yeah? Watch me.”
I did.
And he did. Leave me, that is. His foot punched down on the accelerator, and the Jeep took off down the road.
Open-mouthed, I stared after him as the Jeep disappeared around a bend, leaving me stranded with nothing but my coffee-scorched tongue. But even after one minute … two minutes … five minutes … I held out hope. Because as Noah was driving away, I caught him checking the rearview mirror. Not once, but three times in the first hundred yards, like he was fighting the urge to turn around.
Yeti’s head was turned backward too, looking toward me out the back with what I could have sworn was canine confusion.
“He’ll come back,” I said to no one in particular, my voice swallowed up by the empty parking lot.
He didn’t.
Chapter Six
With the cloud of dust settled and the roar of the Jeep’s engine long gone, I realized with growing horror that Noah wasn’t coming back. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere. With no cell service. No transportation. And a Louis Vuitton suitcase that suddenly seemed about as useful as a giant paperweight. Staring off into the empty distance, I wondered if travel insurance covered being left to die in the wilderness.
“Well, this is it,” I said to the curious bird watching me from a lamppost. “This is the moment Dad will reference for the rest of my life. Remember when you were abandoned at that airport in Colorado? Send me the receipt for the return flight to California.”
I could already hear Mom on the phone with her friends, voice heavy with loving disappointment. Our daughter, the social media failure? Oh, she’ll be fine. Just learning some hard lessons about following dreams instead of listening to her parents.
The bird looked at me with what I assumed was avianempathy. Or it was deciding which eyeball to peck out after the mountain lions were done with me.
The worst part was, my parents wouldn’t even be wrong. I’d flown all the way out here to represent a luxury brand, and I couldn’t even handle basic transportation logistics. So much for proving I was more than just pretty pictures and cute captions.
But even as I spiraled into self-pity, part of my brain kept replaying those last few moments in the Jeep. The way Noah’s hands had hesitated on the wheel. The way he’d avoided eye contact. The way he’d checked that rearview mirror …
I’d grown up reading people’s micro-expressions in my parents’ restaurant. Figuring out which customers were going to be difficult, which ones hid disappointment, which ones were putting on a show for their companions. And Noah Barrett’s micro-expressions suggested … I had no idea.
Other than the fact that he hated me. Obviously. Too bad I’d never see him again to find out more.
Looking across the empty parking lot, I realized I had two options at that point. Option one, I could take the next flight home to Los Angeles, admit to Mom and Dad my influencing career was a failure, and then submit myself to a life of dumpling folding.
Or, option two, I could wait outside and let the Colorado mountain lions eat me.
Pretty much a coin flip, really.
