I snicker and plop onto the boat next to him. “She does,” I argue, “but she’s more of a flirt than I am, so they are usually satisfied by the end of a trip.” Farah is by far my favorite guide to work with, in part because she’s the only other woman working for Red Earth River Tours but also because she tends to draw more of the men’s attention and inadvertently give me some peace when single guys book our trips.
Spencer lifts an eyebrow. “So what’s your deal? You don’t flirt?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“I figured you would be too intimidating for guys to go after in the first place.”
My smile is one of pride and makes Spencer roll his eyes. “You’re not wrong,” I tell him. “But intimidation is a double-edged sword. They’re terrified of me, but they also can’t resist the ego boost that would come from winning a gal like me.” As if to prove my point, I hold my arms up and flex.
Spencer shoves my arm down, probably because he’s jealous. He may own the whitewater company I work for, but he’s never been much of an athlete. He’s way better in the office than on the oars of a boat, which I’m totally fine with because it means he deals with all the paperwork so I can focus on leading the tours down river.
We’re quiet for a moment, listening to the sounds of frogs and crickets take up their evening vigil. I love summer nights in Southern Utah, and it’s always nice to be back after winters away. It’s calm here, and the smell of the rafts and wet equipment is the smell of home.
“You’re worried about something,” I say eventually. It’s out of the blue, but Spencer likely won’t be surprised by the comment. We’ve worked together for fifteen years now and spent enough time on rivers and hiking that we can read each other pretty well.
He sighs, leaning back until he’s stretched out along the tube of the raft. “We don’t have enough trips booked.”
I gather my hair over my shoulder and start braiding, a nervous habit. “You say that every year.”
“This year’s worse.”
“How much worse?”
Lifting his head, he grimaces at me. “Bad enough that I won’t be able to keep the property unless we fully book out the rest of the summer, and there’s nowhere in town big enough that we can afford.”
My fingers slow to a stop halfway through my braid, and I look around the yard and the giant pavilion that protects the boats and gear from the elements. Red Earth has been operating from this spot in Moab for decades, our grandpa’s pride and joy before he passed it on to Spencer. “I thought Pops owned the land outright.”
“He did,” Spencer says with a groan, “but I had to take out a loan when we replaced the boats a few years back, and the property was the only collateral I had.”
I wrinkle my nose. “That was a stupid idea.”
“I know! But it’s the only thing that saved the company, and I can’t change it now. But unless we get more trips booked, we might be toast. I still haven’t paid off the loan.”
“Which means you’ll lose the boats too,” I guess, wishing our old Avons had lasted a few more years. But some of the rafts were fortyyears old and had more patches than solid material, so new boats were a necessity.
As my stomach ties itself in a knot far tighter than the half a braid I’ve twisted my hair into, I look around the space again. I have so many memories here. Utah is full of whitewater companies, so it’s not like I couldn’t find a job somewhere else with my years of experience, but how could I abandon Red Earth River Tours? This place changed my life when I was a teen.
Itsavedmy life.
“So what are we going to do?” I ask, bouncing where I sit so Spencer bounces with me.
He glares at me and sits up. “I don’t know what wecando. I’ve already spent more on advertising than I’m comfortable with, but we’re too small of a company to get much notice.”
Commercial rafting has been a staple of Moab’s tourism for decades, and we’ve always been one of the highest rated companies. But as the modern world evolves, people’s comfort zones get smaller. Even some of the big companies have had harder years, but we seem to have them more and more often.
We need something to set us apart. To catch attention. I have no idea what that something is, but I’m sure we can think of something.
“Don’t panic yet,” I tell Spencer, patting his arm. “Maybe this summer will surprise you with some last-minute bookings.”
He grunts, apparently not believing me, and I know better than to try to keep convincing him. For how much he has followed in our grandpa’s footsteps, he never seemed to pick up on Pops’s optimistic side. Spencer is a worrier.
“Have you talked to Pops about this?” I ask warily.
Shaking his head, he pushes himself up to his feet and starts shuffling back to the office. “No, and don’t you dare tell him. I shouldn’t have told you in the first place. I’ll figure it out.”
I clench my jaw, waiting until Spencer shuts the door behind him before I stand and head to the back of the yard and my above-garage apartment. Spencer says he’ll figure it out, and he has the Tate stubbornness, the one thing all of us grandkids inherited from Pops without fail. I know better than anyone how hard it is to accept help.
But Spencer might be out of his depth with this one, and I have no way to help him. I hate that.
