11. Emma
11
Emma
D espite the rock hard, heart-shaped bed and the scratchy polyester blankets, I sleep like the dead and wake up feeling like a million bucks.
Against all odds, I hiked nine very vertical miles yesterday. Sure, I’m sore as hell today, but the discomfort is overshadowed by a sense of pride. And now, I have the chance to do it all over again. Another chance to prove that I’m fully capable of handling this trip, and that I won’t be sent home early by Garrett North.
Garrett .
His name coils through me like the first sip of ice water on a hot summer day. It shouldn’t…and Lord knows I’m not a fan of this recent development, but there’s no point in lying to myself either. Part of me wanted my boss to kiss me in this sleazy hotel room last night. It’s not sane or logical or even remotely explainable, but it happened.
The ghost of our almost-kiss lingers in the pink bathroom as I brush my teeth and get ready for the day. I can feel the subtle graze of Garrett’s fingertips against my waist. His heated gaze on my skin. His breath in my hair.
There’s no denying what happened, but the moment that I step out of my room into the dark, empty parking lot, it’s clear that Garrett is trying his best to do just that.
I glance down at his arm. The bandage is gone. Even though the cut seems to have mostly closed up overnight, seeing it exposed like that bothers the hell out of me. I learned the hard way how easy it is to get an infection from a minor wound.
“Shuttle’s on its way,” Garrett says without looking up from his phone as I join him in the parking lot.
“Okay,” I mumble.
We stand far apart. Really far apart. Practically on other planets.
There’s nothing to look at but bugs swarming around the flickering light near the office. When my phone chimes in my bag, it’s a welcome distraction from counting moths. Unfortunately, it’s just an auto-generated email with some of the company’s financial information for the quarter. I scroll through the other emails from yesterday afternoon, pausing on one with a surprising title.
“What’s this email from the Denver Rescue Coalition about tents for the homeless shelter?” I ask Garrett.
“It’s just like last year,” he says plainly. “I told them you would coordinate the delivery.”
“I’m not sure I was here for that last year.”
Garrett glances up at me under furrowed brows and tucks his phone into his pocket. “Right, I guess you weren’t. Every summer, True North donates tents to the homeless shelter. I just need you to coordinate the specifics with them and let Phil in the warehouse know when they want the tents delivered.”
“How many tents?” I ask, knowing damn well that True North sells some pretty expensive camping gear. The last thing I need on my final day at this company is a bill for the twenty tents I mistakenly gave away to charity.
“As many as they need.”
“So, if they ask for twenty tents, we just give it to them?” I ask.
Garrett gives me a confused look. “Sure, if they ask for twenty, we give them twenty,” he says. “But they usually ask for at least two hundred. They have a pretty large overflow lot on the property where people are welcome to camp until they have an indoor room available.”
Before I can respond, a pair of headlights flashes over us as a shuttle turns into the parking lot. Garrett picks up his bag and hoists it onto his shoulder.
Misinterpreting my stunned expression, Garrett sighs and says, “It’s easy. I’ll walk you through it when we get back to the office.”
The sun is just coming up when we arrive, casting a golden glow over the jagged landscape. The shuttle drops us off in front of a small, nondescript office on the edge of town. My confidence falters when we step inside.
This group looks nothing like the last. It’s a sea of lean muscles and bright spandex. Everyone has the same sunglasses, the type with reflective blue lenses that wrap halfway around their heads with straps in back to hold them in place.
My sunglasses are white plastic orbs straight out of the 1960s. I push them up on my head and glance around the room, suddenly self-conscious about my plain black leggings and oversized ‘Life’s a Party with Gerbils’ t-shirt that I impulsively bought at the animal rescue where I adopted Purrnando.
Then there’s the fact that I haven’t been on a bicycle in two decades and haven’t been rock climbing in…ever. Things aren’t looking good for me, but who knows? Maybe I’ll surprise myself. I did last time.
A short man with an electronic tablet in a bulky case trots out from behind the desk. The ridge of his brow and hollowness of his cheeks give his face a stern look. The muscles in his thighs and calves look sharp enough to cut glass.
“Morning, everyone,” he nods at the crowd, who return the greeting. “I’m Todd, and I’ll be your guide for this four-day biking and climbing tour. Before we get started, I just need to make sure that everyone is present and accounted for. After that, we’ll go over some quick rules and safety precautions before we head out on the first leg of our journey.”
Todd starts reading off a list of names and tapping his finger to the tablet every time someone calls out ‘here.’ When he calls out my name and I respond, he pauses for a second to give me an irritated glance before returning to the list.
Okay, not sure what that’s about.
“Bagnar Billowbottom?” he reads off eventually, stumbling through each syllable as if he might be pronouncing it wrong.
The room goes quiet as everyone looks around.
“Bagnar, um, Billow…bottom? Am I saying that right?” Todd repeats.
Garrett leans in and whispers, “I’m guessing that I’m Billowbottom?”
“Mmhmm,” I hum, suppressing a smile. There is no satisfaction in life greater than using an online garden gnome name generator to create alter egos for your asshole boss.
“It’s Garrett, actually,” he calls out to the guide, folding his arms over his chest.
After rollcall is finished, Todd goes over some safety guidelines. Even though I barely understand half of the lingo he uses, I hang onto every word and begin to imagine all the ways that this might end poorly for me.
“If there aren’t any questions, I think we can all head outside and get on the bikes. We’ve got fifteen miles ahead of us this morning, then a light lunch. After that, we’ve got ten more miles before we reach camp this evening. Everyone ready?” Todd asks.
I gulp. Literally gulp.
Twenty-five miles in a single day? I thought that was over the course of all four days, and even that had me on edge. Any little shred of confidence I had left floats away as everyone else inexplicably smiles and cheers at this bit of information.
The bicycles are lined up in a neat row. I walk to the one of the far end, hoping that I can get on this thing without falling over and taking everybody else with me like a row of human dominos.
I grip the handles and swing my leg over the seat. Immediately, I can tell this seat and my butt are not going to get along. But at least I’m on the bike. That’s a step in the right direction.
Now I just need to ride it twenty-five miles.
In one day.
It feels impossible, but so did a nine-mile uphill hike. I have no choice but to try my best.
Todd takes off first, and the others follow. As I wobble to a false start, Garrett reaches out for the handle of my bike and pulls me to a hard stop.
“Hang back,” he says, nodding for a few others to go ahead of us.
“Okay,” I agree easily. It’s not like I could keep up with this group anyway.
After everyone else is gone, Garrett waits for me to kick off and start pedaling first then follows a few paces behind.
Everything about this trip feels different than the rafting trip. Friendly chit chat is not on the agenda. In fact, the whole group seems thoroughly uninterested in anything resembling fun. These people are here to push themselves to the limit, not to enjoy the scenery and make new friends. What I wouldn’t give to see Doris right now…or even Math Teacher Carl.
Instead, it’s just me and Garrett. We’re only a few minutes into this tour, but it’s pretty clear that we won’t have any buffer this time. We only have each other, and I’m not feeling great about that.
We pedal along side by side in silence. An hour later, we’re already so far behind the rest of the group that I can’t see any trace of them anymore. For a while, it feels like Garrett and I are literally all alone out here. Just us and a bunch of weird red rocks. It’s a pretty place, but it’s hard to enjoy it when just breathing requires every bit of my focus.
“Let’s stop for a minute,” Garrett suggests when my tire catches on a rock and almost sends me flying over the handlebars. “Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
My thigh and calf muscles are on fire from the hike yesterday. My butt is strangely numb. Everything – and I mean everything – is chaffing. And to top it all off, I’m feeling the start of some pretty serious period cramps. I knew it was coming. Foolishly, I hoped my period would come on this leg of the trip so it would be over before we arrived in California for surf camp. That’s the only part of the trip I am actually looking forward to, and I’d prefer to enjoy it without being actively pursued by sharks.
Now I realize the error of my ways. I’d gladly take a shark encounter over dealing with horrible cramps on top of the blazing heat and this uncomfortable bike seat.
“How far have we gone?” I ask. We have to be at least halfway to the lunch checkpoint.
Garrett taps his fancy fitness watch a couple times and frowns. “About a mile and a half.”
Okay, so that’s less than I thought. By, like…a ton. But this is fine. It will probably get easier…somehow…eventually.
“We should try to catch up to the group,” I say, reluctantly pushing off again. Behind me, Garrett says my name, but I don’t stop.
To no one’s surprise, least of all my own, things do not get easier. In fact, I’ve never felt closer to death. Not even the time that I almost actually died in a ravine in the woods when I was thirteen years old.
“Still doing okay?” Garrett asks out of nowhere.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look so hot.”
“Thank you for that assessment,” I deadpan.
“I just mean that you look like you’re in pain. Are you cramping up?”
“Yes,” I say, even though I know that we have very different definitions of the word cramp at the moment.
Garrett slows down even more. “Hop off and stretch your hamstrings.”
“I don’t think that will help.”
“Quit being stubborn. If you’re worried about catching up to the group…”
“It’s not that type of cramp, Garrett,” I snap.
His eyes go wide as he realizes that I’m referring to my uterus.
“Oh,” he stammers.
“Yeah.”
“Sorry, I don’t know any stretches to help with that.”
Garrett winces as we both try to ignore his suggestion that he might know how to give my lady parts a good stretching. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something else but blows the breath out slowly instead.
We pedal along in silence. With each rotation, my uterus feels like it’s being wrung out by a citrus juicer. I’m struggling just to keep my legs moving. Meanwhile, Garrett seems to be struggling not to topple over while traveling at turtle speed.
“Can I tell you something, off the record?” he asks as he stares straight ahead at the endless dirt and jagged rocks.
“Sure, there’s like an eighty percent chance I’ll be dead by sundown anyway. I’ll take your secret to the grave,” I say.
“You’re not going to die,” Garrett laughs, shaking his head at me. “No one has ever died of menstrual cramps before.”
“But people die from bicycle accidents all the time,” I remind him.
“Yeah, and how many of those people die while traveling at a speed of less than one mile per hour on flat ground in the middle of nowhere?”
“Some?” I guess. “Fine, maybe I’ll live to see another day. Now tell me this big secret of yours.”
“I fucking hate cycling.”
The word sounds so raw and dirty coming out of his mouth, sending a little thrill through me. Garrett rarely uses it at work. He may be a grump, but he’s a highly professional one most of the time.
I stop dead in my tracks, letting one foot catch my weight as the bike starts to lean. It’s not elegant, but I’m too crampy, overheated, and generally miserable to care at the moment.
“Then what are we doing here, Garrett?” I ask, waving my arms around like the Vanna White of this god forsaken desert.
“Research,” he says as he stops beside me. “They’re the biggest tour operator in Utah, and this is one of their most popular tours.”
“Well, you asked for my opinion, so here it is: zero out of five stars. Do not recommend.”
“Noted,” he grins.
It looks so good on him that I can’t stop myself from staring for a few seconds too long. He unabashedly stares back at me. If my loins weren’t completely numb from the bicycle seat, I think they might stir. Seeing Garrett shirtless awakened some confusing feelings in that general region, but seeing him smile directly at me is something else entirely. It makes my breath hitch and my nerves flutter under my skin.
Reluctantly, I pull my gaze away and we both start walking our bikes along the path. If we don’t make some effort to keep moving, we’ll never make it to camp by nightfall.
“Why do you hate biking?” I ask. “I thought you were all about this outdoorsy stuff.”
“Not cycling. It’s not something I really did growing up, and I guess I never developed an appreciation for it.”
“You didn’t have a bike as a kid?”
Garrett’s eyes fix on some distant point. The afternoon sun makes them sparkle with shades of blue and silver that I’ve never noticed before.
“No,” he says quietly.
My first thought is that Garrett probably had something even better than a bike when he was a kid. Maybe a dirt bike, or a hoverboard, or a personal driver on a fancy motorcycle with a sidecar that Garrett rode in while wearing a scarf and goggles. But the way he’s clenching his jaw and staring off in the distance makes me wonder if I’m wrong about Garrett’s childhood.
Whether he enjoys it or not, Garrett seems to be a pro at cycling. He could easily be up there with the rest of the group if he wasn’t worried about leaving me behind. My heart almost warms at the thought until I realize it probably has more to do with the possibility of me suing him when I fall and break my leg than any warm, fuzzy feelings.
“I didn’t really like riding a bike when I was a kid either,” I admit, breaking a long stretch of silence between us. “I was all about the roller skates.”
Garrett quirks an eyebrow as he looks over at me. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
He averts his gaze to a far-off point on the horizon. He licks the start of a smile off his lips and says, “I can just see that about you. Plus, it explains the outfit.”
“What’s wrong with my outfit?” I ask, feigning indignation.
Garrett isn’t exactly rocking the traditional cyclist look either. Instead, he opted for a pair of regular gray cargo shorts and a black t-shirt. His outfit doesn’t stick out as much as mine amongst the sea of cycling apparel, but it doesn’t fit in either.
“It’s an interesting choice,” Garrett says. His eyes flick over to my gerbil shirt and then quickly away again. “I think I might need to have a talk with Taylor about the sort of clothing that we’re stocking in the women’s section.”
My stomach tilts. I don’t have any hard feelings towards Taylor over the clothing situation. I think she means well, but genuinely doesn’t realize how frustrating it is to walk into a store and not find anything that fits. Garrett needs to know that there’s a problem with the women’s clothing section of his stores, but I haven’t figured out exactly how to broach the topic with him yet without throwing Taylor under the bus.
And honestly, I’m too exhausted to even think about it right now.
Eventually, Garrett and I arrive at a picnic area for lunch. The site is empty, aside from Todd and his bike. When he sees us approaching, he stands up and marches over to us.
“Lunch was at noon,” he says with an agitated hand gesture. “You two aren’t even halfway to the first campsite yet.”
Garrett and I slow to a stop in front of him and hop off our bikes.
Okay, so only Garrett hops. I tip to one side and find that my rubbery legs are in no state to support my weight. Garrett reaches over and grabs my handlebars with one hand, casting a stern look my way as he sets both me and the bike upright again.
Turning his attention back to Todd, Garrett responds, “Yeah, but everyone rides at a different pace. Isn’t it best practice to let the slowest person set the pace on a tour like this?”
His tone may be calm and pleasant, but I know Garrett well enough to know that this is his I’m going to eat you alive voice.
“Well, it’s a four-day tour,” Todd says, glancing over at me. “If we let her set the pace, we’ll all still be out here a month from now.”
Wow, Todd…thanks for the pep talk.
“How do you know that I’m not the one slowing us down?” Garrett counters.
“I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re not the problem here.”
Garrett takes a step closer to Todd. The size difference between the two men is jarring. Garrett casts an unfriendly smirk down at Todd, who isn’t backing down either.
“The only thing that’s obvious is that you have no business leading a tour like this,” Garrett says. “How long have you been sitting here, just waiting to jump down our throats about being late to lunch? If you’re not going to let the slower group members set the pace, shouldn’t you at least go back and check on them if they don’t show up at a checkpoint by a designated time? What if someone was hurt or stranded with a flat tire?”
“Well, I…I mean, eventually I would have…” Todd stammers.
“Would have what?” Garrett asks. “Pulled your head out of your ass and actually done your job? Are all of this company’s tours run this poorly, or just the ones you’re in charge of?”
Todd straightens up and takes a step closer to Garrett, who keeps his arms folded across his chest and a smug smile painted on his lips. Apparently, Todd lacks the evolutionary mechanism that warns him not to poke the bear. Garrett is a grizzly compared to him, and it would only take half a second for Garrett to chew this man up and spit him out.
“This tour is meant for experienced cyclists only, so unless your wife is going to pick up her pace, I think it’s for the best if we arrange for you both to end your time with us early. There’s a van that can take you back to the office.”
The way Garrett licks his lips is absolutely predatory. And sexy.
Nope. Nope. Nope. I have gone eleven months without acknowledging the inherent sexiness of my boss, and I’m not going to start now. A million years from now, when I’m sitting around in an old folks’ home reflecting on my existence, I will fondly remember the time I worked for the attractive man who almost kissed me once in a cheesy motel bathroom…but today is not that day.
I watch in equal parts horror and fascination as Garrett goes in for the kill. He won’t lay a hand on the guy. Garrett has too much self-restraint for that. But he’ll tear him apart, nonetheless.
“That’s funny. I don’t recall seeing anything on your website about this tour being for experienced cyclists only. Do you, Emma?” Garrett asks without looking at me.
“No,” I agree faintly.
Garrett continues, “In fact, I think the exact phrasing in the description of this tour was ‘a scenic four-day tour for all skill levels.’ But if that’s not the case, then I think our business here is done and we’ll take that ride back to the office.”
“O-okay,” Todd says, obviously flabbergasted that Garrett is agreeing to leave early.
“And then my assistant and I will let your boss know that True North Outfitters won’t be investing in his company after all based on our experience with your tour today.”
I’m not sure if Todd’s boss actually knows that a partnership with True North was on the table, but I am completely certain that Garrett will let him know exactly why it never came to fruition once we’re back in the office.
Big mistake, Todd. Huge.
Living out my own version of the shop scene in Pretty Woman , I flash Todd a smug smile and turn to walk away, but a tight grip on my wrist stops me.
That’s when I realize that I was wrong about Garrett North. He will absolutely punch Todd right in the face.