Chapter 5 #2
“Give me a second.” I pulled off my stew-stained shirt and dropped it on the floor, grabbing a clean tank top from the hook on the back of the door and pulling it on.
My cabin was small and familiar. A single bed, the overflowing stack of veterinary journals, photos of my family, and the plant on the windowsill that had survived a year of inconsistent watering through sheer stubbornness.
My boots were by the door where I always left them.
The space was mine, and right now, I needed it.
Alyson waited exactly four seconds.
“Sarah, that man out there. That is the man from Paris.”
“Yes.”
“The man from the nightclub.”
“Yes, Aly.”
“The man you walked up to and tried to talk to and who basically blew you off.”
“He didn’t blow me off. He was meeting someone.”
“That’s blowing you off.”
“It’s not. It turned out he was actually meeting someone.”
Alyson frowned. “What does that mean?”
I sat down on the desk chair, after moving the stack of veterinary journals to the desk, and pulled my knees up.
I’d told Alyson the short version after Paris.
The cover story. Talked to a guy, it didn’t go anywhere, end of story.
I hadn’t told her the rest because the rest was mortifying, and because some part of me had wanted to keep everything that wasn’t the vomiting for myself.
Those were the parts I replayed when I couldn’t sleep.
“When we left the club that night,” I said, “after you and Daniel went ahead… A man grabbed me.”
Alyson’s entire body went still.
“He said he’d walk me to the hotel. But he took hold of my arm and started pulling me the wrong direction.”
“Sarah.” Her voice was low now, all the performance gone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Donovan stopped him.” I could still see it.
The fist closing around the man’s wrist. The punch.
How fast and contained the violence was, something held in reserve and released in exactly the right amount.
“He came out of nowhere. Hit the guy. And then Andrew, the redhead, he was there too. They had the guy in handcuffs and in a van in just a few seconds.”
Alyson stared at me.
“Then Donovan walked me back to the hotel. Through the lobby, up the elevator, and to my floor.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Once we got to my floor, we were in the hallway. And I—”
“You what?”
“I threw up on him.”
Silence.
“You… On him?” Alyson repeated.
“On his shirt.”
“Sarah, why did you do that?”
“It was all the wine and the tequila and whatever else you made me drink. All of it. Down the front of his shirt.” I pressed my face into my knees. “And then I ran. I ran to my room and slammed the door and didn’t come out until we left for the airport.”
Alyson was quiet for a long moment. When I looked up, her hand was over her mouth and I couldn’t tell if she was about to cry or laugh.
“Don’t,” I said.
A sound escaped from behind her hand. Laughter. She was trying to hold it in and failing.
“This is not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“It is not even slightly funny. I have to work with this man, Aly. Every day. He’s here to train the rangers, which means he’s in this camp, in that dining tent, in a cabin a short distance from mine. Every single day.”
The laughter faded, and something else moved into her expression. She dropped her hand and looked at me with a focus that had nothing playful left in it.
“You like him.”
“I don’t know him.”
“But you like what you know about him so far.”
I didn’t answer. She didn’t need me to.
“He rescued you from a creep, walked you to your hotel room, and didn’t try anything. Then you threw up on him, and he still just let you go?”
“He didn’t have much choice. I ran to my room and slammed the door.”
“And now he’s here.”
“Yes.”
“In one of these cabins.” She said gesturing around us.
“I already said that.”
“I’m saying it again because I need you to hear it.” She leaned forward. “Sarah, the universe just put the man you threw up on in the cabin next to yours for however long this training thing lasts.”
“That’s not the universe, Aly. That’s a logistics coordinator.”
She was grinning again. “Call it what you want.”
“I call it a nightmare. I dumped a full plate of food on him tonight. That’s two shirts in one month. He’s going to think I’m—” I stopped because I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Dangerous around clothing? Fundamentally unable to be in his vicinity without destroying something?
“He’s going to think you’re memorable.”
“He’s going to think I’m a disaster.”
Alyson stood up and came over to where I was sitting. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked down at me.
“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to acknowledge that this is objectively insane.
We’re going to acknowledge that you are mortified.
And then tomorrow morning, we are going to go to breakfast, and you are going to act like a normal human being who eats food instead of throwing it at attractive men. ”
“I didn’t throw it. I collided.”
“Twice.”
“The first time was vomit.”
“Sarah, you are not helping your case.” She squeezed my shoulders. “Breathe. It’s embarrassing. But it’s not the end of the world. You are a professional. You are excellent at your job. And he’s here to train rangers, not to think about you.”
That last part bit harder than she intended. She saw it on my face and winced.
“That’s not what I—”
“No, you’re right.” I stood up. “That’s exactly right. He’s here to do his job. I’m here to do mine. We happen to live in the same compound for a short time. It doesn’t have to be a thing.”
Alyson looked at me for a long moment, trying to decipher what was behind my eyes.
“Okay,” she said, softer now. “Okay. Get some sleep.”
She hugged me. Quick and fierce. Then she was gone. The cabin door clicked shut behind her, and I was alone.
I sat on the edge of my bed. The camp was settling in around me. Through the thin walls, I could hear the generator humming behind the operations building, voices too far away to make out, the occasional noise from the dining tent. It must have been the staff finishing their cleanup.
Somewhere in this cluster of cabins, a short distance from where I was sitting, Donovan was in his own. Probably scraping stew off his shirt. Probably telling Andrew whatever version of Paris he’d been telling, or not telling, for the past few weeks.
I pulled my braid out and ran my fingers through my hair.
My hands were still shaking, and it had nothing to do with the collision or the surprise or the embarrassment.
It was the thing underneath all of that.
The same thing I’d felt on a dance floor in Paris when I’d crashed into his chest and my pulse had kicked so hard that everything else in the room had gone quiet.
I turned off the light, lay back on my bed, and stared at the ceiling I couldn’t see.
Tomorrow, I would be professional. Tomorrow, I would be composed. Tomorrow, I would eat my breakfast without incident and greet him like a colleague and pretend that none of this was extraordinary.
But tonight, in the dark, with the sounds of the savanna pressing in through the walls, I let myself feel the full weight of what had just happened.
He was here. And he was going to be here every day.
I closed my eyes and tried very hard not to think about brown eyes with flecks of gold in them.
It didn’t work.