Chapter Eight
G od, his throat was dry as rocks. It felt like he had swallowed a bucket of salt mixed with a bucket of sand the night before.
It took monumental effort to crack his eyes, and when he did, he regretted everything. Darkness was his new friend. Batman had been on to something when he embraced the dark. But Batman probably didn’t wake up with a massive headache and... Did superheroes ever take pain relievers? They had to, right? It didn’t matter how rich he was or whatever gadgets he owned, Batman probably had to take medication, just like everyone else. Getting up and finding those pain relievers was going to take a superhero effort, especially without the aid of Alfred. All Dex had was Harper.
“Harp, get me some aspirin.”
This was answered with an impatient caw rather than obedience because Harper had never buttled in her life and wasn’t about to start.
“Shhhhhh,” he implored the bird, bringing his hand to his pounding head, only to be met by something gross. “Son of a—Seriously, Harper?” In protest at not being let out at a reasonable hour, Harper had taken a big crow-size shit in his hair. It was a good thing he didn’t have to go to work today. The day was getting worse and that was before the memories from the previous night flooded into his mind.
Oh God.
If he didn’t want to crawl into a hole and disappear before, he certainly did now. It was funny how the lack of alcohol in his system made his once heroic actions now seem downright silly and embarrassing. And—
His eyes shot open, expecting to see Selah sitting on his couch, both wanting and dreading it at the same time.
Thank God. She’d left him to his misery and—Goddamn, his neck hurt. Between his head and his neck, and from spending the whole night in the recliner, he wasn’t sure if his body was permanently gnarled and would never be able to function the same again. Ava was right. He’d transform into a sixty-year-old man. The thought of going up and down on the path at work made him want to puke his guts out. Dex regretted it all. Everything. He was never doing this to himself ever again.
Harper squawked impatiently, giving him another warning to get up. Not wanting to experience more crow shit, Dex found his motivation to inch out of the recliner at the speed of a sloth and shuffle his way to the door—
Why was he wearing only one shoe?
After releasing the bird, he surveyed his home, seeing how bad it must have appeared to Selah’s eyes. It wasn’t dirty, but there was a blanket on the ground, his mail somehow got knocked to the floor, and some of his cabinet doors were open, revealing the clutter behind them. His mom would have a panic attack at the state of his home, and it had him second-guessing if his place was fit for company. Both of his exes felt it wasn’t, and he could only assume Selah would too.
He hadn’t been expecting someone like Selah to enter his life at all, let alone his house. Dex hoped she was alright and had gotten home okay. Should he check on her? How should he go about it? He could call the High Desert Tours phone line. She might even answer.
Dex pulled his phone from his pocket. Dead. The battery life in his three-year-old phone didn’t hold a good charge these days. Maybe this was a good thing, as he’d embarrassed himself enough in front of Selah. It was becoming a bad habit at this point.
The jigsaw puzzle on his coffee table was further along than he remembered. Did he puzzle while drunk last night? No wonder Ava thought he wasn’t exciting enough for her.
The phone on the coffee table also brought confusion.
He glanced at the smartphone in his hand to make sure it hadn’t teleported to the table without him noticing. The coffee table phone had an oval white sticker with AV8R on it. Definitely not his.
Picking it up, he flipped it over. The locked screen appeared. The background image was a picture of Selah and some older man wearing a blue baseball hat with the word Captain on the front. With the sun beaming down on them, Selah had never looked happier, her smile electric, her eyes bright. It was one more version of her Dex got a glimpse of, one he had yet to experience in person—wait, there was no “yet” about it because he wasn’t going to see her again.
Except she’d forgotten her phone. He had to get it back to her. Phones were important to people, especially these days. They were almost as important as a person’s wallet. Selah might need it for her business. Or perhaps this phone was important to her, like her earbuds were. Plus, she gave him a ride home and he had the day off. He owed her.
Dex made the decision to drive to High Desert Tours. After he cleaned up and took some pain relief, of course. No reason to go over there with bird shit on his head.
When he arrived at the farm parking area, the same one he and Ava used the first time, his was the only car there, besides a white company van. He assumed it meant that there weren’t any flights today or they were already finished. Dex rubbed nervous palms across his pants, unsure of himself. He probably should have called first. Should he knock on the door of the farmhouse? He felt awkward as hell and one look in a mirror confirmed he looked about as good as he felt, which was terrible.
He wasn’t entirely sure why any of this mattered. All he planned to do was knock on the door, drop off the phone, and then be on his way home, where he could take a couch nap while some mindless action movie he’d already seen a dozen times streamed on the TV in the background.
He cleared his throat and ran a hand over his hair before climbing the porch steps to the farmhouse door. Taking a calming breath, he knocked.
The older woman, the one he recognized as Selah’s mom, answered the door while on the phone. What looked like a bit of flour was streaked across one cheek. At seeing him standing there, her features dropped, looking worried. Dex must have really looked a fright for that kind of unexpected reaction.
“Becky, I need to call you back,” she said before hanging up, her brow creasing with concern. “Oh my goodness. Did you have a tour today? I’m so sorry. Ever since... well, my mind has been so forgetful. I really try to be better at keeping track of things.” She fumbled with collecting a worn, folded piece of paper from her pocket which might have served as her makeshift schedule. “I’m really sorry about this. I don’t want to ruin things.”
She appeared on the verge of getting flustered, and Dex had to jump in. “No, it’s fine. I’m actually not here for a tour. I’m... uh... I’m actually looking for Selah.” The tips of his ears grew hot, but he did his best not to react any more than this.
“But it’s not for a tour?”
“No. Just to... talk.” Perhaps he should have explained and handed Selah’s phone over to her mother and be done with it. Although maybe her mom would wonder why a strange man had her daughter’s phone, and he didn’t want to invite scrutiny, even if it was warranted. Her mother might agree with him that Selah shouldn’t have gone out of her way to give him a ride home when she hardly knew him.
Her mom’s expression flipped from relief to actual happiness. “Oh! That’s great! I’m so glad you’re here to see Selah. I think she’s in the office. It’s right on the side of the house over there,” she said, pointing in a direction. “Did you want something to drink? Some tea or coffee?”
“Uh, no, ma’am. I’m good, thanks. I’m just going to talk with her real fast and then I’ll be going,” Dex reassured her before taking his leave.
He’d just climbed the steps to a temporary office trailer when the door swung open. In front of him was a different woman, not Selah, but she hadn’t noticed him as she was looking somewhere inside the trailer. “I don’t understand why you can’t just look at my ideas. You want the company to make money? Well, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do too.”
Selah’s voice came from within the trailer. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, Naomi. I already have enough on my plate getting some of Dad’s loans refinanced. I’m up to my eyes in numbers and I don’t want to see any more right now. Besides, why would I want to start up a bunch of things and then expect whoever ends up being the new pilot to take over all of that? It’s probably going to be hard enough to find someone. If you still want to do it after I leave, you can take it up with them. Things are already overwhelming enough.”
“Whatever. You’re just being stubborn and—Oh, my goodness. Where did you come from?” Naomi’s hand went to her chest as soon as she turned, noticing Dex on the steps below her.
“Hi. I’m looking for Selah.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Selah’s mom leaning on the outside corner of the farmhouse, watching the whole exchange.
“Are you now? Well, that’s interesting.” Naomi’s smile grew brighter. “Sister dearest, you have a gentleman caller.” She stood back, opening the door wider to allow him access.
“Who?” Selah asked.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust once he entered. Selah was leaning back in an office chair with her laptop on her lap and her legs propped up on a desk, eating a bagel. She was wearing her no-nonsense flight uniform of navy pants and a tight black T-shirt. Her aviators rested at the top of her hairline, holding her dark curls away from her face. In short, she looked like a badass.
Her eyes widened in surprise, her feet quickly landing on the floor as she sat up. “Dex? What are you doing here?” She moved her laptop to the desk along with the bagel, dusting the crumbs from her shirt.
“I, uh, just wanted to make sure you got back okay last night.” His nerves hit him full force.
“Oh. Well, as you can see, yeah, I managed to get back okay.”
“Great. That’s good. Glad to see it.” Also, duh, because nothing was more obvious. He wanted to sink into the floor at his apparent awkwardness, and would have, if he didn’t have an audience. It didn’t help that Naomi continued to stand and watch as he stumbled through the conversation.
“How are you feeling? Do you want some water to drink or something?” Selah asked.
“I’m fine. Actually, the real reason I stopped by was because—”
Suddenly, the door crashed open and another young woman with long, curly hair burst through. “Oh, hi! Did I miss anything yet?”
“Now you show up? And what do you mean, did you miss anything? What is there to miss besides you doing your job? In that case, yeah, you’ve missed a whole lot,” Selah said flatly.
“I’m not listening to you right now. Mom just said there might be something interesting to see around here finally.” The younger woman grinned at him, while sweeping an assessing gaze along the length of his body. He had another urge to brush his hand across his hair to make sure it was truly clean and neat.
“Oh my God,” Selah huffed in an impatient breath. “Mom? Mom!”
“What?” came the muffled response outside the closed office door.
“Why is everyone being weird right now?” Selah shouted, probably to make sure her mother heard the question as well. She turned her attention to Dex again. “Sorry. I don’t get a lot of, uh, visitors to the office. Obviously. Those two are my younger sisters, Naomi and Hailey. The woman spying through the door is my mom, Elena.”
“I’m not spying,” her mother said from outside the trailer.
“Oh. Sorry. Should I not have come? You don’t like visitors?”
“Oh, no, I’m okay with you visiting. Wait, are you visiting? Or did you need something?”
“I just wanted to give you this. You forgot it at my place.” He removed her cell phone from his back pocket and handed it over.
She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could say anything, her mother jumped in to say, “What? What is it?!”
“It’s a phone,” Hailey answered. “Wait just a minute.” She swooped over, took Selah’s hand so she could rotate it and look at the other side. “It’s Selah’s phone!”
Naomi released a squeal. “Oh my God, is this the guy you went on a date with last night? So you weren’t lying? You actually did it? And you went back to his place? Selaaaahh!”
“They’re dating?!” her mother asked. “Ask him if he wants to join us for a family dinner someday.”
Dex’s cheeks burned at the misplaced attention, but truth be told, he’d never experienced this kind of excited reception before. Meeting his previous girlfriends’ parents hadn’t been bad, but they were never at this level of enthusiasm. Selah’s family appeared ready to declare him a member of the family. It was similar to when he was a kid, going to Lincoln’s home. After a few months of feeling rejected, this was nice, even while knowing the situation wasn’t what they thought.
Selah rolled her eyes. “Okay, everyone needs to calm down. Mom, why don’t you just come in instead of snooping through the door?”
“I’m not snooping. I’m giving you your privacy, just like you asked.” To prove this, she remained outside the office trailer.
“Okay, first of all, you all are jumping the gun. All I did was give Dex a ride home last night.”
Boiling down their whole experience to giving him “a ride home” was somewhat deflating, even if it was true.
“I accidentally left my phone there. That’s it. Thank you, by the way, for returning it. I was freaking out this morning when I couldn’t find it and was about to pull up the Find My Phone app to locate it. I tried to call it. Why didn’t you answer?”
“Oh, you must have called when I was in the shower.” He wasn’t ready to admit he spent a good twenty minutes of his shower standing under the hot stream in an attempt to feel human again.
“So you lied and you didn’t go on a date last night?” Naomi asked, giving her sister a light smack on the arm.
“No, I didn’t lie. I went on that date last night. Just not with him. Right, Dex?”
“Uh, that’s right.” Dex remembered the asshole, too.
“Well, now I’m totally confused,” Hailey said.
“Anyway, it was horrible and I’m not doing any more bets with either of you ever again. Besides, there’s no point in me going on dates because who knows where I’ll be living whenever I get a different piloting job.” Dex wasn’t sure how he looked, but her sisters—and probably their mother—looked disappointed with Selah’s speech. “Plus,” she continued, “Dex just got out of a serious relationship, so you know, nothing is going to happen there. And I doubt he appreciates all of this when he only stopped by to give me my phone back. As usual, you’re all making things really awkward for a lot of nothing.”
“And I don’t want to date a pilot,” he heard himself say. Dex didn’t know why he said it. Maybe because he was tired of being the rejected one. It didn’t matter that neither one of them had approached the subject of dating. Regardless of the truth of her statements, it remained a blow to his ego that whatever was between him and Selah was a whole “lot of nothing,” even though yesterday, there were times it felt like something.
He only blurted the words because her dating him sounded like such a no-go, it might as well been a brick wall. He wanted to assure her... or him... that, yeah, he agreed and wasn’t interested either. Anyway, if she could eat a bagel while looking like a badass, it probably meant that, at some point, she’d outgrow him, and he’d be blindsided again.
“Right,” Selah responded, throwing him an odd look, but her mouth kicked up on one side as if she wanted to laugh. He liked to think she’d worn this same expression during that first phone call they had. “Totally understandable. No one ever wants to get with a pilot. And, I”—she pointed to herself—“am not looking to be anyone’s rebound.”
“She’s too short,” Dex added because he couldn’t help himself. Turned out, he liked amusing and befuddling her.
“Did he say my Selah is too short?” Elena asked from the other side of the door, the tone so indignant he half expected her to rescind the previous dinner invitation.
“It doesn’t matter, Mom, because I find him too tall.”
“And she’s too cool.” Okay, maybe he’d taken it too far with that one.
“Yes, okay, so there you have it,” Selah said, throwing up a hand before standing. “Dex and I will never be together. It’s impossible and there will never be anything between us. Let me walk you out.” With that declaration, the matter appeared to be settled, and everyone grumbled while going on their own way. Selah led him from the office, and they settled into a casual walk toward his car.
“Sorry. I’m sure you weren’t expecting all that just for returning my phone. Thank you, by the way.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for the lift. I wasn’t too much, was I?”
“No. It was fine. And I liked meeting Harper.”
“She wasn’t a jerk to you?”
Selah laughed. “No. She was fine.”
They arrived at his car, but he wasn’t eager to leave. He liked talking to her, but finding an excuse was getting harder.
“I hope dropping off my phone wasn’t too much out of your way.”
Even though this was his only purpose for the drive, that and to make sure she got home okay, he didn’t want to reveal this to her. “No, I... was heading to the park today, anyway,” Dex lied.
“You’re working today? You’re not even wearing your park uniform.”
Dammit. “No, I’m not working but... I was thinking about what we were talking about last night—”
“You remember what we talked about?” She appeared skeptical.
He leaned against the side of his car, crossing his arms. “Yes, I remember. I wasn’t that bad.”
“Okay, so what were we talking about?” Her lips pulled into a smile as she tilted her chin upward. Her cuteness would distract him to no end.
“Well, about Harper and a wildlife rehabilitation resource and—” Like a bolt of inspiring lightning, it struck him. Maybe if she thought his idea about the wildlife education and rehabilitation was a good one, it actually was. And since she ran her own business, Selah could probably give him some tips, and this didn’t have to be the end of their contact. “I think having something like that at Smith Rock would be a good idea. It could be educational for visitors because they can learn about local animals, including crows. Plus, we can help local wildlife that needs it.”
“Yeah, I like it. It doesn’t hurt to at least try, right?” she said.
“Of course, it won’t be easy.” It might even be impossible, but Dex was excited by the prospect, anyway. “I’m just a ranger without much pull, and my boss is probably going to tell me no because governmental earmark money for park improvement projects is already tight, and this would probably be really expensive.”
“Doesn’t the park sometimes get private donations for something like that?”
“Well, yeah, maybe. I just have never tried to undertake something like this before.”
“Neither myself nor High Desert Tours has that kind of money, but we might be able to help in a small way, at least with visibility. You know, if you ever need that.”
“Really?” He’d love to have the prospect of seeing her again, even if there was no future between them, other than as acquaintances. Any excuse was better than none.
“Sure. For Harper.”
“Oh, yeah. For Harper.” Dex shouldn’t lose sight of this. Getting to see Selah was a bonus. Harper shouldn’t always get shafted in attention, and he could relate. In a world where majestic eagles and beautiful peacocks existed, some people were simply crows, like Dex.
“I get it, though. We here at High Desert Tours could use the exposure too. We’re getting closer to the end of summer and things always get a little tight around here once the weather turns cold.”
“You still fly in the winter?” he asked.
“Sure, if the weather’s good. I’ll fly anytime. Do you have any ideas on how to go about starting the rehab?”
“Uh, not yet.” He wished his brain was quicker this morning instead of sluggish due to a recovering hangover.
“Well, if you ever need a brainstorm pal...” She let the sentence linger, but it felt like an opening, something full of possibilities.
“Okay. That sounds great.” Even if the whole thing didn’t work out, at the very least, it was a consolation prize. “Maybe... I can text you later to discuss it?”
To his surprise, he left the farm with her number in his cell phone and his in hers. It buoyed his soul in a way pain relief pills couldn’t touch, and it was all thanks to Harper.