Chapter Nine
S he wasn’t sure what made her agree to give Dex her phone number or to imagine there was anything worth developing between them, even in a business sense. Especially since a wildlife center didn’t have any connection to High Desert Tours or her goal of becoming a real pilot.
But Selah also knew they had to do something for her family’s business. Naomi was right. While her sister’s ideas were sometimes out there, like kids’ birthday parties in a balloon—which sounded like trouble and a huge liability—their attempt at finding their footing the normal way was becoming discouraging, and their father’s debt wasn’t disappearing at a satisfying rate. Before Dex had shown up with her phone, Naomi had given her the news that their attempt to be featured in the Bend Bulletin had been pulled because the newspaper decided Soaring Over Oregon would make for a better story and went with them. No matter how hard Selah worked, there were constant roadblocks being dropped, and she was beyond frustrated.
Regardless of the reason for exchanging numbers, Selah liked talking to Dex. He was a nice diversion from her normal, everyday life, especially since at the beginning, their messages had little to do with business.
I get what your phone sticker means. It only took an embarrassing long time to finally get it. AV8R. Aviator! Clever.
Oh yeah. My dad gave me that when I got into flight school.
The same sticker had been on Robert’s phone as well, which now sat dead, propped up next to his urn, somewhere on her mother’s cluttered dresser.
Sounds like he’s proud of you.
He was.
Selah should have replied, yup , and kept things moving. Those two words could pack a lot of meaning in any number of ways and, obviously, Dex wasn’t going to know, nor did he need to.
Except his comment about her dad being proud of her pricked at some emotion. In the privacy of her vehicle, currently parked in the spot behind the townhome she shared with her sister, she wanted to feel the prick, to know she still could feel it. Selah could be as cool as marble when she needed to, but right now, she allowed herself to feel something different, to feel some of the loss.
It took several minutes for Dex to respond, the minutes long and agonizing as she watched the conversation bubbles appear, disappear, and then reappear and disappear again. Whoever invented this feature on phones did it as a cruel joke to torture people.
His response came before she could change the subject to something else and end the misery.
Sorry. Did I just step into something I shouldn’t have?
No. It’s fine.
She wasn’t sure if this was reassuring or not, but she was used to managing. She could be fine. Selah was always fine these days.
I don’t think anyone has ever given me a sticker before. I get other things. Do you know that crows are generous gifters? When they like you, they bring you gifts. Today, Harper left this for me.
Under the message was a picture of Dex’s palm. In the center was a small, grimy, heart-shaped button.
That’s cute! Do crows actually understand the significance of a heart? My mind is blown.
No... at least, I don’t think so. She just likes finding things that seem unusual to her. Yesterday, she brought me this.
The next image was a single metal dangle earring, dirty and bent.
To raise money for the wildlife rehabilitation, you can loan her out to find lost items at Smith Rock, like a crow search and rescue, but instead of people, she’s looking for earbuds or lost wedding rings.
See! I knew it was a good idea to ask you for help. You’re already coming up with good ideas. I was just going to throw this away.
Noooo, you can’t do that! She probably went to a lot of parks and dirt paths to find the perfect gift for you. What does a crow get for a park ranger that has everything? Sorry, but you have no choice but to pierce one of your ears and wear it.
I get one gift from a crow, and now I have to be a pirate?!
Yup. Pretty sure that’s crow law. You can thank the founding fathers for that one. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who fought to get it included in the Constitution.
He reacted to her text with a laughing emoji and she liked it because she was laughing in her truck as well. Her whole mood completely turned around.
This might be why, after a couple of text conversations during the week, she agreed to meet at his place after work to brainstorm about the wildlife center. They kidded themselves into thinking they’d be less likely to get sidetracked if they were meeting for a specific reason. Or maybe she was the only one kidding herself because she wanted to hang out, to feel like she could be a different version of herself with Dex. She needed some space where she didn’t have to be anyone’s rock.
“Hey,” she said as she exited her truck, a small swarm of butterflies buzzing through her stomach.
He sat in one of the red plastic Adirondack chairs on the porch, drinking a bottle of some kind of kombucha drink. Besides warm tanned skin, he didn’t look as if he’d spent the day under the hot sun at the park. He looked refreshed, wearing a simple dark green T-shirt and jeans, no uniform in sight. It was still odd to imagine Dex had a full wardrobe in his closet other than hangers upon hangers of park ranger uniforms—almost the same as a kid discovering their elementary school teacher also went to grocery stores and didn’t live at the school.
Harper, perched on one of the porch railings, cawed twice in greeting. Dex lifted his head from his phone, a smile slipping into place. Selah was a touch nervous about if she should hug him in greeting or what. Her family were big huggers. She was relieved when the decision was made for her because he didn’t get up from his seat, only did a small, playful salute and said, “Captain.”
“Captain was my father. Selah is fine.”
“Selah, then.”
“Ranger Dex.” She took a seat in the other Adirondack chair, sliding her sunglasses to the top of her head. Dex offered a chilled extra bottle of kombucha. “Thanks,” she said, twisting the lid off and taking a healthy sip. It had the sweetness of marionberries, mixed with the zing of ginger, the flavor fizzling on her tongue.
While Dex did have neighbors, there was a healthy distance between them. Real space, with plenty of old-growth trees, and it smelled warm and earthy. If she couldn’t be in the sky, this was a fine spot at ground level. She leaned back, her nerves leaving her and a sense of relaxation and calm taking their place.
“You ever meet Smokey the Bear?” she asked, taking another sip from her bottle.
“Have you ever met the Red Baron?”
She almost choked on her drink because his quick follow-up question was unexpected. “Excuse me? Is that a dig at my age?”
He shook his head, laughing. “No, but Smokey the Bear died sometime in the seventies. How old do you think I am? Or how old do you think Smokey the Bear is?”
She studied him, feeling brave enough to take a guess. “Thirty?”
Dex was in the middle of taking a sip and held up two fingers.
“Aw, thirty-two then.”
He turned a scrutinizing eye in her direction. She returned this with a coy look, raising an eyebrow. She wasn’t sensitive about her age. It was just a number and, whatever, she didn’t care. It was more that Selah enjoyed seeing guys squirm at having to choose a number. It was her turn to see how courageous he was.
“Twenty-two?”
She flicked her bottle cap at him. “Shut up. You don’t honestly think I’m twenty-two.”
Harper responded with her own squawk.
“Yes, exactly! I agree with Harper. You’re nothing but a big caw-ward,” she said to Dex.
“Ha! I didn’t know you did dad puns. Okay, then. Thirty-two?”
“Oh my God! You think I look thirty-two?” She feigned shock. “You think I’m an old crow?”
“But I’m thirty-two. Are you saying that’s old? How old are you?”
Selah schooled her features into prissiness, replying, “Thirty,” before taking a sip.
Dex laughed heartily, sending bright bubbles of pleasure through her chest. “Get out of here with that fake outrage.”
They soon got down to real business, but only after Selah begged him to drag his coffee table onto the porch so they could work on his current jigsaw puzzle while they chatted. She found it easier to keep her focus on something else, instead of catching herself gazing into his hazel eyes.
“Did you talk to your boss about your idea already?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah, that went great,” he replied with sarcasm. “She basically laughed me out of the yurt. You have no idea how damaging it can be to your ego to be laughed out of a yurt. As expected, the answer basically boiled down to no budget, no interest, and, most importantly, no budget.”
“Wait, so is that it?” If the whole thing was impossible, what was she doing here?
Unless he wanted to hang out with her too? But why not say so instead of creating an excuse? There was a part of her wanting to believe this was true.
Selah reached for a puzzle piece within the box, the same one as him, and their fingers tangled together. His felt strong and tender. Her gaze lifted, which was a mistake, because exactly what she had feared happened. She got lost staring into his eyes. She counted on him to put an end to it, to stop touching, to break this connection, but he didn’t move either. Her skin flushed hot.
Harper’s squawk startled them both, bringing them back to their senses. Dex muttered an apology before pulling his hand away and surrendering the disputed puzzle piece to her.
Selah cleared her throat. “So, about the project?” she said to remind both of them of the conversation they were having while concentrating extra hard on fitting the puzzle piece together with its correct partners.
“Oh, well, Chris said, Go find yourself a wealthy benefactor who cares about crows and ducks . And, yeah, I guess she was being sarcastic, but then I thought, why not? Smith Rock is famous, so it’s easy to believe that wealthy people visit just as much as poor people. If we can get enough attention, maybe it’ll generate some kind of interest from the right person.”
“Except getting people’s attention these days isn’t easy.”
“True. Although, a hot-air balloon always catches people’s attention. I know it catches my eye when I happen to see one at work.”
Considering The Blue Wonder was most likely the balloon nearest to him when he was at work, she wondered if he’d seen it and thought of her. Or would he only think about what a bad experience that flight was? Maybe he hated the sight of her balloon, its whole association tainted because of one bad proposal. It was hard to tell from his words whether this was a good thing or bad. If anything, it reminded her the guy was fresh off the relationship wagon and she should be more careful when choosing and picking puzzle pieces.
“Well,” she started, “it’s not like I can give people hot-air balloon rides inside the park as it wouldn’t be very practical, and I don’t know how we can connect it in people’s minds to wildlife or rehabilitation or any of it, although...” An idea struck her, and she wasn’t sure if it would work, but decided to blurt it out, anyway. “What if... what if the park had some kind of educational event, but we turn it into a picture slash Instagram moment?” Her pointer finger rubbed across her bottom lip, a habit she was prone to do while concentrating.
Dex leaned his head against a hand, his attention focused on the movement, his eyes softening. It wasn’t clear if he was listening, but then asked, “What do you mean?”
“Okay.” She spread her hands in front of her as though about to reveal something big. “Tethering. We set up the balloon in some flat area at the top of the park, like maybe the RV parking area, but it’ll be tethered to the ground. I’ll use my whisper burner mode to keep the envelope inflated and people can take pictures in front of it. We’re getting closer to the end of the season, so people are going to be looking for opportunities for family images to use on this year’s holiday cards, or maybe they just want to take a nice image for their social media. And what cooler image can you have than taking a picture in front of a hot-air balloon with Smith Rock in the background? Right?”
“Yes.” He pondered this for a moment before nodding. “I think my boss would really like this. If we can promote it, it might draw people in. And balloons are in the sky, just like crows, so maybe we can connect these two things. Harper and I can have a table nearby. Help Harper’s friends. If people take pictures, learn about Harper, they might be more willing to make donations to the Smith Rock non-profit organization. It might not be enough to get the wildlife rehabilitation center, but it’ll still help the park.”
“As long as you think Harper will be okay around people. We don’t want to stress her out and have some bird accident with someone or the balloon.” She didn’t want to imagine what that could be, but she’d feel bad if something were to happen. Tethering wasn’t the easiest thing, as balloons wanted to soar away, but it might be worth it for the attention. Naomi would be proud of her for coming up with this out-of-the-box idea.
Wrapped inside the Moreno barn was the new envelope her dad had purchased. All this time, she hadn’t been able to bring it out. It was his. But this might be the opportunity they needed to drum up business for High Desert. They needed a balloon that would pop against the background and get people to remember them. Maybe this was the nudge she needed to finally face it.
“Harper should be okay. I’ve brought her to the park half a dozen times already, mostly in the hopes she’d want to stay, instead of living with me. The problem is that she’s not afraid of people and prefers my food, so you can see how well that turned out.” He did a half eye roll in the same direction as Harper with a smile, which was the most charming version of an eye roll she’d ever witnessed, more playful than sarcastic. “As long as people give her space and don’t crowd her, she might even pose for a picture or two and not be an asshole about it.”
Her brain couldn’t stop zipping along. “Oh, you know what? I can get my sister, Hailey, to do some social media videos for us so we can get the word out to even more people. If they’re able to donate online, it might mean more money.”
“Your sister would do that for us?”
Selah tried not to focus on the word “us” too deeply. There’d never been an “us” between them before. She casually flicked a hand through the air and replied, “Oh, sure. She owes me. Plus, she supposedly does really well on the Loop app. Her channel is some kind of gossip thing. Her handle is @HaileyTeaTime. I don’t really get it, but I know she gets a lot of views. As long as we’re okay with her having creative license, I think she’ll be willing to do it. But this way, we can cast our wealthy benefactor net even wider than just local park visitors. You never know.”
Harper hopped off her perch onto the table and grabbed a bright blue piece from the puzzle box, dropping it into Dex’s hand before returning to her spot. Like some kind of magic trick, he put the piece in the exact spot it belonged, snapping it together with an easy click, his gaze flicking to Selah’s with a grin. “Well, friend, I think you, me, and this plan are going to fit together perfectly.”
It was all so smooth, Selah almost swooned right there. It was too bad she’d declared swooning was prohibited. She laughed it off instead. There was nothing else to it. Friendship with Dex would have to do.