Chapter 1 The Museum of Vintage Taxidermy and Other Curiosities #2
“This is an Uber, right?” Unease pierced in his otherwise warm, baritone voice.
“Yes,” Lainey answered, just as Isaac said, “She’s not allowed on Uber anymore.”
If a side-eye could melt a person, Isaac would be a pool of humanoid sludge on her WeatherTech mats.
“It was more mutual than he’s making it sound.
” Uber had a supremely unjust, zero-tolerance policy against drivers of forty-five-year-old vehicles with nonfunctional passenger doors who’d repeatedly lied to Uber Support about both the model of the car and her intention to get said door fixed.
Gaslighting an app into believing her well-loved 1981 two-door Mercedes was a 2023 S-Class worthy of Uber Black was a grift she’d known she could only run for so long.
In protest of Uber’s policies, she currently drove for Ridr, a rideshare app that was more lax with car requirements for reasons she suspected were not unrelated to the increasing number of phishing scam texts her phone received per day.
“This is basically the same thing.” She stopped at the intersection, seizing the opportunity to squeeze some water from the ends of her hair. “I promise I’m not kidnapping you.”
“But that’s exactly what a kidnapper would say.”
He smiled at her in the rearview mirror. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling back.
He cleared his throat. “I was a little worried when I saw a QR code above the urinals next to an ad for male-enhancement supplements.”
“Ooh.” She perked up. “Norm promoted me to the spot next to the penis pills?”
His chuckle was light. A breath of air. “You’ve been working your way up to that spot, huh?”
“Above the urinals is prime advertising real estate in this town. It’s our version of a highway billboard.”
He lifted his glasses to his lips, exhaling a warm breath onto the lenses. “I had no idea there was so much market research involved in bathroom flyers.”
“Absolutely,” she answered, flicking on her blinker. “I thought I’d plateaued at the bulletin board between the piano lessons and the rooms for rent. Good to know I made it out of hallway purgatory.”
She lifted her chin up to spy his reaction in the mirror.
“Congratulations,” he said with tilted lips. “Do you have a background in advertising?”
“More of a hobbyist,” she replied coyly.
Lainey made it a point to never get too friendly with tourists, but she couldn’t seem to help herself with Olive Rain Jacket Guy.
His voice stretched at the vowels, making him sound vaguely East Coast–y, but he possessed a timeless handsomeness that she’d thought was reserved for British men in period dramas.
It was his jaw or maybe his cheekbones. He definitely had the bone structure of a man who penned letters by candlelight, a look that wasn’t exactly characteristic of the surrounding region.
This man seemed so out of place in her back seat.
She couldn’t figure out how he fit here, in her town, and during the offseason, no less.
Her app chimed to signal that they’d arrived at a destination.
“Just pull in here.” Isaac pointed out a warehouse on the edge of town.
Lainey’s shoulders jolted at the reminder that Isaac was still in the front seat. She’d almost forgotten how this ride had begun until suddenly they were pulling up next to his car.
Isaac stared back at her expectantly.
She looked at him, confused, then her eyes wandered from him to his car’s rear—very flat—tire.
“No.”
Isaac looked back at her, infuriatingly unbothered. “Grab the jack from your trunk and it’ll take us two minutes. Tops. We’ve gotten so good at it!”
“I should not be good at changing your tire, Isaac. Why does this keep happening? Your dad owns a VW dealership.”
“He’ll give me a new car when I agree to join the family business, but I can’t. It’s not my passion.”
“You work at a beanbag store in an outlet mall!”
Olive Rain Jacket Guy poked his head between them. “I can help him with—”
“Absolutely not,” she snapped, before realizing she’d sent her ire in the direction of a tourist who might’ve otherwise tipped her. “Sorry. This is an ongoing…thing between the two of us. A fundamental misunderstanding on the appropriate uses of a rideshare app.”
“I’d do it for you,” Isaac argued.
“I’m positive that’s not true.” And even if it were, Lainey wasn’t the type to bank on favors.
With an inhale through her nose, she chose the path of least resistance. “I want fifty dollars cash right now.”
“I have nineteen dollars and a coupon for a free Caribou Coffee.”
Her tongue prodded the hollow of her cheek as she reflected on every one of her poor decisions, lining them up like dominoes and watching them topple her into this exact moment. “Any drink?”
He nodded.
She sighed. “Fine.”
Isaac stared at her. “I need you to climb out first—”
She muttered a curse under her breath and flung open the door.
“This will only take a minute,” she assured Olive Rain Jacket Guy, who audibly swallowed, his discomfort palpable. There went any hope of a tip. Raindrops plopped on the crown of her head as she made her way to her trunk. “You better leave me five stars on the app.”
Isaac winked. “You’re a redhead with a heart of gold. Like Pippi Longstocking. Or the Little Mermaid. Or Fiona from Shrek—”
“Please stop attempting to compliment me. You’re only making it worse.”
She unearthed the jack from beneath a bag of aluminum cans she’d be taking to the recycling center (eventually) and a beach towel of unknown origin, then kneeled in front of the flat, picturing the kind of life where she could afford to say no to an extra nineteen dollars and a free coffee.
Once the donut was fitted to the rear wheel on Isaac’s Jetta, Lainey climbed back inside her car, yanked the door shut, and rated Isaac one star.
“I didn’t realize you rated us on these things,” Olive Rain Jacket Guy said from the back seat.
Lainey pressed her forehead against the steering wheel as though the cool, hard object held the power to protect her from this particular humiliation.
Her seat was damp, and her hands were as slippery as they were perplexingly gritty.
All she wanted was to go home and climb into bed, but there was still a stranger in her car who required a ride.
She bravely lifted her head to respond. “You rate us. We rate you. It’s a balanced social contract.”
A tense silence fell between them, as though she’d suddenly transformed from a chimpanzee in a chauffeur cap to a moody gorilla with a penchant for tearing off her passenger’s faces.
She rolled her shoulders back and jerked the sticky gear shift out of park. Uber Black drivers probably didn’t get conned into changing tires in exchange for positive ratings and coffee coupons.
Lainey tapped her phone’s map to start the next route. A new name appeared on her screen: Elliot.
“So, Elliot,” she said, enjoying the sound of his name on her lips. “Would you be so kind as to leave this part of the ride off your review?”
She fixed her eyes back on the road as the woman in her GPS directed her to turn right.
“Because I’m not normally…” Lainey let her voice trail off.
“Are you planning to finish that sentence?” Elliot asked.
“I was going to say ‘I’m not normally messy like that,’ but this isn’t even the first time I’ve yelled at a passenger in front of another passenger, so…”
She rubbed her temple, wanting nothing more than for the gesture to magic her back home.
She could already feel the glimmering aura of a migraine coming on, which was truly an insult to injury as she was currently rationing her last six pills of the one medication that provided any sort of relief.
The only insurance plan that covered them was, to the best of her knowledge, reserved for high-level federal government employees and first-round NBA draft picks, so when it came to managing her chronic condition, she was, in a clinical sense, shit out of luck.
Her backseat passenger was quiet the rest of the drive until the app directed them into an empty Kwik Trip parking lot. The chime sounded again.
“This is your destination?” she asked him. “Am I the one getting kidnapped? My oh my, how the tables have turned.”
He laughed. It was a nice sound. The quiet rumble of coals shifting in a fire on this miserable day. “Expecting something better?” he challenged.
She stepped out of her car, offering her palm to him as he climbed into the front seat. “You’ve seen Norm’s urinal advertisements, so you must be aware that Timber Creek has so much more to offer you.”
“The Museum of Vintage Taxidermy and Other Curiosities was very tempting.” Elliot stepped onto the oil-stained pavement under the gas station canopy, looking just as unfairly good looking from this new vantage point.
He was tall—any taller and it would’ve been something she’d feel compelled to remark on—and the eyes hiding behind his glasses were a hypnotic chocolate brown with ribbons of gold.
His gaze caught hers like a latch on a zip tie, and suddenly it seemed as if the world was cinching around them.
“I’m here to pick up my car,” he explained.
The sentence sliced the moment with a pair of shears.
“Right,” she replied through pursed lips.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. Plenty of tourists opted to rent.
Lainey was the sole cabbie on a rideshare app that was spreading malware to her contact list. What surprised her was how disappointed she felt at the prospect of this guy renting a car for what was left of his stay in Timber Creek.
This was probably the last she’d see of the man in the olive rain jacket.
“I should probably…” She fidgeted next to the still-open door, worried she’d missed a moment of natural transition back into their roles as driver and passenger. She faced the opening, prepared to drive away forever, when an arm appeared between her and the car.