8. Noah #2
“It did get me more followers,” she admitted as she opened the book. “Not that it matters.”
“It’s okay if it does matter.”
Macey considered it; I could tell by the way her finger froze on the corner of the page.
Eyes that should be roaming the printed words stayed in one place.
After a few seconds, she answered, “Maybe it would be important if I had my own blog, but as a cog in the machine that is Roamer’s Digest , it doesn’t. ”
A cog in the machine. I always hated how corporate terms sounded so robotic. At least let your employees have some personality in the ways they describe themselves.
“Do you want your own blog?”
“I’m a writer for a magazine,” she said, deflecting with ease. “That would be a conflict of interest. ”
She dove nose-first into the book, intent on ignoring me for the rest of the flight. I laughed when I saw the title: A History of Whale Migration. Guess her costume spurred a newfound love of whales.
The discussion about the girlfriend and boyfriend situation could wait until we landed.
It was a long flight, though, and there was no built-in entertainment system. How was I going to survive without my favorite hobby of monitoring the plane’s location on the map?
I gained a few minutes of entertainment from watching people on the flight.
You always saw the same people on airplanes.
There was the nervous flier, who repeatedly checked the safety card; the sleepy flier with an eye mask and ear plugs; and the health enthusiast, who brought their own snacks onto the flight.
Once the air kicked on more strongly, it was a bearable temperature. Not for Macey, though. She immediately dug through her backpack to find a sweater and shoved her arms into it.
I did a double take.
Wait a damn minute.
“Is that my jacket?”
Macey blinked and glanced down at the jacket, looking just as surprised as I did. “Oh, yeah, it is. I almost forgot you gave it to me the last time we were at the airport.” She started to pull her left arm out. “Here, take it back.”
“No, it’s fine. You can keep it.” At Macey’s raised brow, I amended, “Until the end of the weekend. In case you get cold again.”
“Right.” She tucked her head down into the book again, but I thought I caught a smile on her face. “Thanks.”
I looked at her hands, poking out of the sleeves of my jacket, distantly aware of how domestic this entire situation was. There was a fine white scar on her index finger I’d never noticed before. Small hands. Mine would wrap around them easily.
I shook myself out of the thought and looked down at my own hands, safe and far away from hers.
This sudden sense of domesticity wasn’t real. We were just two people who were going to be forced to pretend to date for a few days. I didn’t need real domesticity with anyone. I especially didn’t need anyone else close to me. I just…ached a bit sometimes. That was all.
Ready for a nap, I leaned my chair fully back, ignoring Macey’s glare. Moments later, I slipped into a restful dream of whales and whale costumes.
“That’s funny,” Macey commented as we stepped into the cool blast of baggage claim at Aruba International Airport. “They put our names together.”
She pointed to a private driver waiting for us, holding a sign that said Noah & Macey.
“Because they think we’re dating.”
“ What? ”
Maybe I shouldn’t have ripped the Band-Aid off like that.
“There’s no way they think that,” said Macey, pacing in small circles. “Why would they?”
I pulled up the email on my phone and held it out. She clamped a hand over her mouth as she read it, but I could have sworn I heard a muffled sonofabitch escape through her fingers.
After a few frenzied breaths, Macey dropped her hand. “We have to set the record straight.”
“No, we don’t,” I said. “It would make both of us look bad if we showed up to an all-inclusive resort’s press event only to say just kidding, we’re not actually a couple . ”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying? We should let them think we’re dating?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
She blinked, utterly appalled. “No way.”
I smirked. “So you want to be the one to explain to the PR team that we scammed them into giving us a free vacation?”
“But we didn’t scam them. It’s just an innocent misunderstanding!” Macey let out a strangled noise. She jabbed a finger toward me. “How are we supposed to sell this?”
“They already believe it,” I said. “We just have to do enough to make them continue believing it.”
She stared blankly back at me. God, she was acting like I’d suggested we take up synchronized swimming. Surely getting along with me for a few days couldn’t be that hard, could it?
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Fine, we’ll figure it out.”
My suitcase appeared first on the carousel, and we waited for Macey’s bag to follow.
But after a few minutes, in which Macey switched from chewing her nails to tapping her foot, it never did.
The same few suitcases made their rounds, Macey’s long forgotten.
I watched her braid, undo, and re-braid her hair three times before she gave up.
With a deep sigh, Macey drawled, “I’m going to the lost luggage counter.”
There wasn’t an invitation there, but I followed anyway. This section of the airport was shockingly quiet. Apparently, we were the only ones to have bad luck today.
After a long conversation that culminated with a We’re sorry, we have no idea where your luggage went, please enjoy this free drink coupon, it became clear that Macey wouldn’t have her bag tonight.
They assured us that it would be delivered to the resort as soon as it was found, which could be as early as tomorrow morning.
Or as late as the end of the grand opening. Or never. Yikes .
I thought Macey might let loose with a lecture or at least a death glare—I know I would have—but instead, she gritted her teeth, smiled like a saint in a bad mood, and said, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
Really? It took so little for her to insult me and call me a Ken doll, but the idiots who lost her luggage were off the hook.
“I never realized how polite you are to everyone,” I murmured as we searched for our driver again. He was tall and lanky, so I wasn’t sure how he disappeared so easily. “Except me.”
“It’s not the customer service rep’s fault,” she said. “People are good. They just make mistakes sometimes. The rep apologized. Besides, I packed my inhaler and an outfit into my carry-on, so as long as I get my luggage in the morning, it’ll be okay.”
Inhaler. I had almost forgotten what she had shared with me on the bench, too focused on the pain in my ankle and her soft touches. Thank God she had her inhaler with her or else I’d make us skip the opening event to go to the pharmacy.
“Interesting,” I said with a shake of my head.
“What?”
“You tend to see the best in people. I never noticed it before.”
I pushed down any hurt I felt at being the exception, not the rule.
“And that’s bad because…”
Because people were the worst. There were a few exceptions, but generally, people treated others terribly. Just turn on the news at night. And when people weren’t the worst, that was when you had to be careful. It was in those instances that you were at risk of having someone close to you leave.
Macey tightened the straps of her backpack and waved at our driver, who had been snacking on yucca chips in the corner. We trailed behind him like two kids following their dad .
“People do bad things,” said Macey through a hardened mouth. “It doesn’t mean they’re intrinsically bad.”
“I usually don’t stick around to find out.”
The warm Aruba air hit as we walked out of the automatic doors of the airport. We trailed through a parking lot until arriving at a small white van that would take us to Opal Serenity.
I opened the back door for Macey. Because that’s what fake boyfriends do. And real ones, I guess.
She hummed as she got comfortable in the back seat. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said. “A man who drops out of Cornell to take care of his sister doesn’t sound like a flaky person to me.”
The car roared to life, and we pulled out of the parking spot. Fortunately, the driver couldn’t seem to care less about our conversation. Or he wasn’t fluent in English. “Maybe you need to get your ears checked, Scribbles.”
“Scribbles?”
I shrugged. “You’re always scribbling down notes in your notebook.”
“There’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned notebooks.
Especially when it’ll help me make this weekend a great trip.
Minus the fake dating thing.” Macey flipped to a to-do list in her notebook.
Pictures to take, people to talk to, articles to write.
“My column is spiking, and if I can get my boss to let me publish what I want, I think I can walk out of this as a mid-tier travel writer, at least.” She checked off the first item: fly to Aruba.
“I’m sure everything else will go smoothly. ”
Which would, inevitably, jinx a million other things into going wrong, but I wisely kept my mouth shut.