by Lily Hayden
The atmosphere had flattened a little after Caleb had gone and Ella had started to feel a little like a third-wheel as Jessica, Sawyer and Joelle chatted about people she didn’t know. She idly flicked through her phone, feeling her awkwardness growing. She found herself wishing that Caleb had stayed. After a week in the office, she’d thought she had settled in well, but she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness with every minute that passed with nobody including her in the conversation. She craned her neck, hoping to find Jason’s friendly face in the throng at the bar, but she couldn’t make out anybody in the crowd. Caleb’s rush to leave had been playing on her mind and, coupled with the loneliness, she began to feel a little tearful.
Ella had never not been the centre-of-attention. She’d been a High School cheerleader, Prom Queen and a sorority sister. She’d never been the girl sat alone in the corner at a party. She felt the tears start to prickle at the back of her eyes and she quickly rose to her feet.
“Hey!” She forced herself to sound upbeat. “I’m so tired. I’m gonna head home.”
Jessica glanced up at her, giving her a tight smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes.
“’K. Bye, honey.”
Ella stepped backwards, surprised by the coolness of her tone, but Jessica turned back to the others, picking up her conversation. Ella turned away quickly and hurried towards the exit. She pushed the heavy door open, feeling the dusty, hot air hit her and she leaned up against the wall for a moment fighting back the urge to cry.
“Hey.”
The familiar, deep drawl surprised her, and she turned to see Jason step out of the shadows. He flicked a cigarette to the ground, extinguishing the smouldering butt with his heel.
“You OK?” He asked.
Ella nodded, not trusting her voice.
“I’m heading home.” He said. “You want a ride?”
Ella shook her head quickly. “I live really close. Thanks though”
“Don’t walk around here at night.” Jason shook his head firmly. “Come on.”
He seized her wrist, and despite his strength, he very gently guided her to a brand-new, dark Pick-Up truck. There was something in his manner that made it very hard to say no to him, she thought as she obediently climbed into the passenger side, letting him shut the door behind her.
She waited for him to pick up the conversation as easily as he had earlier, but he seemed quiet and pensive as he drove to her Motel. Ella felt her stomach fall a little in disappointment as he turned into the parking lot and barely more than a few words had passed between them. He pulled the truck to a stop but left the engine running.
“Uh, thank you.” She said, suddenly feeling very nervous.
She paused, expectantly. She could feel her pulse quickening a little at his proximity and she turned slowly towards him in one of her most-practised (and successful) ‘moves’. She knew how the scene played out: guy ‘drops’ her home, she turns to him, gives him a little look from under the lashes, mouth full and pouty, he goes in for the kiss. Even with Caleb playing at the back of her mind, she suddenly longed for some physical contact from this kind, handsome man.
Except it didn’t happen like that. Jason was tapping out a text message on his phone, not even looking in her direction. He sensed her eyes upon him and he looked up.
Confusion, followed quickly by bemused knowing, flickered across his face and Ella felt her cheeks start to blaze with embarrassment. She turned away quickly, throwing open the door, grateful for the dark night that hid her humiliation.
“See ya!” She called breezily.
She took the steps up to her room, two-at-a-time and flung the door open, slamming it shut behind her and flinging herself onto the bed.
She led there for a while, waiting to receive a ‘goodnight’ text from Caleb or a message checking she’d got home safe from one of the Marketing girls, but her phone stayed sadly silent. Frustrated and, for the first time in her life, feeling very homesick, she climbed under the sheets, still dressed and cried herself to sleep.
Booty Call
Taylor felt her phone buzz through the pocket of her jeans, but she ignored it. She already knew that it would be Deon, but his ‘good morning’ call was too late, and she was already sat in the office of Dr Redding at the Conservation Project, listening attentively to the Induction Briefing.
It wasn’t so much an office as a storeroom in the squat building that the Conservation team were using to store, test and analyse water and earth samples. Taylor snuck a quick glance around the group of four others who had been successful in securing the temporary positions. Like her, they were all staying at a house in a tiny nearby town, but she had arrived late last night and hadn’t had a real opportunity to get to know anyone yet.
Deon had convinced her to push her flight back. Well, it had been more of a compromise when he couldn’t convince her to stay. It hadn’t helped that her whole family were on his side; all of them secretly delighted when he had rolled out of her bedroom the morning after. They threw around their best attempts to bribe her with boasts of upcoming, wild trips to Europe and weekends with A-Listers. None of them could understand her desire to leave all that behind to stay in a poky room out in the sticks, spending her precious free-time peering through microscopes at dirty, swamp water. It would have been laughable, Taylor thought, if she didn’t find their lack of support in her interests so disheartening.
She would never admit, in a million years, how hard she found their dismissiveness of her passion. Nor would she admit, to anyone except herself, how tempted she had been to stay. Not for the parties and the vacations though. She would prefer to spend the summer hanging out with gators and snakes than her family but leaving Deon again. Well, that had been hard.
He’d insisted on taking her to the airport when she wouldn’t back out. He’d upgraded her ticket even though she hated the pretension of Business Class for such a short flight and kissed her lingeringly, whispering sweet-nothings into her ear, his teeth grazing her lobes in the way that he knew drove her wild.
But, she thought proudly, she had done it. She’d made it to South Florida, found her lodgings and here she was, ready to get stuck into her first day.
“So, Team!” The enthusiastic Dr Redding clapped her hands sharply, bringing Taylor back to the present. “Today, we’ve got a special friend of the centre, Noah Anderson, coming to show you around the swamps. Until we get the rain in, it’s gonna be pretty tricky to get out to the marshes for our readings and Noah has kindly volunteered to give you guys a tour.”
Taylor followed the group out of the office. She hung back a little, slipping her phone from her pocket and glancing quickly at her notifications. She had a missed call and a message from Deon. She hesitated, seeing the others start to move out into the parking lot, but temptation got the better of her and she opened the message, feeling a warm tingle spread through her abdomen at his words. She quickly tapped out a response and hurried after her new colleagues.
She had only delayed herself a few moments, but they were already huddled together as Dr Redding introduced the group to a tanned guy in battered jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt.
He glanced in Taylor’s direction as she tried to discreetly slip to the side of the group. She twisted her face into a friendly smile, but his eyes, under the shadow of his baseball cap, hardened a little before he looked away dismissively.
“Anything you’d like to add, Noah?” Dr Redding smiled brightly at the man.
“I’ll need y’all to remember that this isn’t a field trip.” He drawled. “No phones, no selfies. This ain’t a tourist boat. We got big gators, snakes and it’s unpredictable out there. Y’all got that?”
They nodded, but Taylor fought the urge to roll her eyes at the man’s judgemental tone. They were all first-class graduates and she had worked on Conservation projects all over the world. How patronising was this guy?
Noah gestured towards a beat-up mini-van with the project’s logo painted onto the s
ide. The two other women in the group jumped up front with Noah and Taylor had no choice but to slide into the back with the two guys. She kept up a stream of chatter, getting to know the group, as the van bumped them over potholes and bumps in the dirt road. They seemed a nice enough bunch and Taylor tried to keep her focus on the conversation, despite the buzz of her phone jammed into her back pocket.
The van drew to a stop at a small tourist attraction. A huge, hand-painted wooden sign proclaimed, “Gators here” and Taylor couldn’t help but laugh at the cartoon reptile grinning down at them. Noah jumped out, holding out a chivalrous hand to help Hanna and Caitlyn down from the front cab. She caught the women shooting lingering looks towards their guide, and she hid a smile at their obviousness. She’d seen it a million times before. Super-intelligent young women wasting valuable learning experiences because they were too busy flirting with the hottest available guy. It was exactly why she didn’t “do” relationships. Sure, she’d had plenty of hook-ups, but she only flirted after-hours at social events. During working hours, she was strictly business.
The women hurried ahead, either side of Noah, and Taylor strolled slowly behind, taking in the surroundings. They were following a gravel path that curved down to the visitor centre, next to a wooden jetty where a couple of Airboats were tied up. The swamp curved out into the distance, flanked on either side by thick green vegetation. Taylor squinted into the water, making out the tell-tale bumps of what looked like a gator, lurking close to the bridge.
She heard the girls ahead, squealing and pointing, and she watched, anticipating Noah’s irritated response, but he hooked a muscular arm around both women and steered them close to the water’s edge to take a closer look. Taylor looked back to see if the guys were finding this as amusing as her, but they were both oblivious to the flirting and they headed towards the trio.
Taylor, feeling a little like the outsider, watched until the reptile disappeared beneath the surface. She wasn’t sure why she was feeling a little out-of-sorts and irritable today, but one thing she was aware of was her unread message burning a hole in her butt pocket. Glancing around to check nobody was looking, she snuck a look at her phone.
Deon. Again.
She dug deep into her reserves of self-control and fought the urge to immediately open his message, re-pocketing the phone. Noah was crouched down now at the water’s edge, pushing back the sleeves of his t-shirt, revealing strong, tan forearms beneath a dusting of golden hair. She could hear him talking in his deep, low drawl, but she was too far away to make out his words, so she moved closer.
“Hey!” He glanced up towards Taylor. “You gonna put that phone away and join us?”
Taylor felt a rush of blood to her cheeks at his comment. How the hell had he even seen that?
She opened her mouth to respond, temper flaring, but she bit back the retort, reminding herself to remain professional, even if he wasn’t. She forced her lips into a polite, interested smile and joined the group at the end of the jetty.
“So, as I was saying.” Noah drawled. “This is the driest year we’ve had on record, and we’ve had a lot of problems with the swamps drying out. I’ve been out with the team for the last few weeks, retrieving some of the bigger and bolder ones.”
He straightened out easily from his crouched position, rising to his feet and gestured towards a little flat-bottomed boat hidden from view behind the giant Airboats.
“Jump in.”
He hopped into the boat effortlessly, landing easily despite the little vessel rocking violently with the motion and Taylor held back from rolling her eyes at his blatant athletic display. The other women gasped, predictably easily impressed, and happily accepted the proffered hand, helping them into the boat. He dropped his hand as the two men clambered aboard, both taking deliberate care to look unphased as it wobbled beneath their feet. Taylor hurriedly followed them, keen to board before the patronising cave-man offered her his hand. She stepped on a little too quickly and felt the bolt of panic that accompanies the sensation of falling, but she caught herself against the nearest solid object, steadying herself.
She looked down, following the line of her slender, dark arm, feeling the panic fade into mortification at the sight of her hand, fingers splayed, against the hard, firm pectoral muscle of Noah Anderson.
He followed her gaze, a smug smile playing on his lips, and she pulled her hand away, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks.
“How clumsy!” She attempted to laugh, quickly turning away from the self-assured man.
She settled into a seat next to the other women and was grateful when the noisy motor made conversation impossible. It really was something else out here. For a girl who’d grown up in the concrete jungle of New York City, she only ever felt at true peace out in the wilds of nature: on the ocean, in the mountains, lakes, coral reefs, deserts and now here in the swamps. The boat sped away from the little jetty, opening up into a wider lake surrounded by mangroves, tumbling on crooked legs over the water. The boat turned into a little grove, where the stilt-like roots bent on both sides so that the swamp was enclosed by the leaves meeting above their heads. Taylor twisted and turned to take in the abundance of wildlife in the skies and the water as they plunged deeper into the swampland.
Noah handled the little boat confidently, pulling in scarily close to some huge gators for a closer look, before steering them back out into the open and pulling to a stop where the water started to grow shallow next to a steep bank.
“I can’t get any closer when the boat is this full.” Noah explained. “Rachel wants some samples from this area. This is the quickest way, but we’ll come back with a smaller party unless any of you fancy jumping in.”
He grinned at his own joke, as if it was hilarious that any of these city-slickers would be brave enough to get into the water.
He allowed the boat to bob quietly in the water with the motor off for a little while, legs stretched out in the cramped space and gazing into the water, a contented smile on his face. Taylor found herself inexplicably drawn towards the serene smile that touched his lips and his eyes. He looked like she felt. At peace and content surrounded by the beauty of nature.
She felt her phone buzz in the pocket of her tight jeans, breaking the tranquillity of the moment. Without thinking, she eased her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen.
She discreetly opened the picture message and before she could react to Deon’s explicit image, a piercing scream filled the air.
“Wow! Look at the size of that!”
Taylor jumped in shock, feeling the phone tumble from her hand and she followed the sound, horrified that her colleagues had seen what she was looking at.
Relief flooded her body as she took in the massive creature that was sliding confidently down the bank towards them. Taking her eyes off the gator, she fumbled on the floor of the boat for her phone. To her horror, Noah, who was the only one not entranced by the huge reptile, reached his long arms across the gap between them and scooped up the phone. Taylor’s heart stopped in her chest as the time moved in slow motion. Noah glanced down and, without skipping a beat, held the phone out to her. She leaned forward, almost snatching it from him and slipped it straight into her pocket without looking to see if Deon’s impressive manhood was still proudly filling her screen. The others were too distracted by the solo alligator’s slow descent into the water to have noticed the exchange and she turned her head towards the spectacle, purposely avoiding looking in Noah’s direction.
He fired up the motor before the gator slithered too close and propelled them away from the creature.
“There’s been a company letting tourists feed them.” He told them over the roar. “They get cocky and that’s when they’re dangerous. It’s irresponsible and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt.”
He circled back through the tunnel of mangroves and before they knew it, they were back at the jetty. Taylor felt she had no choice, but to accept his outstretched hand,
not wanting to look churlish and stepped onto the wooden boards. She followed the group back to the visitor centre, where Noah had advised that Dr Redding would be waiting for them to talk to them about the observations they would be conducting over the next few weeks. Taylor was halfway through the door to the wooden-fronted building when she patted her jean pocket, discovering the absence of her phone.
It was practically a third limb, she was so attached the device and, annoyed with herself, she muttered her apologies to the group and spun back around to retrace her steps. She was adamant that she’d slipped the phone into her tight pocket, but the downside of wearing jeans that looked and felt like they had been sprayed on was that maybe the phone had just fallen into the boat. She’d been too preoccupied with the humiliation of Noah seeing the graphic image to think about anything else.
She crunched down the gravel, scanning the path side-to-side for the missing object. Her heart sunk when she saw the muscular shape of Noah emerge from the little boat in the distance. She paused, debating whether to turn around and give up on the phone, but he raised a hand in greeting and she was forced to walk on.
She could feel her heart beating a little faster than usual in her chest and she berated herself for getting all anxious around the asshole.
“You’re a grown woman.” She muttered under her breath to herself. “You can receive whatever damn pictures from men that you want. Who’s he to judge?”
“Hey.” Noah stepped out of the boat, long denim-clad legs unfolding easily onto the jetty. “Can I help you?”
Taylor stopped; his polite, friendly tone surprising her. She’d sensed more than a little animosity from him before the horrifying phone-dropping incident, but now, when she felt he would be at his most judgemental, he was all but tipping an imaginary hat at her and calling her “Ma’am”.
“Uh, hey,” She almost stuttered in response. “I think I might have left my phone.”
She could feel her embarrassment rise at her own words.