Page 6 of A Discovery: Love and Other Things
His smile shone bright while he politely avoided the tits in his face as best he could.
“You must be from the University of Madrid. I’m Kitty.” I extended my hand over the table.
He took it, giving it a gentle squeeze—nothing awkward, just friendly. The internship program had sent out an email letting us know which universities had been selected to participate this year, and judging from his accent, he was the selection from Spain.
“And I’m Angela.” She grabbed his hand before the guy even had a chance to offer it.
Angela’s favorite hobby was men. Back in California, she had her pick of the lot, rarely ever seeing the same one twice. I admired her assertiveness—to go out there and take what she wanted. I wished I was just as bold. I’d had boyfriends in the past, but I could count them on the fingers of one hand. My dating life had hit a stale point lately, and Angela was putting me to shame by snagging the best-looking guy on our team.
“Are you two excited for today?” Felipe asked. “This is the first dig I’ve ever participated in.”
“Same for the both of us. I don’t know what to expect,” I replied. I had only read about excavations in research papers and seen them in documentaries, so the thrill of participating in a live one was something I still couldn’t quite believe.
“I just can’t wait to get dirty, you know?” Angela’s lips tipped up into a sly grin aimed straight for her Spanish crush.
Nervously eyeing her as if she were a hungry python in the hands of a zookeeper in a petting exhibit, Felipe continued, “It should be a lot of fun, even though I heard that Dr. Campbell can be ratherdifficult.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me he’s a hard-ass,” Angela groaned. “It’s bad enough we need to be up at the crack of dawn; now I need to worry about some man who has small-dick syndrome or something getting on my case.” Her Southern accent was always stronger when she was irritated.
“It’s true,” the guy sitting to my left added. “Hi, I’m Sean.” His British accent meant that he was most likely the team member from Cambridge. He seemed to be a few years older than us, with a dark head of hair just like Felipe, but where Felipe had a scruffier appearance, Sean was well groomed and looked like he should have been teaching a class himself with his white linen shirt and dark blue jeans.
I introduced both of us this time around. “I’m Kitty, and this is Angela.”
“It’s a pleasure,” he replied with a courteous smile only half as big as Felipe’s was.
“Do you know Dr. Campbell?” Angela asked, redirecting the conversation back to the topic of our mentor.
“I don’t. But my friend goes to Oxford and took one of his classes. She said he was the hardest grader she’d ever had. Just barely passed his final.”
“Shit...” I frowned. I hadn’t thought that our mentor would be the professor from hell. All the hope and excitement I’d had oozed away. I wasn’t a worrier by nature, but a foreign feeling slowly crept into my chest—anxiety.
“Difficultisn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe he just wants us to learn as much as possible,” a raven-haired woman with delicate features said, interjecting. Her petite frame was on display as she leaned over the table, resting her hand on the surface as she spoke to us. Her accent was distinctly Italian, making her the fifth and final member of our team from the University of Rome.
“And who are you?” Angela asked pointedly, not liking that Hermione Granger had invited herself into our conversation.
“Isa-bel-la.” Even the way she said her name, enunciating each syllable so that we would remember it, came off as pretentious. I had the sneaking suspicion that she was going to ask Dr. Campbell to add a research assignment to our program before the sun set today.
“I don’t know about you, but I like to learn without a micromanaging dictator hovering over me,” Felipe joked. This earned a disapproving scowl from Isabella.
“Forgive me for being so forward, but if I had to fly all the way here, then I’d want to get the most out of this experience,” she snapped, glowering at him.
The group stared at her. We all wanted to get the most out of this trip, but shit, not all on the first day!
Sean’s voice broke the tension. “Well, I think we should head out so we’re not late.”
Everyone agreed and grabbed their dishes to hand them back to the cook. The table looked just as tidy as it had been before we woke up for breakfast.
“Everyone got their sacks?” Sean asked.
I looked around at my teammates, all of whom—especially overachiever Isabella—had backpacks filled with notebooks, pens, and water bottles slung over their shoulders. Everyone except me.
I was disappointingly unprepared for the most important experience of my college career.
Dear God, please help me to get through this day unscathed!
Chapter 5
The desert.
