“Frankly, Esra, I need a Pretty Annie Lou. I don’t even need a new ice cream girl. Sinan asked me to give you a job. This is a job. Take it or leave it.”
“Oh.” A smart person would have said something like“With all due respect, I’m physically incapable of performing a stunt like that, even if it seems easy to you”, or“Thank you but I’ll have to decline”, or even“Bestie, putting me on a horse is an insurance liability you don’t wanna deal with.”But despite spending the last four years acing my way through college, I wasn’t smart. I didn’t want to keep driving on these painfully bumpy roads to maybe, possibly, find someplace else to spend the summer. And I didn’t want to intern at my father’s firm. So I only said, “I’ll take it.”
Chapter Two
CAREERS – STAFF HOUSING
The shortest commute possible: Bravetown is excited to offer its staff members modern housing on-premises. Employees can benefit from low rent prices on private studio apartments.
Just joining the workforce? Young people and junior employees may even qualify for a room in our free house-share program.
Rules and regulations apply.
NOAH
The rules were right there. Black on white. Laminated. Taped to both the backsplash of the shared kitchen and the refrigerator. You’d think that would be impossible to ignore, but you’d be wrong. Clearly, labeling my bread and peanut butter and putting them on the cupboard shelf with my name on it wasn’t enough. And while I didn’t mind sharing, the peanut butter sandwich thief had the nerve to leave the counter covered in crumbs and abandon their plate with the bread crust still on it.
What self-respecting adult cut the crust off their bread?
Lucas sauntered into the kitchen in one of his sheriff costumes, white hat still on. He got a kick out of riding through town like that. Any tourists that made their way out here had come for the theme park. Even if they stayed at the one motel we had or Berta’s B&B, they’d flock to Bravetown eventually. Which made Lucas, also known as Sheriff Kit Holliday, a local celebrity. Technically, we weren’t supposed to be in costume outside the park, but Lucas put on the white knight act to get girls, and Renee turned a blind eye because it helped draw undecided people into the park and steer excited fans there earlier.
I didn’t care so much about the costume as I did about the crumbs on his vest.
Were those peanut butter sandwich crumbs?
“Don’t glare at me like that. I stocked up this morning.” Lucas lifted his hands in mock surrender before he pulled a bag of Doritos from his designated shelf.
Fair enough. Lucas had been working here almost as long as I had. He wasn’t exactly a stickler for rules, but anyone who’d spent more than one summer at the park understood the bare minimum of keeping the peace in the staff housing complex.
“Fucking seasonals,” I muttered and screwed the lid back on to my peanut butter jar.
“Absolutely planning on it,” Lucas replied with a grin. “I mean, did you see that redhead waitress she hired for the saloon?” When I rolled my eyes at him, the idiot winked at me. “Don’t get your panties in a twist over some bread, Noah.” He chuckled and strolled out the door.
“It’s not about the bread. It’s about the principle.” And now I was talking to myself while wiping off counters. Great.
I was getting too old for this place. Most people who worked here all year came from town, had their own homes and families to get back to at the end of the day. I hadn’t meant to make this my permanent residence, but I’d moved in at twenty-four, and five years later, I was still here.
Two more years. I’d done the math. Two more years and I could move back home.
I slammed the cupboard shut harder than needed, earning myself a puzzled look from Austin, who sat at the huge dinner table with his chunky headphones on and his phone propped up in front of him.
I booked it upstairs before I’d start ranting about shared living etiquette to him. Even considering how to word it made me feel too petty for a Tuesday night. I was going to hit the shower and just eat at the staff gathering later.
We were two weeks away from summer season officially starting. Which equaled opening earlier and closing later, live shows, busloads of tourists rolling in daily, and right now a shit-ton of work to get the park prepped. I’d spent the entire day in the stables, and if I showed up to the saloon like this, the whole place would smell like horse shit by the time Renee had finished her big welcome speech– which was the same each year, but the new seasonals didn’t know that.
Staff House B was three floors, the upper two allocated to bedrooms and bathrooms. Each floor held six bedrooms, two bathrooms. Sharing the bathroom with two other people usually wasn’t a big deal. I twisted the handle, found it locked, and would have just come back in five.
This time, however, an unfamiliar chipper voice inside yelled, “One second!”
“It’s fine,” I replied. My mood had soured, but I wasn’t so much of a dick that I’d rush some new employee off the toilet.
“Don’t worry,” the door swung open and a cloud of steam evaporated into the hallway–someonehad probably used up all the hot water– “the bathroom’s all yours.”
I glanced down at the short woman in front of me. Soft. Everything about her seemed soft, and it wasn’t just the fluffy towel wrapped around her chest, or the billows of steam behind her. Her big brown eyes took up so much of her heart-shaped face, she almost looked like a doll. Dark waves grazed at her delicately sloped shoulders, and her damp skin glistened like copper. Even her brows were smoothly curved black arches. Not a jagged line on her.
And despite all of that, my eyes latched on to the fluffy fabric that covered her from chest to knee. “That’s not your towel.”
“Huh?” She glanced down, water dripping from her wet hair, then grinned back up at me, a deep dimple in her right cheek. She tapped her finger against my embroidered initials on her midriff. “Yes, it is. Look: N.Y. New York. That’s where I’m from.”
