by Roxie Noir
It would feel so, so good to clock you, he thought.
Then he felt Jules’s hand on his arm, like she’d read his thoughts, and he calmed down.
“Don’t worry about it, Gilbert,” Jules said. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. This mine isn’t happening, and given what I found, I don’t think there are going to be more.”
Inside the gas station, the paper started moving through the feed at an agonizing pace.
God, I hope that thing works, thought Seth.
“I know who you are,” Gilbert said, suddenly. “You’re one of those hillbillies who thinks he owns that goddamn mesa.”
“Nope,” said Seth. “I’m one of those hillbillies who does own that goddamn mesa, and who has documentation to back it up.”
Gilbert hissed through his teeth, and tried to move around Seth, but Seth was too quick, blocking his way with his big, muscled frame.
Inside the gas station, he could see the gawking face of the clerk. It was probably the most interesting thing he’d seen all day.
Gilbert tried again, and Seth moved with him, looking down at the shorter man.
“Let me through,” Gilbert hissed, but Seth stood there, arms in front of his chest. Off to the side, he could see Jules looking worried, her hair still framing her face like an alarmed orange halo.
Gilbert got a smug look on his face, then reached in his pocket, pulled out his phone, and hit a button, holding it up to Seth’s face.
“This man is publicly harassing me,” he began. “When I tried to enter this gas station, he grabbed me and—”
From the side, Jules stepped up quietly.
Then she snatched the phone from Gilbert’s grasp, stepped back, and threw it as hard as she could onto the asphalt. Seth heard a metallic crunch as it skittered across the pavement back toward the highway.
“Hey!” shouted Gilbert. He tried to go after the phone, but Seth grabbed him by the upper arm. Gilbert winced in pain and tried to jerk free, but Seth didn’t let him go.
“Be glad it was just your phone,” Seth whispered.
Inside the gas station, he saw Zach grin and give him a thumbs up, waving a piece of paper.
Seth let go, and Gilbert made for the door, only to see Zach standing against the window, holding up the copy of the deed so that Gilbert could read it. He did, his lips moving slightly, then looked from Seth, to Zach, to Jules.
The other man hadn’t moved at all from where he stood by the car, looking nervous about the situation, and now he got back in quickly.
“This isn’t over,” Gilbert said, stalking back toward the car.
Then he stopped and pointed one finger at Jules.
“You’re—”
“I quit,” she interrupted him. “Also, go fuck yourself.”
Gilbert looked like he wanted to call her a name, but then he took a look at Seth and decided against it.
The black car squealed out of the parking lot, not even stopping to retrieve the broken phone.
As he watched it go, Seth couldn’t help but grin.
Then Jules leaped onto him, laughing, and Zach shoved the door open.
“It sent!” he shouted to Seth.
Even the gas station clerk was cheering and clapping.
14. Jules
Nearly a month later, Jules hadn’t gotten around to leaving Obsidian. About two weeks after she’d quit her job, the cable internet had finally come through, and now that she was unemployed, why not job hunt from a dining room with a gorgeous view of a mesa?
The job hunt was kind of a problem, though. As much as she was discovering that she liked being in Obsidian — beautiful landscapes, starry nights, oh, and Seth in her bed — there weren’t any geology jobs there. In fact, Obsidian had almost no jobs, period, so she was having to look further afield for work.
Much further afield. The closest cities of any size were St. George, Utah, and Grand Junction, Colorado, each about four hours away. Neither had a lot of science jobs. For what she wanted to do, she’d probably need to go to Salt Lake, Denver, or maybe Flagstaff.
The thing was, how did she bring that up to Seth? The two of them, along with Zach, had fallen into their lives together almost instantly, in a way that felt so perfect and right that Jules knew she could never bring herself to leave.
But she also couldn’t resign herself to a lifetime of waitressing at Big Mary’s, not if she could help it. She loved what she did.
It was a hell of a pickle, that was for a sure.
Before Jules could get any further in her worrying, she heard tires on the gravel driveway. Seth had finally fixed his truck — for now, anyway — and she didn’t have to drive him to his job anymore. The front door opened and she heard the familiar sounds of his footsteps, the pause as he took off his shoes, then the slight echo as he walked down the hallway.
“Hey there,” he said. He crossed the room and moved to kiss her, leaning his tall frame down.
“Hey yourself,” she said back.
Seth flopped onto a couch, letting out a long exhale.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
Jules bit her lip. She hated to have this conversation as soon as he got home, but what else could she do?
“One of my former professors emailed me about an opening at the Geological Survey outpost in Salt Lake,” she said.
Seth raised his eyebrows.
“Are you going to apply?” he asked.
Jules put her laptop on the coffee table and twisted her hands together in her lap, pulling her feet up under her.
“What’s going on... here?” she asked, gesturing to indicated everything around them. “It’s just, Seth, there are no jobs in a two hour radius of Obsidian, and I really like being here with you, but...” she trailed off, shrugging helplessly.
Seth nodded, his face darkening a little.
“Yeah, I knew this was coming,” he said. Slowly, he rubbed his hands together, then sat forward. “You ever heard that if you love something, you should let it go?”
Jules’s mouth dropped open.
Did he just say he loved me and then break up with me all in one platitude? she wondered.
“What are you trying to say?” she asked, holding back tears.
“I think you should apply for the job in Salt Lake,” he said. “It’s closer than Dallas, isn’t it? I’ll drive up and visit you, maybe you can come down here sometimes. We can do that video thing you showed me on the internet.”
He looked at her, eyes pleading.
“Maybe after everything has settled down with the land ownership, Zach and I can rent this place out and I can move to Salt Lake. He’s gotta move to college anyway.”
“You can’t do that,” whispered Jules. “You can’t move away from here. You can’t sell this place, and nobody’s gonna rent it out, it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
Seth grinned.
“It’s a relaxing, holistic retreat in the middle of the most untouched natural splendor that Utah has to offer,” he said, grinning.
Jules blinked.
“It needs serious work, but I could do a lot of the renovations to this place myself,” he said. “I’d really only need to hire someone for electrical and plumbing.”
“You’ve been thinking about this,” she said.
“Of course I have,” he said, his face going serious. “Look, I know I sound insane, but when I see you, when I hear your laugh or watch you stick three pencils into your hair or see the way your freckles scrunch up when you get mad, I think to myself, this is it. And God knows that there’s not a whole lot in Obsidian. I love it here, yeah, but I’d rather be with you.”
Don’t blink or you’ll cry, Jules thought, her eyes welling.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“It’ll work out,” Seth said, taking Jules’s hands in his. “Trust me.”
Epilogue: Seth
Four Months Later
They stood in the backyard, both totally naked.
“You know how, when y
ou shiver, it sort of feels like you... flex your skin?” Seth asked.
For a moment, Zach got a faraway look in his eyes, like he was trying it out.
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
“It’s sort of like that, but not my skin,” Seth said.
“This isn’t helping at all,” Zach said. “Maybe I just need to jump off a cliff.”
Seth made a face.
“I won’t,” muttered Zach, as he paced around the yard. “It’s just — were you the only one to get that gene from Mom? Does it not work for me? Does Jules secretly hate me?”
“She doesn’t hate you,” Seth assured his brother. “Look, I don’t know either. Mom’s voice just said, ‘it’s the girl,’ and that was it. I mean, technically, it could be any girl I’d seen, ever.”
Zach crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“Maybe you just need to find a girlfriend,” Seth teased, and Zach rolled his eyes at his brother.
“Not helping,” he muttered.
There was the sound of tires on gravel, and both men turned their heads, then Seth grinned.
“Put some pants on,” he said. “Jules is home.”
By the time she was out of the truck, Seth was standing in the front doorway of their house, leaning against the frame, clothed.
“Welcome back, sunshine,” he called.
Jules looked up at him, grinning.
“Come get some groceries and carry them in,” she called back. She usually went shopping on the way back from her office in Salt Lake City.
Once inside, the groceries on the table, Jules wouldn’t stop grinning. Seth got suspicious.
“What?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. He put his hands on her hips pulling her toward him.
“I have good news, but I don’t want you to get ahead of yourself,” Jules warned, putting her hands around his neck.
“The United States Geological Survey has decided to set up their headquarters in Obsidian,” he guessed.
Jules laughed, and Seth’s heart skipped a beat.
I’m not that far off, he realized. She can come live here full time, and I can wake up every morning next to her, and we can drink coffee and then go to work, like regular couples. No more six-hour drives every weekend and trying to figure how to afford renovations to turn this house into a rental.
“The Grand Escalante National Monument is being expanded,” Jules said.
Seth raised his eyebrows.
“And... stuff around here would be more protected?” he said, not exactly sure where she was going with this.
“Yes,” Jules said. “But they’re also talking about putting a regional park service office in Obsidian.”
He wasn’t following exactly — she didn’t work for the park service — but he couldn’t help but grin.
“I think I’ll be able to work something out with the Park Service and work from their office here,” she said.
Seth whooped, then grinned and hugged her, picking Jules up and swinging her through the air as she squealed.
“It’s not for sure!” she shouted, even though she was grinning herself. “And I’d probably still have to spend about a month a year in Salt Lake.”
That’s nothing, thought Seth.
“That’s incredible!” Seth said, finally putting her down. “When will you know for sure?”
“No idea,” Jules said. “Look, there’s still a chance it won’t happen, but... I could actually move in, for real.”
Seth picked her up one more time, and they kissed as Jules wrapped her legs around his waist.
Then he carried her down the hall, leaving Zach to put away the groceries.
The End
(But keep reading for Prey, Zach’s story…)
PREY
Copper Mesa Eagles, Book 2
Roxie Noir
1. Zach
“That sounds really nice,” the woman sitting across from Zach said, her hands folded in front of her, a polite smile on her face.
Zach just nodded. That was one of those phrases that he just didn’t have an answer for.
What am I supposed to say? He thought. “Yeah, it does sound totally nice that I’m twenty-eight and still in college?”
Just in time, the sound of a knife clinking a wine glass echoed through the room. Zach could have cheered with relief, but instead he stood from the small table, lifting his glass of red wine.
“It was nice meeting you,” he told the woman, reaching out to shake her hand.
“You too,” she said, putting her well-manicured hand in his, limp as a rag.
Zach had already forgotten her name, but it didn’t matter. He was pretty sure she’d forgotten his as well. That was how these speed-dating things went: you met a bunch of women at once, and at the end, struggled to remember which one had been which.
He walked three feet to the next table, where a woman with an empty wine glass sat, looking at her phone. He waited a moment for her to look up at him. Then he waited another moment, and another, until she finally finished texting someone and looked up at him.
“Hi,” he said, trying not to be annoyed. “I’m Zach.”
“Emma,” she said.
They shook hands. Same limp-rag handshake. Zach sat, carefully placing his almost-full wine glass on the table. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he could tell that she was pretty in a classic sort of way: dirty blond hair, blue eyes. Her face was nice enough to look at.
It just wasn’t doing anything for him. No spark. No wiggling feeling in his stomach. Nothing.
“So,” she said. “What do you do?”
Zach could hear himself giving her the answer he’d given the other eleven women already, as he’d moved around the room from table to table. He was a junior studying structural engineering at Northern Utah University. Yes, he was a non-traditional student; no, he hadn’t gone back to school after getting one degree, this would be his first.
Her interest flickered out, just like most of the others’. Women in their late twenties didn’t want to date someone who was still a college student, not that Zach could blame them. A guy whose only income was from tutoring calculus students, who subsisted mainly on ramen?
Not exactly a catch.
Politely, Zach sipped his wine and asked her about herself. Then he managed to nod and smile at all the right points without actually listening to a word she said.
Back in his dorm room, Zach flopped onto his extra-long twin bed and looked up at the ceiling, giving himself a few seconds before throwing himself into the homework that he still had to do. God knew there was plenty of it, but that was his own fault for trying to cram four semesters’ worth of classes into three. After all, it was cheaper that way, and Zach figured he could sleep when he was dead.
You should stop going to these bullshit dating things too, he thought. You’re not going to meet someone this way, and it’s just making you miserable.
The problem was, he didn’t know how else to meet anyone. He lived in a freshman dorm as the Resident Advisor, so he spent his weekend nights on call, doing his homework and occasionally breaking up parties that got too loud or too drunk. Otherwise, he was in class or in the campus’s computer lab, using the engineering programs that his own ancient computer was way too slow to run.
Sometimes, he went grocery shopping. Once in a blue moon, he’d go out with the other RAs who were his age, not that there were many.
Zach let his eyes close, draping a forearm over them for just a moment. He didn’t even want to meet someone, if he was being honest. He had too much to do and not nearly enough time for a relationship or a girlfriend.
But two years ago, his oldest brother Seth had fallen off a cliff.
Halfway down, he’d turned into an eagle and flown away, totally unharmed.
As if that all wasn’t weird enough, Seth had heard their dead mother’s voice. She’d told him that the reason he could shift was the girl he’d just met — the girl who was now his wife.
In the following week
s and months, Seth and Zach had discussed it endlessly. Seth tried to give Zach shifting lessons, drew diagrams, came up with crazy metaphors. Once Zach had jumped from the roof of the house in an attempt to force the shift, but nothing had happened.
Zach had finally decided it was one of two conclusions: either Seth was the only one who could shift, or he needed to find a girlfriend. So he’d tackled the girlfriend mission the way he tackled everything: studiously and methodically, trying to find the best way to meet as many women as he could, hoping that someone might click.
No one had. He was starting to feel like it was hopeless, not to mention a little scummy, like the only reason he wanted to go on dates was so he could turn into a bird.
With a long, loud sigh, Zach took his forearm off his eyes, sat up, and walked two feet to his desk, where he pulled up the calendar on his computer. He rubbed his eyes, yawning as he looked over the problem sets that were due the next day.
I swear to God, when I graduate, I’m going to sleep for a week, he thought.
A few days later, he walked down a hall in the student union feeling wildly overdressed. Before the semester started, he’d blown some of his loan money on a suit from a store down in Salt Lake City. Paying nearly $300 for a single outfit had made him nearly pass out, but he knew that first impressions mattered. Besides, a good suit was an investment, an item of clothing he’d be wearing again and again.
Once he was inside the job fair, he felt better. He was still more dressed than most of the people there, but at least he wasn’t the only one wearing a suit and tie. Here, at least, the people wearing cargo shorts and flip flops looked out of place, not him.
Before heading in, Zach reached into his briefcase — bought on the same trip as the suit — and pulled out the flyer that had the layout of the job fair printed on it. Booths were highlighted in three different colors: green for firms he was very interested in, yellow for firms he was kind of interested in, and orange for anything he’d like to check out if he had the time, but that weren’t a priority.
