Sweetest in the Gale: A Marysburg Story Collection (There's Something About Marysburg Book 3)

by Olivia Dade

  He could now ride a horse like he’d been doing it his whole life.

  The sword master said he was the best in the cast with a weapon in hand and had the fastest feet of any actor she’d ever met.

  At long last, he’d learned to pronounce Latin with an ease his parents had both acknowledged and deemed a bitter irony.

  Over his time on Gods of the Gates, he’d been nominated for five major acting awards. He’d never won, of course, but he had to believe—he did believe—that the nominations didn’t simply reward a pretty face, but skill. Emotional depth. The public might believe him an acting savant, able to ape intelligence despite having none of his own, but he knew the work he’d put into his craft and his career.

  None of that would have been possible without the crew.

  He angled away from the cameras to look at some of those people, and to obscure the change in his expression. “Finally, I want to thank everyone behind the scenes of our show. There are nearly a thousand of you, and I—I can’t—” The sincere words tangled his tongue, and he paused for a moment. “I can’t imagine how any series could have found a more dedicated, knowledgeable group. So to all the producers, stunt performers, location managers, dialect coaches, production designers, costumer designers, hair and makeup artists, VFX and SFX people, and so many others: Thank you. I, um, owe you more than I can express.”

  There. It was done. He’d managed to say it without stumbling too much.

  Later, he’d grieve and consider his next steps. Now, he simply needed to wash and rest.

  After a final round of embarrassing applause and a few claps on the back and hugs and handshakes, he made his escape. To his trailer for a quick wash at the sink, and then to his generic Spanish hotel room, where a very, very long and well-deserved shower awaited him.

  At least he thought he’d made his escape, until Vika Andrich caught up with him just outside the hotel lobby entrance.

  “Marcus! Do you have a minute?” Her voice somehow remained steady, even though she was jogging over from the parking lot in sensible heels. “I had a few questions about the big sequence you’re filming now.”

  He wasn’t entirely surprised to spot her. Once or twice a year, she’d show up wherever they were shooting and get whatever on-site impressions and interviews she could, and those articles were always especially popular on her blog. Of course she’d want to cover the end of the series’ filming in person.

  Unlike some other reporters, if he asked for space, she’d respect his privacy. He even liked her. That wasn’t the problem.

  The other qualities that made her his favorite entertainment blogger-slash-paparazzo also made her his least favorite: She was friendly. Funny. Easy to relax around. Too easy.

  She was also smart. Smart enough to have spied something… off… about him.

  Offering her a wide smile, he stopped inches short of freedom. “Vika, you know I can’t tell you anything about what’s happening this season. But if you think your readers want to see me covered in mud”—he winked—“and we both know they do, then feel free to take a picture or two.”

  He posed, presenting her with what he’d been told was his best side, and she got a couple of shots.

  “I know you can’t tell me anything specific,” she said, checking the images, “but maybe you could describe the sixth season in three words?”

  Tapping his chin, he furrowed his brow. Playacted deep thought for long moments.

  “I know!” He brightened and turned a pleased grin on her. “Last. One. Ever. I hope that helps.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him for a beat too long.

  Then, confronted with the blinding gleam of her own innocent smile, he had to blink.

  “I guess…” She trailed off, still smiling. “I guess I need to find one of the other actors to ask about how the show’s ending deviates from both E. Wade’s books and, of course, Homer’s Aeneid. Aeneas ended up married to Dido in both those stories, but the show might have taken a different approach.”

  Homer? What the fuck?

  And Dido was long, looooong dead by the end of the Aeneid. By the final page of the third Gods of the Gates book, she was alive but decidedly no longer interested in Aeneas, although he supposed that could change if Wade ever released the last two books in the series.

  Somewhere, Virgil was probably uttering Latin curses as he shifted in his grave, and by all rights, E. Wade should be side-eyeing Vika from her lavish compound in Hawaii.

  He pinched his forehead with a thumb and forefinger, absently noting the dirt beneath his nails. Dammit, someone needed to correct such grievous misapprehensions.

  “The Aeneid wasn’t—” Vika’s brows rose with his first words, and her phone was recording, and he saw the trick. Oh, yes, he saw it. “The Aeneid isn’t something I’ve read, sadly. I’m sure Homer is very talented, but I’m not much of a reader in general.”

  The last bit, at least, had once been true. Before he’d discovered fanfic and audiobooks, he hadn’t read much beside his scripts, and he’d labored over those only until he’d learned them well enough to record them, loop the recording, and play the words back to himself over and over.

  She tapped her screen, and her own recording ended. “Thank you, Marcus. It was kind of you to talk to me.”

  “My pleasure, Vika. Good luck with your other interviews.” With a final flash of a vapid smile, he was finally inside the hotel and trudging toward the elevator.

  After pressing the button for his floor, he leaned heavily against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Soon, he was going to have to grapple with his persona. Where it chafed, how it had served him in the past, and how it served him still. Whether shedding it would be worth the consequences to his personal life and career.

  But not today. Fuck, he was tired.

  Back in his hotel room, the shower felt just as good as he’d hoped. Better.

  Afterward, he powered on his laptop and ignored the scripts sent by his agent. Choosing his next project—one that hopefully take his career in a new direction—could wait too, as could checking his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

  The only thing that definitely needed to happen before he slept for a million years: sending a direct message to Unapologetic Lavinia Stan. Or Ulsie, as he’d begun calling her, to her complete disgust. Ulsie is a good name for a cow, and only for a cow, she’d written. But she hadn’t told him to stop, and he hadn’t. The nickname, one he alone used, pleased him more than it should.

  He logged onto the Lavineas server he’d helped create several years ago for the use of the lively, talented, ever-supportive Aeneas/Lavinia fanfic community. On AO3, he still occasionally dabbled in Aeneas/Dido fanfic, but less and less often these days. Especially once Ulsie had become the primary beta and proofreader for all Book!AeneasWouldNever’s stories.

  She lived in California, and she’d still be at work. She wouldn’t be able to respond immediately to his messages. If he didn’t DM her tonight, though, he wouldn’t have her response first thing in the morning, and he needed that. More and more as each week passed.

  Soon, so very soon, he and Ulsie would be back in the same time zone. The same state.

  Not that proximity mattered, since they’d never meet in person.

  Only it did matter. Somehow, it did.

  Two

  Dirt. More dirt.

  This particular dirt would tell a story, though, if April listened hard enough.

  She squinted at the site’s final soil core through her prescription safety glasses, comparing the different shades of brown to her color chart, then noted the sample’s water content, soil plasticity and consistency, grain size and shape, and all the other relevant data on her field form.

  No discoloration. No particular odor either, which didn’t surprise her. Solvents would emit a sweet smell, and fuels would smell like—well, fuel. Hydrocarbons. But lead would simply smell like dirt. So would arsenic.

  After wiping her gloved hand on the t
high of her jeans, she jotted down her findings.

  Normally, she’d be talking to her assistant sampler, Bashir, about their most egregious coworkers or maybe their most recent reality-show binge-watches. But by this point in the afternoon, they were both too tired to make idle conversation, so she finished logging the sample silently while he filled out the label for the glass sample jar and completed the chain-of-custody form.

  After she filled the jar with soil and wiped her hand on her jeans again, she labeled the container, slipped it into a zip-top bag, and placed it in the ice-filled cooler. One last signature to confirm she was handing off the sample to the waiting lab courier, and they were done for the day. Thank God.

  “That’s it?” Bashir asked.

  “That’s it.” As they watched the courier leave with the cooler, she blew out a breath. “I can take care of cleanup, if you want to relax for a few minutes.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll help.”

  Other than their thirty-minute lunch break, they’d been on task and focused since seven that morning, almost nine hours ago. Her feet hurt in her dusty safety boots, her exposed skin stung from too much sun exposure, dehydration had her head throbbing inside her hard hat, and she was ready for a good, long shower back at the hotel.

  Her cheek also itched, probably from a stray smear of dirt. Which was unfortunate, because soil-to-skin contact was, in technical terminology, an exposure pathway. Or, as April would put it, a fucking bad idea.

  Uncapping her water bottle, she wet a stray paper towel and swiped until her cheek felt clean again.

  “You still have some…” Bashir’s finger scratched at his spot near his temple. “There.”

  “Thanks.” Despite her headache, her smile at him was sincere. She could count the number of genuine friends she had at her current firm on one hand, but Bashir was among them. “Good work today.”

  After one last swipe and Bashir’s affirmative nod—she’d gotten rid of all the mud this time, apparently—the paper towel ended in the same garbage bag as her used gloves, and good riddance.

  The soil was dirty in more ways than one. Until mid-century, a pesticide factory had operated on the site, polluting the facility’s surroundings with lead and arsenic. Because of that history, April had spent the last several weeks gathering samples of the soil to analyze for both chemicals. She wanted neither directly on her skin. Or on her jeans, for that matter, but paper towels were just a pain in the ass at the end of the day.

  “Did I tell you?” As she gathered their paperwork, he slid her a sly grin. “Last week, Chuck told that new kid never to drink water in the exclusion zone. Because it’s bad practice, and goes against health and safety guidelines.”

  Together, they turned to stare at their red cooler filled with water bottles, which she’d placed on the tailgate of their field truck that morning.

  “Chuck’s a self-congratulatory twenty-two-year-old prick who’s spent almost no time on actual job sites.” At her flat statement, Bashir’s eyes widened. “He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but is happy to tell everyone how to do their jobs anyway.”

  At that, Bashir snorted. “Not just our jobs.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” April rolled her eyes skyward. “Did he lecture you about hummus again?”

  “Yes. Even though I don’t even eat much hummus, or give half a shit about chickpeas. I guess he just assumes I do, because…” Bashir waved a hand at himself. “You know.”

  Together, they began carrying the paperwork to the company truck.

  “I know.” She sighed. “Please tell me he wasn’t telling you to try—”

  “The chocolate hummus,” Bashir confirmed. “Again. If you’d like to hear about its fiber and protein content, or perhaps how it’s a vast improvement over more traditional versions of hummus—the hummus of your people, as he put it—I’ve been well informed and would be delighted to share my newfound knowledge with you.”

  He opened the passenger door for her, and she tucked the paperwork inside the latching case of her clipboard.

  “Ugh. I’m so sorry.” She grimaced. “If it’s any consolation, he also has very definite opinions about how his few female colleagues should dress to score more jobs.”

  In a small, private firm, consultants like her had to hustle for clients, woo them over lunches and at professional meetings, draw them aside at conventions and conferences about remedial technologies. Convince them she should be taken seriously and they wanted to pay her company for her geological expertise.

  To remain optimally billable, she had to look a certain way. Sound a certain way. Present herself in the most professional possible light at all times.

  Billable had become an epithet to her in recent years.

  Reputation in her industry could be a fragile thing. Could be damaged. By, say, the revelation that a seemingly serious and practical colleague liked to play dress-up as her favorite pretend TV character and spent most of her free time discussing fictional half-gods.

  Bashir rolled his eyes. “Of course he has opinions about women’s clothing. You told management, right?”

  “Literally five minutes later.”

  “Good.” Bashir walked by her side back toward the sampling table. “Hopefully they’ll fire his ass before much longer.”

  “He knows nothing. Less than nothing, if that’s possible.” A pluck of her fingers at her shirt demonstrated how it clung damply to her. “I mean, look at how much we sweated today.”

  “Copiously.” He glanced down at his own sweat-soaked orange shirt. “Disgustingly.”

  Stopping by the table, she shook her head. “Exactly. Someone needs to set that new kid straight. Unless she wants to end up in the hospital for dehydration, she needs to bring water.”

  Bashir inclined his head. “You would know.”

  “I would know.”

  And she did. Up until now, almost a third of her work hours as a geologist had been spent staying upwind of drill rigs like the one on this site, poring over soil samples to be logged and shoved into jars and sent off for lab testing. For a long time, she’d loved the processes and the challenges and even the physicality of doing field work. Some part of her still did love it.

  Not all of her, though. Not enough of her.

  As they flipped the table on its side and folded its legs, Bashir paused. “You’re really leaving, huh?”

  “Yup.” This was her last day visiting a contaminated site in her current role, her last week as a consultant at a private firm, and her last time washing dirt from her jeans. “I’ll miss you, but it’s time. Past time.”

  In less than a week, she was moving from Sacramento to Berkeley. And in less than two weeks, Future April would begin her new job at a state regulatory agency in Oakland, overseeing the work of consultants like Current April, which would mean more meetings and document analysis, and less time in the field.

  She was ready. For so many reasons, personal and professional both.

  Once she and Bashir had all their supplies back in the truck, she changed into her regular glasses, and removed her other personal protective equipment. With a sigh of relief, she untied her dusty boots and deposited them in a plastic bag, then put back on her battered but clean sneakers. Beside her, he did the same.

  Then she was done. Finally, blessedly done, and desperate for a shower, a cheeseburger, and approximately a gallon of ice water. Not to mention some more Lavineas fanfiction, group chats on the server, and DMs with Book!AeneasWouldNever. Hopefully BAWN had written while she was working.

  First, though, she and Bashir needed to say their goodbyes.

  “I don’t know if you already have plans for the weekend, but Mimi and I would love to treat you to dinner. To celebrate your new job and say farewell.” Even after several years of working together, he was still shy enough to fidget while issuing the invitation. “She knows you’re my favorite colleague.”

  As he was one of hers, and she considered his wife Mimi a genuine friend too.r />
  But even they didn’t know everything about her. Specifically, that she spent most evenings and weekends immersed in the Gods of the Gates fandom: tweeting about her OTP, writing and beta-ing and reading fanfic, chatting on the Lavineas server, and employing her vast enthusiasm and infinitesimal costume-construction skill to cosplay Lavinia.

  One stray pic at a con, one slip of the tongue, and her professional reputation might suffer. She could devolve from an experienced professional into a silly fangirl in less time than it took for her to log a soil sample.

  So she hadn’t attended Gods of the Gates cons. She hadn’t told work friends about her fandom. Not even friends she liked as much as Bashir.

  The state regulators at her new job, though…

  Well, the difference in culture couldn’t have been clearer. The personal and the professional were inextricable there. Intertwined in the most joyful and hilarious ways.

  When she arrived in less than two weeks, she’d become the fifth person on their team of geologists. The third woman. When she’d gone in to complete her I-9 last week, the other women, Heidi and Mel, had offered April a slice of the cake the team had brought to work in celebration of the women’s tenth anniversary as partners.

  Mel and the two guys on the team—Pablo and Kei—were in a freakin’ band together. A band. One that evidently performed for retirement parties and other gatherings in which their unique folk music talents couldn’t successfully be avoided.

  They’re terrible, Heidi had whispered, her mouth half-hidden behind her water bottle, but they all enjoy it so much, we can’t say anything.

  At that moment, in that dreary state-government-bureaucrat’s office suite, something taut to the point of snapping inside April had eased. Any remaining doubts had disappeared.

  She’d made the right decision to change jobs, even with the pay cut. Even with the price of housing in the Bay Area. Even with the hassle of moving.

  At her new workplace, she wouldn’t need to shield different parts of herself for fear of others’ disapproval. As of next week, billability no longer concerned her.