in as soon as you walk in, and clock out the moment your shift is done and this is where you put your orders, you hear me?” The manager of the Malt and Burger is in the process of explaining to me the way “his” restaurant runs. He’s a six-two, two-hundred-and fifty-pound black man who, like the other managers throughout the summer, thinks he’s the only one that uses the system of sticking the paper orders over the grill. Two words: corporate policy.
“Got it,” I answer.
“You hear me?” he asks with a wide white grin. “It doesn’t leave the grill until it hits one hundred and sixty degrees.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” Food poisoning’s a bitch.
He slaps my back and if I wasn’t solid, the hit might have crushed me. “Good. Called around about you. Hear you’re a good man. We get a lot of travel employees through here, and you aren’t the only fresh face working this week. I expect you to pull your weight and not miss a beat, hear me? Otherwise, I’ll put you out.”
Loud and clear, and it’s going to be a long week if he says that phrase as much as he has in the past thirty minutes.
“So we’ll see you tomorrow?” He uses a red bandanna to wipe the sweat off his brow.
“Tomorrow.”
We shake hands, and I let myself out the back when the drive-through worker yells that the headset shorted. Vail’s cooler than Denver, but not by much and because of that, I walk in the shadows of the alley.
“You were too serious-looking in there, you know? Surely a year can’t change someone that much.”
I glance behind me and notice a girl with short black hair and wearing a Malt and Burger waitress T-shirt leaning against the brick wall next to the Dumpster. A cigarette dangles from her hand and as she lifts it to her mouth, the ton of bracelets on her wrist clanks together.
“Do you know me?” I ask.
She releases smoke into the air. The sweet scent catches up and for the first time in months, the impulse for a hit becomes an itch under my skin. The chick’s smoking pot.
“I know you, Noah Hutchins. I know you very well.”
I scratch my chin as a dim memory forces its way to the surface: pot, beer, her naked body and the backseat of my car. Shit.
“Mia,” I mumble. She introduced me to the employee travel program. Last fall, she trekked across the country working for different stores, and for two weeks while she had stopped in Kentucky, we traveled down each other’s pants.
“You remember my name. I’m touched.” She extends the joint to me. “Our last encounter started this way, too, which works for me. I just got off shift and if I remember correctly you had a killer backseat.”
I shove my hands in my pockets. “I don’t have my car.”
“You don’t?”
“We took my girlfriend’s.”
She chuckles then takes another hit. Mia’s silent as she holds the smoke, then studies me while she blows it out. “Never thought of you as boyfriend material. Pegged you to be like me.”
“Guess you pegged me wrong.”
“Guess I did.” Mia smashes the small remains of the joint between her fingers, and it disintegrates as it falls to the ground. “Did you move here or are you visiting?”
“Visiting for the week.”
“What a coincidence—so am I.” She releases the same sly grin she gave me moments before going down on me last year. Twenty bucks the girl knows what she’s doing now just like she knew exactly what she was doing then. “Tell me about your girl.”
Standing here and reminiscing with someone I spent hours exploring in a haze isn’t the best way to be true to Echo. “I’ve gotta go.”
“You were badass, Noah, but you were never a dick. This is just a conversation between two old friends.”
She’s wrong about me, and sometimes Echo is, too. I am a dick, and I especially was when I was doing her. “We’re not friends.”
There’s a pessimistic tilt to her lips. “Touché, but we did enjoy the hell out of each other’s bodies. We will be working together, and as I said about the whole dick thing—it meant you had a slight conscience. So let me guess, you found the good girl who redeemed you.”
I rub the back of my neck. This is one of the things I hated about sleeping around. Occasionally, a girl had the stones to call me out on my shit and they’d be right.
Two minutes of conversation. I can give it to this girl if it’ll wipe the slate clean. “Yeah, but it’s more like she found me.”
She nods like I said more than I did. “So how redeemed has she made you? College route now?”
The hairs on my body rise like I’ve got a sniper trained to me. “Yeah.”
“When was the last time you hung out with anyone not her and partied? You know, be eighteen and not ninety?”
Before the two of us got serious. “What’s it matter?”
She toes a piece of green broken glass. “Matters more than you think. You’ll need to bring your girl in to let me meet the competition.”
“There’s no competition,” I say.
“Oh, Noah.” She pushes off the wall and walks backward for the opposite street. “Life is only about competition.”
I watch what I used to be leave. This is going to be a great conversation with Echo: You know how I decided to stay here for a week, ruining your chances to meet with other galleries before we head home? Great news: I fucked one of the waitresses, and she wants to meet you.
My cell vibrates, and I pull it out of my pocket, hoping to see a text from Echo. My eyebrows draw together when I spot Isaiah’s name: Where you at?
Me: Vail
Isaiah: Staying?
Me: Fir Tree Inn Room 132
Isaiah: See you by morning.
“Damn.” I forgot to tell Echo about Isaiah and Beth.
Nestled at the bottom of a mountain, Vail is possibly the most beautiful town I’ve ever visited. The cobblestone streets with tidy buildings transport me into a cute little Swiss mountain village. Each store I pass screams expensive and boasts if you break it, you buy it. Well, the ice cream shop doesn’t boast that, but it would be cool if it did.
Staying in the hotel with Mom’s messages on my phone became torture, and walking alone isn’t the needed distraction.
A couple exits a store, and they laugh and hold hands. They’re beautiful together—wearing the same type of clothes and smile. They look like they’ve materialized out of a J. Crew catalog and chat over their shared love of some vase.
Noah and I would never have that conversation.
Feeling suddenly insecure and underdressed in my cut-offs and blue T-shirt, I tuck my free-flowing curls behind my ears and cross my sweater-covered arms over my chest as I wander past a line of galleries. I’ve visited lots of galleries over the summer, and judging by the quality of art in the windows, none of them have been this high-end. In any of these places, my work wouldn’t be fit to display in the bathroom. If what the curator in Denver said was true, my paintings are probably inhabiting a Dumpster.
Noah wouldn’t say it, but he harbors guilt for changing our plans. He won’t after I gush over the number of galleries in Vail. This side trip could be life-altering. Maybe I do have one last shot at proving myself before going home.
My