Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits 1.50)

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.