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“He went to get help,” she added. “And he took my backpack with him so that I didn’t have to carry it.”
“With all your gear?”
“And my phone.”
The look on Mac’s face suggested he had thoughts about that which he was choosing not to share. He started walking again.
“So he alpine-divorced you, eh?”
“He what now?”
“It’s when a guy takes his wife or girlfriend he wants to get rid of up a mountain, pushes her off or leaves her there to die, and calls it an accident. There was a famous case where some guy did it in the Alps so that’s how it got its name. Alpine divorce.”
Wow. Mac is pissed.
“Dale didn’t push me. And he’s not my boyfriend. This was our first date. Stephanie set us up.”
The corner of Mac’s mouth turned up. Of course it did—Stephanie made everybody laugh.
“It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me this week,” Jodie offered.
“No? Then you’ve had a really crappy week.”
Jodie grinned to herself. “Shitty, you mean?”
“That’s what I said. Crappy.”
Yup, Mac absolutely refused to swear in front of a woman.
“Yeah, I really could have used you last Saturday,” she told him. “Where were you?”
“Probably doing something completely pointless that I would abandon immediately to know what happened to you that was worse than this.”
This isn’t so bad right now.
“Okay. Last weekend I was cleaning out my shed and I gave away my dad’s old rototiller that he let me have ages ago.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad yet.”
“Yet. I put an ad online and I got a response. The guy said he’d swing by to pick it up Saturday morning. My definition of morning is sometime before noon, but apparently his is three o’clock.”
“So you waited for him all day.”
“I did. And just when I’m about to text him and say forget it, I see a cloud of blue smoke coming up the street. The guy’s driving this old truck, which, I love old trucks, don’t get me wrong—I think they’re kinda sexy. But not this one. This one needed to be shown the sunset and then put out of its misery.”
Mac’s chest rumbled with laughter. Boy, did she feel it.
“Stop laughing,” she said. “I’m injured.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Your chest is laughing.”
“My chest thinks this is a great story.”
Damn. Oh, damn.
“So he parks in my driveway and I’m hoping the truck doesn’t leave too big of an oil slick. He parks but he doesn’t turn off the engine. I see he’s got this kid with him, like early twenties, who doesn’t bother looking up from his phone. The guy gets out, he’s wearing a backwards cap, and a T-shirt that doesn’t quite cover everything it’s supposed to cover.” Jodie grimaced at the memory of his hairy beer gut and belly button.
