Page 74 of Interning For A Billionaire

“You make it sound simple,” Josie said. “But those things are huge. Making the call and deciding to give someone a shot.”

I had given Michael a shot, but it didn’t look like it would work out, after all.

I felt a heavy weight settle in my stomach.

I looked down and I saw Ari, leaning against me. The dog looked up at me with big, mournful dark eyes as if to say he knew what I was going through and I wasn’t alone.

I had to laugh.

“Your dog is definitely special, Dad!” I said as I came into the house. I told them how I was feeling sad, without saying why, and how Ari had seemed to want to make me feel better.

“Maybe he is psychic,” Aunt Kate said. My father rolled his eyes and we laughed for a good long time.

It felt good to be home.

Chapter 28

Michael

By the time I got to Salina, I was tired, fed-up and impatient to find a rental car so that I could get to Nolan. I searched for a rental care agency in the airport building and selected the office with the least number of customers waiting to be served. When it finally was my turn, the agent called Mandy had one car left. I didn’t even look at it, I just said I’d take it.

Then I asked Mandy what the best road was to get to Nolan.

“Sorry, where?”

“Nolan, it’s a small town near here?”

“I’m sorry, Sir, I’ve never heard of it.”

Surely that wasn’t possible?

I googled the name and showed it to her.

“Oh! Naln!” That was what she said, giving the town name a strange, exaggerated twist, swallowing the vowels in some weird way.

I felt like I was in one of those slapstick movies where the foreign detective can’t pronounce the words right. I wanted to tell her, that is what I said! But I guess, this was the Midwestern accent.

“Where are you from?” she asked me, in an infuriatingly polite way.

“San Francisco,” I said.

“I’ve heard it’s awesome.”

“It is, yeah.”

I got out of there as quickly as I could, deciding I would trust Google Maps to get me there.

I found my rental car and threw my luggage in the back, then I got in and promptly smacked my knees against the steering wheel as the seat was way too high and close to the front. Who had been driving the car before me? Some kind of legless midget??

I closed my eyes for a second and remembered the nurse in the emergency ward of the hospital I went to after my bouldering fall. She’d laughed at me when I told her my story. “Embrace the rock, don’t fight it, isn’t that what you wackos always say?”

“I wasn’t in the mood for embracing,” I muttered.

“So, you were attacking the boulder,” she said.

“Guess who won,” I deadpanned and was rewarded with a smile.

“Note to self,” she said after she’d finished patching me up. “Embrace the rock.”

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