Her Dirty Archeologists by Mika Lane
6
PENN KELLER
“We’re here? This is the place?”
I had no idea where my brother Jonas and his colleague Drake got Fleur, and I was betting right about now they were wishing they could send her back. But she wasn’t my problem.
I was just enjoying the show.
Since Fleur and her sexy sister had bumbled into the airport, dropping their shit all over the place, trying to figure out where to go, she’d been non-stop entertainment.
I didn’t mean to sound like a dick. As if I were enjoying someone’s misfortune, discomfort, or, perhaps, poor decision-making. I wasn’t that mean. But the woman was a fish out of water if ever there was one, and her perspective on it all was, well, hilarious.
First, there was her shock at everything. Then, the resignation, where she accepted things as they were, even though they couldn’t be more different from anything she’d ever seen in her life. But the best part was her effort to try and act like everything was normal.
When we’d gotten on the bus, there were only a few seats left. Fleur grabbed one, and Drake ended up sitting behind Jonas and me.
“All good?” my brother asked after we settled in and the driver pulled onto the pot-holed version of a third-world freeway.
Fuck me. Five hours of this?
Drake leaned forward and lowered his voice, even though it was unlikely that Fleur, across the aisle from us, could hear over the bus’s clanging engine.
“She just experienced her first squatter toilet.”
Oh no.
“But I gotta hand it to her,” he continued, “she didn’t complain. She dealt with it like a champ.”
Well, that was something. And while it should have been the last thing on my mind, I could picture her lifting up that cute little skirt…
Jesus. Get a grip, jerk.
“Glad she survived it. Squatters can be hard to get used to. At least for women,” Jonas said.
He’d always been the sensitive twin. Me, not so much.
At the first stop, about an hour into the trip, the woman seated next to Fleur exited the bus. The seat was then filled by a new passenger, a cheerful man missing several teeth, carrying a live chicken in a bag.
The poor bird was squawking and fighting his confinement with violent indignation, which his struggling owner tried to get under control.
To her horror, the bagged bird smacked into Fleur more times than I could keep track of.
This would have been ugly if it wasn’t so damn funny.
Fleur had squished into her seat as small as she could make herself, her eyes wide with horror, like the chicken might escape and kill everyone on the bus.
But after a while, the doomed bird settled down, and my frequent checks in Fleur’s direction found that she’d dozed off, her head against the bus window. The guys and I quickly followed suit, having been traveling for nearly twenty-four hours at that point.
I’m not going to lie. I dreamt about being at home in my own bed, where it was quiet and cool, where there were no mosquitoes, and where I wasn’t pressed body-to-body with other humans who smelled like it might have been a while since they’d showered.
Just when I was imagining turning on air conditioning and enjoy flowing, frigid air, I was jerked out of my sleep by a scream.
From Fleur.
I jumped up from my aisle seat and found Fleur pushing the man next to her out of their row and into the aisle with a combination of her fists, yelling, and kicking him with her high heels.
Those ill-advised shoes had come in handy.
“Fleur! What’s going on?” I shouted.
Her neighbor, now fully out of his seat, chicken bag in tow, was frantically trying to escape Fleur’s flailing limbs. The bird was screeching again—almost but not quite drowning out Fleur—with the man adding to the commotion with his own bellowing at no one in particular, in a language I couldn’t identify.
“He touched me!” she screamed. “Creep! Get the hell away from me.”
As if kicking him out of his seat weren’t enough, she jumped into the aisle after him as he tried to escape. I stepped aside just in time to avoid being trampled, watching Fleur continue to push and kick until the guy was all the way at the front of the bus. Even though we weren’t at a stop, and were clearly in the middle of nowhere, the driver pulled over and opened the door.
Everyone else on the bus was now buzzing, craning their necks to see the uproar.
“That’s right, asshole,” Fleur yelled. “Get OUT!”
The terrified man ran off the bus before realizing he was in the middle of nowhere. The driver closed the door and hit the gas, slapping his leg and laughing his ass off at the misfortune of his countryman.
Fleur, now wrinkled, dirty, with her hair hanging limply in protest of the heat and humidity, smoothed herself out and returned to her seat, head held high.
Hot damn.
I think I was in love.
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