Page 73 of Own the Eights Gets Married
“What are we doing?” she screamed up at the sky, stumbling forward.
“Georgie, let me try to wipe some of it off,” Jordan offered.
She stared at him, then took a step forward, but her other foot didn’t make it to the ground. Thanks to an exposed tree root, she was now lying on the forest floor, staring up at the pouring rain in a slick of mud.
Jordan bent over her. “Are you okay, babe?”
She blinked back the rain or tears or rainwater infused with her tears and animal bile. At this point, she couldn’t even guess how many substances were covering her body.
She extended her arms and legs like a kid making a muddy, deranged snow angel. “Do I look okay, Jordan? Do I look even remotely close to being considered okay?”
“I feel like this is another trick question,” he said gently.
She’d had it. This was it. She was done with this bullshit boot camp. Done with deer jerky. Done with Brice and Camille and Syd and Buck and shovels—so freaking done with shovels.
“I have fallen, and I can’t get up!” she screamed, which triggered the alpaca to scream, which then triggered her fiancé to cry out.
In the history of wilderness survival, never had there been a more pathetic display of outdoor survival skills.
Jordan collected himself, then offered her his hand. “I can help you up, Georgie. Come on. Let’s get to camp and make a fire. You’ll feel better after you warm up.”
Prostrate on the ground, she blinked back the rain.
“How are we going to make a fire? It’s raining cats and dogs, or llamas and alpacas,” she answered in a shrill scrape of a voice.
He watched her as one would observe a ticking time bomb. “We’ll get the tarp set up. Then we’ll use the bow drill and the dryer lint.”
“Where the hell are you going to get dryer lint?” she shot back.
Where’d he think they were? The appliance department of Home Depot?
“It was on the list. You were supposed to pack it,” he answered in a crisis negotiator tone.
The man wasn’t wrong, but she’d thought it was a typo.
“I didn’t pack any lint from the dryer,” she replied as Jordan’s features hardened.
“Then, what did you pack?”
She stared up at him. “Lemon verbena-scented dryer sheets.”
“Dryer sheets?” he echoed with a scrunched brow.
She nodded. “Yes, I told you. I brought lemon verbena-scented dryer sheets.”
He shook his head. “What’s verbena?”
“I don’t know, but they’re good for the earth, and they smell all lemony sweet,” she answered, getting a little tired of his know-it-all vibe.
“We use earth-friendly dryer sheets?” he questioned.
If she weren’t afraid of choking on rain infused with alpaca bile, she would have scoffed.
“Of course, we do! Do you think I’d purchase earth-unfriendly dryer sheets?”
“I’d never given it much thought,” he answered.
How sexist! Just because he was a man, it didn’t give him a license not to care about non-toxic laundry products.
