Page 47 of Jackson's Redemption
There were tears in her eyes. But they didn’t fall. For that, I was grateful.
I didn’t tell her I upgraded her plane ticket home to first class. She would find out once she got to the airport. I knew the first-class seats on the Alaska Airlines reclined all the way back and she would need that to deal with the pain. Pain I caused because she ran from me.
When I got to Hope’s Point, there didn’t seem to be any point in hanging around town. I went back to camp. Back to work. And wondered how long it took for a person to fall out of love.
* * *
Bud’s Place
Olivia
Don’t look over your shoulder. Don’t look over your shoulder. Shit. I want to look over my shoulder.
“Well, if it isn’t God’s gift to the engineering core.”
Inwardly, I smiled, thinking I had won. He’d approached me first, so I had no choice but to turn around and address him.
“Noah,” I said in greeting as he stopped next to the bar stool where I was sitting.
“Olivia,” he said through gritted teeth. Then he held his finger up to Bud to order a beer.
“Here again with the goons? Sorry, I mean the guys.”
He snarled. “Yes, in fact, I am. Two of them of anyway. Angel’s off on some mission of love, the idiot. And Jackson over there, well, he just got his heart crushed so he’s no fun. Not that he ever was.”
Mission of love?Heart crushed? That didn’t make sense. Not in Hope’s Point where the population was less than a hundred people and that was including the Dyson employees. All of whom were men.
Something I was keenly aware of every time I was on the off-shore rig or at the north side camp. Except a woman didn’t get into this business thinking she was going to be surrounded by women. She did it with a purpose. To change the culture from within.
At least that’s what I told myself I was doing. My own personal crusade.
Only sometimes I wasn’t exactly sure what I was crusading against.
Noah—or Ark to his team—was the easy answer.
Sometimes, though, it would be nice to have my own posse of girls to run with up here. To gossip with. To tell them what a horrible person Noah truly was, despite his handsomeness.
I really hated that he was so smoking hot. Really. Hated. It. Jeans, boots and flannel shirt. That’s all he ever wore, and I thought, it’s all he ever needed to wear.
Then I stopped thinking about how hot he was and considered what he’d said about Eli. I remembered there had been a short blonde with Eli when I’d been here a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask who she was or why she was here. Noah and I had gotten into a fight over my shoes.
Noah and I got into a lot of fights. About everything.
“So where are all these women coming from that you guys are falling desperately in love with? Is this some sort of Russian Bride program you’re running? Oh, I know, maybe you’re testing out a new reality TV show.Seven Brides for Seven Oil Riggers. That is something I could imagine on the Nature channel.”
Bud put two beers on the bar and slid them toward each of us with a wary look that suggested he didn’t want any problems tonight.
I took my beer and offered him a smile as a way of saying I never started any of our fights. It was always Noah.
“You’re not too far off,’ he said leaning against the bar facing me. I could feel him checking me out.
This time I had opted to pass on the skirt and heels, instead having gone with jeans and boots. The last time I was here I had been trying to make a point of not compromising my femininity on these now monthly trips. I wanted to show, not just Noah, but everyone, that I was both a woman and an engineer. I wasn’t going to hide either fact.
Which, of course, led to Noah accusing me of being a tease. Not true. I simply wanted the guys to acknowledge that I was a woman in their camp and to be considerate of that fact. It was 2018. #METOO. It was time for that sexist, misogynistic shit to end. What better place to prove men could be civilized than amidst an all-male camp of professional workers?
In fact, other than Noah, I really felt most of the guys here respected me.
Well, some of them. Which was progress.
