I winced and did as he said. While I didn’t want to come into physical contact with him, I also didn’t want to die on the back of this thing. Or worse, have another humiliating moment and spend the afternoon in the medical van—again.
“You on?” Grant asked.
“Uh huh,” I said as I gripped his waist tighter.
“I won’t go too fast,” he assured me. “Just try to yell in my ear if you don’t think I’m going the right way.”
“I’ll yell when to stop. Just drive straight that way and then we can check the map again,” I instructed.
Grant pulled away and we headed out through the forest. It wasn’t as scary as I’d anticipated it would be. The wind whipped at our clothes but the weather was relatively warm, with the sun beating down on us. As we entered the forest, we came to a clearly marked path.
Grant sped up a little bit and I held on tighter, surprised to find myself smiling.
This was actually kind of fun.
We arrived at a fork in the road and I yelled, “Stop.”
Grant obliged and I pulled out the map from my pocket.
“Okay, looks like we need to go left. It should be up the path just a few hundred feet.”
“You got it, boss. Ready?”
“Ready.”
Grant took off again and we arrived at the building site. There was already a camera operator there, as well as the structure that we had been told about.
We both hopped off and jogged over to the job site.
Grant ran a hand through his hair after taking off hishelmet. “This is going to take forever,” he said, assessing all the building materials in front of us.
He was right. Even if the instructions were simple and we hit this out of the park, it would still take at least an hour or two.
“Let’s get started, then,” I said, finding a blueprint of sorts and examining it. Grant leaned over my shoulder to look at it too.
“Maybe we should start here,” he suggested. He pointed to the walls that we’d have to build. The whole thing was relatively basic. We’d assemble each wall on the ground before attaching them to the base of the shelter.
We got to work, silently at first. I would hand him the next piece and he would screw it into place with the provided electric screwdriver. Thankfully, the burn from my zip lining incident was well on its way to being fully healed, and I could barely feel it underneath the fresh bandage I had applied this morning.
After twenty minutes we had the first wall done and set aside. As we moved on to the next one, I wordlessly handed Grant the next piece.
He eyed me and grabbed it. “You know, this might go by faster if we—I don’t know—talk?”
“You want to talk to me?” My disbelief was evident.
He screwed down the piece. “Why not?”
“You haven’t wanted to talk to me so far,” I pointed out.
“When have I had the chance? You were always with Arnie, and then Eli.”
I mean...I guess he wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t like I was the most open person in the world, especially not with him.
“No offense, but it just didn’t seem like we’d get along,” I said.
He clutched his hand to his heart. “Ouch. Offense taken. Why would you say that?”
“I really need to spell it out?” I asked, surprised he was pushing this.
