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He nodded. But as he unwrapped a piece of Laughing Cow cheese, he recalled Olivia joking about it during their trip to the supermarket in Paphos. He pushed the memory away.
TJ popped a handful of grapes into his mouth. “So, Rick, now that we’re almost done here, what’s your next gig? Have you got something lined up?”
Trust TJ to ask if he was thinking ahead. But looking forward was far preferable to brooding over Olivia.
Rick tapped a hard-boiled egg against his knife and started peeling it. “I was considering a couple of options, but I decided to go back to Turkey to work for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. I’ll be doing a mix of underwater excavation and lab work like I did last fall.”
“That’s so exciting,” Alisha said. “I lived in Istanbul for a year and really liked it. If you visit the city, hit me up for recs. I know some killer restaurants.”
“Just out of curiosity, what was the other choice?” Marisol asked.
“I was thinking about going home to California to see my family,” Rick said. “I haven’t been back in years. I was going to look for work in cultural resource management.” At Marisol’s curious look, he added, “Rescue archaeology—conducting surveys or excavating sites threatened by construction or land development.”
Alisha unpeeled an orange and broke it into segments. She passed a few to Marisol. “Let’s see…uncovering an underwater shipwreck versus digging up the site of a future high-rise. Sounds like you made the right choice.”
“Except if you went back to California, you could be with Olivia,” TJ said. “Isn’t she at UCLA?” At the stunned looks Alisha and Marisol gave him, he clapped his hand over his mouth. “Oh, shit. Forget I said that.”
Marisol giggled. “Seems obvious to me. I’ve seen the way Olivia looks at you.”
“Yep, the girl’s got it bad,” Alisha agreed. “Are you two an item?”
Rick released a tight breath. “We were, but not anymore. It wouldn’t work out in the long run.”
“Why not?” Marisol said. “You’re both archaeologists. You both love what you do. I think it’s so romantic.”
“Yeah, but by next spring, she’ll have her PhD and be looking for teaching jobs. I’ll never be at that level.” Rick’s gaze fell on TJ. “Like you said, it’s all about connections, right? I’m not a very valuable one.”
“Shit, man, I shouldn’t have said that,” TJ said. “I was talking out of my ass. When I saw you at the airport in Larnaca, looking so jacked, I had to compete somehow. Unlike you, I’m not exactly built like a superhero. I don’t have half your experience, either.”
“But you’ve battled scorpions in the desert heat,” Alisha teased.
“Rick’s done more than that,” TJ said. “The guy’s been living without a safety net. That’s super ballsy.” He grabbed the last two cookies from the pack and crumpled up the wrapper.
“You honestly think Olivia cares whether you get a PhD?” Marisol asked. “That might be her dream, but it doesn’t mean she expects you to do the same thing. Unless you want to?”
Even if he’d been stung by Olivia’s words, their argument had forced Rick to think about what he really wanted, as had his conversation with Dr. Roth. “Nope. As much as I like working with students, academia’s not for me. I’d rather be out in the field, but it’s hard to teach without a doctorate. Or a master’s, at least.”
“Maybe you could figure something out,” TJ said. “Like, if you did the rescue archaeology thing, you could teach high school students about it. Run weekend courses where they could learn about preserving our cultural heritage. They won’t care if you’re from an Ivy League school. They’ll just want to hear about all the stuff you’ve done in the field.”
True. A kid fascinated by archaeology would be more impressed by Rick’s adventures than his credentials.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll consider it, though I’m not sure when I’ll be heading back to California.”
“What about Olivia?” Marisol asked. “Are you just going to let her go? If you really want her, I bet you could make it work. She knows you care about her, right?”
Does she?
When she’d told him it was over, he hadn’t asked if they could talk things out. Instead, he’d let her walk away. He hadn’t even tried to stop her.
“No. I never told her. Because I’m an idiot,” he muttered.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Alisha said. “Most guys are idiots. But it’s not too late to fix this. We’ve got—what—a week left? That’s still time to win her back.”
“Yeah, man,” TJ said. “First rule of rom-coms—it’s never too late for a grand gesture.”
Rick wasn’t sure what a grand gesture entailed, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. Knowing TJ, there was a lengthy story behind it.
Once lunch was over, he and TJ staked out two more test pits. With any luck, they might learn whether the stone feature Alisha and Marisol had uncovered was part of a larger structure, like a wall or a building. Rick secretly hoped they might find the remains of round stone dwellings, like the type seen at Choirokoitia, a well-known Neolithic settlement located an hour east of them. Discovering a similar site would be a huge accomplishment.
