our Future Farmers of America club—but the short walk from my car to the van has got to be some kind of metaphor for what a college education can do for a person. My shaggy old suitcase chugs along, veering off-path every time it hits a pebble. The fabric is worn out, the lock is broken, and the wheels are barely attached to the case. Up ahead, James McCann is shiny as a penny as he climbs out of his sleek BMW coupe and extracts his glossy aluminum luggage. He sets it down like it weighs nothing and, behind him, it glides across the parking lot like an obedient, high-end robot.
I want to throw something at him, preferably my shitty suitcase.
Plus, he’s wearing a neatly pressed navy suit like we’re going to another Netflix meeting instead of climbing into a cramped van for a fourteen-hour drive from Jackson to Los Angeles.
Irritation crawls up my spine.
“You’re wearing work clothes?” I have to yell to drown out the horrifying screech of my suitcase wheels struggling to stay connected to the bag.
He doesn’t turn around. “Are we not headed to work?”
“Not work work. We’re going to be sitting for a while.” Thanks to you, I think. “I assumed we should wear something at least fifty percent Lycra with no zipper.”
“I left my yoga pants at home.” He still doesn’t even look at me over his shoulder. “This is how I dress, Carey.”
“Even when relaxing?”
“We have an event tonight.”
“And we can change at the last stop,” I say. “Won’t you get wrinkled?”
This time, he looks back at me over the top of his glasses. “I don’t wrinkle.”
I glare because, as impossible as it seems, if anyone can figure out how to be both stain- and wrinkle-proof, it’s James. He keeps walking, and I riffle through my memory. In the couple of months that he’s been working for Rusty, I don’t think I’ve ever seen James in casual clothing, or looking anything less than recently pressed. No jeans, certainly no sweats. Now all I can imagine is James McCann washing his silver BMW in his driveway wearing tailored chinos and one of his many Easter egg–hued button-down shirts.
He’s definitely never spilled a forty-ounce Super Big Gulp down his cleavage.
“Why are you so interested in my clothes?” he asks.
For the record, I’m not—I mean, not really. It’s annoying that he’s seemingly so perfectly turned out, but if I have to endure a week of this, I’m doing it in an elastic waistband.
“Because we’re here against our will,” I say, “and you and I are about to spend the entire day driving to Los Angeles. I’m wearing what I want.”
“I’m sure Melissa won’t have anything to say about that,” he says dryly.
I glance down at my leggings and faded Dolly Parton T-shirt. Melly doesn’t like what I wear even when I’m dressed up, though I do use the term dressed up loosely. Fashion is not my forte. But if I have to tolerate her disapproving face anyway, I might as well be comfortable.
We roll our suitcases around the side of a building that houses one of the Comb+Honey warehouses, and James comes to an abrupt stop. My face collides with his shoulder blade.
I’m too busy being annoyed that his back feels wonderfully solid and defined under that dress shirt to immediately realize what caused him to pull up short.
“So I guess they’re not going for subtle,” he says.
I follow his attention to the giant bus parked at the loading dock.
Wow. “Am I the only one who thought the publisher had booked a van? I mean, a fancy van, but still.”
James heaves a sigh of resignation at my side. “No.”
“I definitely didn’t think we’d be traveling inside Melly’s and Rusty’s heads.”
But why am I surprised? Melly loves flash and she loves her brand—the Comb+Honey logo is literally stamped or embroidered on everything from golf shirts to key chains to the staplers in the office. (If she didn’t think tattoos were the worst kind of tacky, I’m sure she would have gotten a Comb+Honey tramp stamp years ago.) So obviously I was expecting a logo on the door. At most, I was thinking the book title would be tastefully scripted along the side. I did not expect a mammoth tour bus wrapped in a giant photo of Melissa and Rusty.
Their too-white smiles are stretched in vinyl across forty-five feet of windows and steel. Don’t get me wrong, the Tripps are a good-looking couple, but nobody looks their best at