Tic-Tac-Mistletoe - N.R. Walker Page 0,1

my booking.

Why would they? My rental car was waiting for me in Spokane. In Washington. Not in freaking Montana.

“Oh,” I whispered, and my left eye twitched. “That’s nice.” I looked around the airport, at the line of annoyed people behind me. “Excellent. I’ve seen that movie where Tom Hanks lives in an airport. It wasn’t so bad. Could be worse. Could’ve been the one where he’s stuck on the island, I guess. Though I didn’t pack a volleyball, so that would’ve sucked.”

She blinked and tap-tap-tapped away at her keyboard. “But sir, we’ve had a lot of cancelled flights today because of the weather. I can arrange a vehicle for you, if you’d like?”

Oh, my sweet baby Jesus in a manger, why didn’t she lead with that?

“I would like that very much,” I said, wiping at my eye with my sleeve. “It’s been a day.”

She smiled, kindly. “I can see that.”

I meant it literally—I left home literally a day ago—but whatever. I checked my phone again. “Uh, are there mobile phone . . . er, cell phone service issues? Or do I need to do some magic overseas-roaming thing to my phone?” I’d asked the phone guy back home what I had to do with my phone and he said—

“Oh, the storm took out a cell tower,” she replied. “Could be down a while.”

Because of course the blizzard took down a cell tower. Because of course it fucking did.

“Oh, I’m supposed to drive to my sister’s place,” I added, but then the guy behind me cleared his throat. Clearly my disasters were an inconvenience to him, and I noticed the woman behind him checked her watch. “You know what?” I said, giving the poor woman behind the counter a big ol’ smile. “I’ll be fine. Who needs a map or directions when you’re in a foreign country, huh?”

“Oh, I might have something . . . ,” she said, then produced an old fashioned folded map. Like it was 1992. Like they used in the dark ages before the internet. She handed it over, and with a glance to the ever-growing line behind me, I took it.

I signed everything I needed to sign, she spieled off a slew of instructions, and a few minutes later and with a renewed sense of vigour, I was wheeling my wonky suitcases out of the airport.

And directly into the Arctic.

Well, not quite, but close enough. It sure felt like it. The skies were grey, the clouds were low, the wind was a thousand frozen ice needles into my face, and I was cold through to the bone in less than three seconds.

Deciding it was better to find the car instead of freezing to death on the footpath, I followed the signs and pressed the key fob thingy until my car beeped at me. I threw my suitcases in the boot compartment and got into the driver’s seat—which was the exact moment I remembered it was on the other side of the car.

Because of course it fucking was.

After getting out and walking around to the other side and getting in behind the actual steering wheel, I took a few deep breaths. I had prepared myself for this. Driving in a different country, on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, honestly couldn’t be too hard. People did it all the time. And while I might be a totally catastrophic, unmitigated disaster, amongst a long list of other things, contrary to popular belief, I was not an idiot.

I could do this.

I checked my phone, and seeing it had no service, I typed out a quick message to my sister anyway. If, on the off chance there was a tiny blip of service, the message might get through. With that done and with the paper map on the seat beside me, I reversed successfully out of the parking spot. Then, ever so slowly, I drove out of the parking lot. Thankfully there was a line of traffic I could just merge into, and driving on the wrong side of the road wasn’t so bad when I was following a line of cars.

I drove a few blocks without a major incident, and I was feeling more and more confident despite the worsening weather out my windscreen. The clouds were lower now, darker too. And the rain had become sleet at some point, and the road was dirty slush. I drove slower than a sedated sloth might have, probably annoying every other driver on the