The Expat Diaries: Misfortune Cookie (Single in the City Book 2) by Michele Gorman Page A

bounces off the side of the bus. Or, more accurately, the bus bounces off the side of something, ricocheting from the barrier towards the guardrail, and the abyss beyond, while the less continent passengers soil themselves. ‘Yeeaahh!’
    We come to rest a little way up the road. I swear I see the driver take a swig out of a bottle in his bag. It looks a hundred proof.
    ‘All right me lover?’ Brent grins, like he’s waiting for our exclamations of praise for planning this adventure just for us.
    ‘I think so.’ Aside from my fingertips, which are knuckle-deep in the seat back, there doesn’t appear to be any damage.
    Stuart twists around to address Stacy, who’s wedged between me and the window. ‘You all right?’
    She’s hyperventilating.
    ‘Hoo. Hoo, yeah. I’m okay, hoo.’ Women in labor sound less distressed. ‘Isn’t there another way to get to the monastery?’
    ‘Brent?’
    ‘Sure, we could have taken the gondola.’
    There’s a gondola? As in a nice, slow, safe, not-driven-by-maniac mode of transport? ‘Is there a stop close by?’
    ‘Nah, it’s back where we got the bus.’
    ‘Stace,’ I say. ‘Do you want to lie down for a minute?’
    ‘Okay.’ Docile as a lamb, she lays her head in my lap. Now I know she’s not all right. Stacy’s not the type to show weakness.
    ‘Here, buckle up.’ I don’t want my best friend bouncing around like popcorn in the pan when we start moving again.
    ‘How can you not be scared?’ I ask Brent, who looks like he’s about to have a quick nap. I’m really warming to him. He’s remarkably easy-going, and reminds me a little of my housemate, Adam, from London. Adam is the kind of big, cuddly man who women want to be friends with, the type who suffers under the curse of the nice-guy syndrome. Always a best friend, never a lover. Brent has the advantage of a runner’s build (which would be yum if it wasn’t covered in ginger fur), but his happy, open face tells you that he is nice-guy afflicted. He wouldn’t be bad-looking if he didn’t have quite so much forehead, but Mother Nature can be cruel. His eyes are a pretty light blue but his face is a little too delicate for a man. It’s his pointy nose and very archy eyebrows. Plus, his accent makes him sound simple. As endearing as this is in a friend, few women want to hear it when being smutty-talked in bed. His brother, sharer of chromosomes, is identically challenged. They’re only differentiated by their bellies; Stuart has one and Brent doesn’t.
    ‘Nah, I’m not frightened. I have faith that I’m not going to die on a back road in Hong Kong. So I don’t worry about things like that.’ He shrugs.
    ‘You’re a fatalist then? You believe there’s a time and place, and you’re not going to go before your number is called?’ I’d love to have that kind of faith. Being a lapsed Protestant and a devout worrier, there’s no chance.
    ‘And that’s the truth,’ he states with a nod.
    Their accents will take getting used to. And they keep calling us lover, which I assume is just a figure of speech in the West Country, not a declaration of intent. ‘What makes you think your ticket’s not going to be punched on the ride back?’ I ask.
    His smile briefly falters. ‘Well, I just don’t. It doesn’t do any good to worry, does it? Might as well live your life as you’d like to. Otherwise you’re just biding time.’
    ‘Like reading magazines in the waiting room,’ I propose.
    ‘That’s right. I’d rather just turn up when my appointment is called.’
    The driver’s unusual application of brakes makes Stacy bolt upright. ‘Are we there?’ She’s much more chipper with the risk of suicidal plunge behind us.
    ‘It seems so.’ Seven thousand stairs meander to the top of the hill. They have painful journey written all over them.
    ‘Do we have to climb all the way up?’ I ask. ‘I can see it fine from here. Big Buddha, very nice. I’ll get a photo.’ In the dim distance,