Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Tristan
It’s quite an adjustment having so many people with me on the drive back to Valor Springs.
It’s a straight shot of about twenty-two hours, but we decided to break it up into three days.
We’ll go through Missouri and Oklahoma. There are five of us going, that’s all we can fit in the car.
There were a few others that wanted to go, but taking two cars seemed a little excessive.
So now I’m stuffed into the car with Eros, Apollo, Keegan and Armando. Levi thought about coming with us, but his wife, Felicity, is eight months pregnant. And he worried that she could go into early labor and didn’t want to take the chance. I’m excited to meet the little nugget.
“Are we stopping soon? I’m hungry,” Apollo says to Keegan.
“We stopped to eat like two hours ago.” Armando laughs from the back.
“Yeah, and? I’m hungry. I’m a growing bear.”
“Yeah, growing rounder.” Eros laughs.
“Feed me!” Apollo growls at Keegan.
After another hour, we finally get to the hotel. Apollo complained the whole time.
“And you said you wished you had siblings,” Eros says to me as he sighs.
“I still wish I had siblings.”
“You’re crazy. You can take one of mine, in fact, take Apollo. But keep in mind, he eats and grumbles a lot.”
“I’ll take him.” I laugh. “So does this mean I get to be a polar bear shifter?”
Eros laughs. “Sure. Why not.”
We all laugh and head into the hotel to check in.
“Looks like there’s a restaurant here. We can get dinner after we drop our stuff in the rooms. I got us two adjoining rooms, but I booked it before I knew there’d be five of us. So I’m pretty sure one of us is sleeping on the floor.” I look at all of them.
“I got it, Apollo can sleep on a cot. Some hotels will give you a cot for children.” Eros smiles.
“Wait. Why me?” Apollo frowns.
“Why not you? You’re the baby in our family…” Eros smirks.
I check us in as the brothers continue grumbling at each other. People are starting to look at them.
“We need a cot for the room, please,” I say to the concierge.
She looks at all of us.
“I don’t think any of you will fit on a cot,” she whispers to me.
I laugh. “We’ll make it work.”
“I can get you an upgraded room, just give me a sec.”
She starts clacking away at the keyboard for a few minutes. The brothers are still arguing, now it’s about who eats more. They’re too much.
“Okay, I got you adjoining rooms. Each has a bedroom with two queen beds and a pull-out sofa bed.” She smiles at me.
“Thank you, we really appreciate this. How much more is it?”
“Oh don’t worry, it’s all taken care of.” She’s still smiling at me as I sign the papers and she hands me five keys.
I walk over to the guys and hand them each a key, telling them what the concierge did for us. They all smile and wave at her as we walk past.
“I think she likes you.” Eros chuckles to me.
“You’re funny.” I shake my head.
“Hey, my key sleeve has a phone number on it and the name ‘Melody.’ I’m pretty sure this is yours.” Apollo laughs as he hands me the key.
We get to the room and drop our stuff.
“Um, I’m still hungry,” Apollo says as he frowns at us.
“I swear Mama dropped you too many times as a baby.”
“That’s rude,” Apollo says as he squints at his brother.
“I saw the restaurant downstairs while Tristan was checking in. I’m kind of hungry too,” Armando says as we watch Apollo and Eros wrestling on the ground.
“Maybe we should leave them and go eat.” Keegan shrugs as he moves out of their way.
“I’m hungry too.” I nod.
We start to head out the door when Apollo comes barreling out and almost takes us all down.
“See? There’s something seriously wrong with you.” Eros laughs.
“You think we can fit in one elevator this time?” Armando asks as he laughs. Coming up, we had to take two. We couldn’t fit in one with our suitcases.
“Maybe?” Keegan answers as we all laugh.
We all shove into the elevator, it’s a little tight but doable. It’s almost like when you go to the circus and see the clown car with all the clowns stuffed into it. When we get to the lobby and get out, we can hear people making comments. It’s pretty funny.
We all take a minute to look at the menu, it looks like they have a pretty good variety.
“Looks good to me,” I say as the others nod.
We order and eat enough to feed ten of us. I remember the first time I went out with some of the family in Chicago. I’d never seen a restaurant bill so high before that night. But tonight? We came pretty close. The waitress comes back with dessert for each of us.
“We didn’t order this,” I say.
“It’s from Melody, she wanted to pay for your dinner, but you paid before she told me. So she got you all dessert.”
“Please tell her thank you,” I say as the guys chuckle at me. I swear they’re like kids.
“She also asked me to give you this,” she says as she hands me a piece of paper. “In case you didn’t get the right key.”
I thank her again as she walks away.
“Are you going to call her?” Eros asks.
“I wasn’t planning on it. I mean it’s not like we’re coming back here. But now I feel like I owe her for all this.” I sigh and get up, heading to the concierge desk.
“Hi, Tristan, did you need something?” Melody smiles.
“No, I wanted to thank you for the dessert. And let you know that I appreciate what you’ve done for us with the rooms. But I’m not in a position to hang out with you. My brothers and I are only in town for one night.”
“I understand. My mom always said you’ll never know until you try. So I had to try and see if you were interested.”
“I’m flattered and thank you again for everything,” I say as I head back to the table.
“She seemed to take it well,” Armando says to me.
“She did. And she seems really nice, but I’m just not in the right headspace for meeting someone. Especially while I’m headed back to Valor Springs.”
“Have you been back at all since you enlisted?” Eros asks.
“Nope. Not once. I haven’t even talked to anyone back there. I had a few friends, but it was the type of friendship where we only texted for holidays.”
“I get it. We have a few friends in Greece like that. I mean if we went back, we’d hang out. But keeping in touch is harder,” Apollo adds.
We finish up dinner and head to the room to get some rest. The plan is to get an early start and maybe try to do the last sixteen hours in one shot. We’ll just take turns driving. I really want to get this over with and get my parents back to Lake Renegade.