Chapter 29
CHARLIE
Janice Dawson, it turns out, gets carsick. Fortunately however, according to her, she is perfectly fine if she rides in the front seat.
Myles and I split the drive, me taking the first half, him taking the second after we’d stopped for a quick dinner. Up in the front, Janice talked the entire way.
When it was my turn to drive, I had done everything I could to keep my eyes away from the rear-view mirror where I knew they would land on the reflection of Myles.
After we traded at the halfway mark though, I quickly realized I didn't need to have worried because every time I glanced up, it seemed like Myles's eyes were meeting mine in that little rectangle of glass.
True, most of the looks he gave me only threatened to make me laugh as he grimaced and eye-rolled his way through some of the cringier things Janice said, but there were other moments that made my skin prickle and my palms break out in a sweat when it could have been so easy to read so much more than I should into softer looks and smiles.
Only when my mind had latched on to the possible explanation that at those moments, he might have been thinking about Rachel, and that the looks might have had nothing to do with me at all, had I been able to switch off those dangerous flickers of hope that had been so hard to extinguish in my chest.
During the last hour of the trip, Janice had fallen asleep in the front seat, snoring loudly but twitching like she was about to wake up any time Myles and I even tried to whisper back and forth.
Long before Myles pulls us into a parking place near the entrance to the hotel where reservations had been made for us, we’d totally given up on any kind of conversation, leaving me to sit far too long with my own, not especially cheerful, thoughts and the strange, thick tension that had to be all in my imagination, hovering between the driver’s seat and my spot in the back.
Needless to say, I can’t remember a time when I’ve ever been more ready to get out of a car.
Ever the gentleman, Myles unloads all three of our bags from the back—his backpack, and Janice’s and my carry-on sized suitcases.
Despite the fact that it’s approaching ten, the hotel lobby is crowded, and we have to wait in line before the clerk at the desk is ready to check us in.
“Three rooms for the Riverside School District,” Janice raps out as soon as the man behind the counter beckons us forward.
He’s younger than Myles and me, probably just barely out of high school, with a line of piercings down his left ear and red streaks highlighting his shoulder-length black hair. Dark eyeliner makes his grey eyes pop.
I can feel the judgments Janice is passing on him, even with her back turned to me, and to try to make up for her unfriendliness, I flash the guy an extra bright smile from over her shoulder.
The clerk, who had visibly shrunken away from Janice’s sharpness, shifts his attention to me, returning my smile with a lopsided grin before typing away furiously on his keyboard for a second.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Myles’s gaze dart to my face. He looks…bothered, but I can’t understand why, unless it’s about Janice. Only that doesn’t match the searching, questioning scrunch of his eyebrows…
“What do you mean only two? How did this happen?”
Janice’s critical voice (the exact tone I hear all too often through the wall of my classroom) rings through my focus on Myles, making me realize the clerk must have said something to her.
“I need an explanation, and I need you to find someone to fix your mistake.” One of her hands is on her hip while she uses the other to point an aggressive finger at the clerk, whose face is now flushing blotchy scarlet.
“I-I didn’t handle the booking,” the poor kid mumbles, looking miserable. “And my manager is on her break.”
“What’s going on?”
The clerk’s eyes shift gratefully from Janice to me as I step up to the counter, totally ignoring her as she continues to fume.
“Something happened with the booking for your party,” he tells me, red still staining his cheeks.
At least he doesn’t look like he wants to sink into the floor anymore though.
“For some reason, there are only two rooms listed under the Riverside reservation, and it sounds like you were expecting three—”
“We certainly were,” Janice’s voice is loud as she cuts across him.
“—and with the conference going on,” the clerk continues, obviously trying to tune Janice out as he fixes his eyes on me, “we’re all booked up for the next three nights.”
“And,” she narrows her eyes, “what he hasn’t told you yet is the worst of it. They’re both single rooms. Two beds, two rooms,” she pauses for emphasis before making her final scandalized assessment, “three of us.”
“This doesn’t have to be a big deal,” I start, about to say that Myles and I can just share.
Even with the obvious excuse though, and despite the fact that just two weekends ago, I slept two nights in a row holding him on his sofa, the prospect of sharing a bed with Myles has my heart going about a million miles a minute.
“Myles and I—” the words get stuck halfway out, and I swallow hard against the dryness at the back of my throat.
“We don’t mind sharing, at all, do we, Charlie?” Myles’s eyes catch and hold mine as he throws his arm around my waist, pulling me close against his side. “It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.”
Dimly, I’m aware of Janice gaping at us and of the startled look on the clerk’s face, but really, all I can focus on is the feel of Myles’s body, so unexpectedly pressed alongside mine. How his hand squeezes, just the lightest fraction of a squeeze, against my hip for a second.
I know he’s just talking about that night when we were fourteen, and about when he was sick and we slept together on his sofa, but something about the way he just said it sounded so…different. And, for some reason that makes totally no sense, this feels different.
This isn’t going to be one kid crawling into bed with the other when one of them is hurting. It’s not one friend passing out on the couch against the other when he’s sick.
Even though the rational part of my mind knows nothing is going to happen and that this situation is actually the most practically rooted of all our bed-sharing scenarios, I can’t let go of the fact that what we’ve just signed up for is Myles and me climbing into bed together.
On purpose. As adults. Three nights in a row.
Annnd that’s on top of all the mixed signals and confusion Myles has been throwing my way.
Mutely, jerkily, I shake my head. Then, after way too long of a pause, I choke out, “Don’t mind. Sharing’s good.”
Ohmigod, why? That was so not how any normal human being talks.
Myles may or may not be aware of the fact that my brain’s totally short circuited because, while he gently steers me out of the way to take over checking us in, he doesn’t push me away either.
He doesn’t even let me go for that matter, and what it means that his arm is still around me and his hand still planted firmly on my hip, I won’t even let myself investigate for a single moment.
One short minute later, the clerk is handing Janice one and Myles two key cards, flashing one last friendly, apologetic smile (directed pointedly to the right of Janice where Myles and I stand.)
“That guy spent the entire time checking you out,” Myles hisses the moment we step away from the counter, completely disregarding the fact that Janice can totally hear him. Probably even the clerk too.
His arm is gone from my waist now, and I miss it. Way more than I should let myself.
I laugh, shaking my head, as something eager and foolish flares in my chest. Because why would Myles care? “No he didn’t. He was awkward and upset by—by what happened, and he was looking at me because I was nice to him.”
“He couldn’t take his eyes off you,” Myles insists, glancing back over his shoulder in the direction of the clerk.
I don’t know what exactly has gotten into me, because before I can stop myself, I’m blurting, “Well, he is kind of cute.”
I’m sure he is, if you like punky, barely legal twinks.
Nothing against the clerk, but I however like— Nope.
I know full well what my type is, and replaying it in my head is so totally not doing me any favors when I’m about to spend the next three nights sharing a bed with the precise archetype of that type. Ohmigod…
And Oh. My. God. Because I swear I can see Myles’s eyes darkening as a scowl forms on his lips and his shoulders tense. Just like if he were— But he can’t be— Jealous?
My pulse is racing so hard and fast, the whole damn hotel feels like it’s doing cartwheels around me, but even though the thought that Myles could, by some crazy miracle, be jealous over my quip about the hotel clerk, I can’t stand the idea of hurting him, even in the tiniest way.
And so, I tell him the truth. “Not my type though.”
Ugh, why is it that those words can’t manage to come out anywhere nearly as light and casual as I’d meant for them to?
But the way Myles’s shoulders relax and his face lightens does things to me. Dangerous, hopeful things that don’t match up at all with the memory that’s burned into my brain of him and Rachel Beck embracing.
“Yeah?”
His eyes are locked on mine, and oh sweet Jesus, I’ve got to be imagining the breathy, hopeful sound in his voice.
The elevator dings, and I jump. Literally jump, because I hadn’t even realized we were standing right beside it.
What it is about sharing an actual bed with Myles that feels so totally different than sleeping on his sofa with him, I have no idea, but the space between us is even more charged than I’d ever imagined it would be.
Part of me wonders if maybe it’s not even the bed but something else.