Chapter 5 Easton #2
“Because the one surefire way to make him come running back is if he hears you’re on a road trip with another guy.”
He just lets it hang there for a moment in the air between us, probably assuming that I’m going to refute this or argue in some way.
And normally I would, but…he’s actually right.
Thomas spent much of his adolescence feeling like a geek, which is one of the reasons this stupid trip with Devon Hunt holds so much appeal—it’s another chance to assure himself those days are behind him.
Another chance to have a bunch of girls who’d have ignored him in high school fawn over him now.
I assumed it would grow old fast, but it’s not happening as fast as I’d hoped.
He could use a nudge, and a couple of social media posts showing me traveling with Elijah, the six-five prom king, might remind him that the clock is ticking, that there’s something important he could lose while he relives his lost youth. Still, is that worth enduring the next few days with Elijah?
I sit up, folding my arms over my knees. “I’m not even sure I want to marry Thomas badly enough to spend a million hours in a car with you and your grandmother.”
He raises a brow. “Well, that’s probably something you should sort out before you win him back, but I still need help and you know you’ll eventually say yes.”
Okay, sure. But if I’m subjecting myself to all of this bullshit, I’m getting something more out of it than the ability to claim we traveled together.
Though I can’t believe I’m about to beg a guy who dumped me to help me win back another guy who dumped me. A guy who was supposed to be here to rub the first guy’s face in it.
“I’ll go if you pretend we’re together in any pictures I take. And we stay overnight in West Palm Beach on the way. I can’t sit in the car for eleven hours. I just can’t.”
His eyes narrow. “Why West Palm?”
“A, it’s probably about the halfway point,” I say, ticking the item off on my finger. “B, I know people there from school.”
“Don’t you see enough of them in Boston?”
He’s so obtuse at times. Or maybe he hasn’t spent the past five years wondering how to make an ex jealous.
“The point isn’t to see more of them,” I reply. “The point is for them to see me with another guy, so word filters back to Thomas.”
Because even if he’s in the middle of nowhere and even if he’s not stalking my Instagram feed the way I’m stalking his, James and Melissa will text people to say they saw us together, and one of those people will definitely text Thomas.
“So what does seeing your friends entail?” he asks. He hasn’t moved an inch and yet it’s as if he’s backed away a foot.
“Jesus Christ, Elijah, I’m trying to marry my boyfriend. Stop acting like I’m asking you to fuck me in the town square.”
His eyes catch mine, as if he’s picturing it. As if he wouldn’t mind. Something flickers inside me, a long, slow pulse of heat. For a half-second, it’s as if the past five years never happened. “Fine. But what do I have to do?”
“Mostly just act like a decent human being who’s interested in me for an hour or two.”
I expect him to make the kind of comment I’d make in his shoes: That’s harder than you might think or It’ll be my greatest acting role ever.
Instead, something like fear flickers in his eyes before he glances away. “I’ll do it. I just see a lot of ways it could go wrong. You’ll be ready Monday?”
“This Monday? That’s almost two weeks before the wedding.”
Kelsey wanted close friends and family to get in several days early, a sort of vacation/extended reunion, but two weeks? That’s nuts.
“My grandma wants to stop a lot. Maybe it’ll take three days and maybe it’ll take ten. I’m just planning for the worst.”
Which means, potentially, a lot of time alone with Elijah, time only broken by the presence of an old woman who always disliked me and will be making us stop at every flea market and Cracker Barrel over the course of six hundred miles.
“You really buried the lede, there, didn’t you?”
He grins and my stomach does that same old topsy-turvy thing it’s done since I was a kid. “I figured the worst part was traveling with me.”
Oh, right.
It definitely is.
How could I have already forgotten?
“Wait,” says Kelsey, coming to a dead stop in the middle of our beach walk a few hours later. “You agreed?”
I shrug. “I don’t like your grandmother, but it would kind of cast a pall over your wedding if she died en route. Besides, as he pointed out, one stellar way to get Thomas to come running back is for him to think I’m on a road trip with someone else.”
Kelsey has started walking again—she’s strangely paranoid about being able to get into her wedding dress, though she looks the same as she always has, and has been taking these five-mile walks for the past few weeks—but she stops a second time, her eyes widening.
“Holy shit, Easton. Are you pulling a fake romance plot with my brother? You know how this winds up.”
I roll my eyes. “Hopefully it winds up with Thomas on one knee, handing me the ring we chose. Preferably in time for your wedding.”
A grin spreads across her face. “You know what this reminds me of.”
I laugh. “It’s not The Wedding Date.”
One of Kelsey’s favorite movies as a kid was about this woman, Kat, who hires a male escort, Nick, for her sister’s wedding in order to make her ex jealous.
I’m not sure why we loved it so much, nor am I sure why Judy allowed us to watch it, given the premise and the fact that Kat does indeed pay Nick extra for sex.
“Tell me how it’s different,” she demands.
“Well, first of all, Elijah and I don’t get along.”
She barely dodges a hole someone’s dug in the sand. “Nick and Kat didn’t in the movie either, but please continue.”
“Elijah isn’t a male escort.”
“As far as we know,” counters Kelsey, and then she doubles over laughing. “Oh my God. Can you picture Elijah as an escort? He’d be so cranky and reluctant about everything. If you did ask him to perform, he’d be like...” She gives a dramatic sigh. “I guess. Whatever.”
My smile is a little forced. As the only person here who’s actually been intimate with her brother, I can attest...he was not reluctant at all.