Chapter Nine
I stood in an alcove of the hallway leading to the ballroom where lunch was being served and adjusted my camera bag for the umpteenth time.
Trying to quell the nervous knot twisting in my stomach, I reminded myself that it was unlikely BamBam would bust out of lunch and start checking the different casino food courts for me.
It was equally unlikely that Gabby and Nittha would accidentally blow my cover by skipping TrendCon’s under-twenty-one content creator pool party. They wouldn’t pass up free mocktails.
That said, the longer Ethan took, the more anxious I got.
I was starting to think that maybe I should find a better place to wait for him, when one of the ballroom’s heavy soundproof doors swung open.
I stepped back about three feet and got ready to run if so much as a hair that looked like BamBam’s walked out of the door, then calmed down as Ethan rounded the corner, checking from side to side as if he were sneaking out past curfew.
“Ethan,” I whispered from my hiding place, then tried to stifle a laugh as he jumped, a small, goofy squeak escaping him. Spotting me, he exhaled and walked over, still surveying the area as he crossed the hall.
“Jamie, you scared the hell out of me,” Ethan whispered. “I thought you were Buzzy or…” He let the sentence trail off as I beamed up at him, unable to hide my smile anymore. “You think this is funny?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” I continued to grin as we walked down the hallway toward the casino floor and the exit that would take us to The Strip. “For a guy who seemed so cavalier about my grandma catching us, you sure are freaked out about someone seeing us.”
“Whatever.” Ethan chuckled. “Do you know where we are going?”
I watched him for a second, trying to decide if I wanted to press for details on who else he thought I was, then pushed the intrusive voice that wanted to know who Ethan thought about aside.
Now would be a deeply inconvenient time to develop friend feelings for him.
And that was all they were. Friend feelings.
I pulled out my phone and held up the screen so Ethan could see the little blue dots zigging and zagging across the map that we were supposed to follow. “For whatever reason, when I put in walking directions, the map is making it seem really hard to get there.”
“Maybe because we’re indoors?” Ethan offered.
“Maybe.” I shrugged, then added, “The aquarium is in Mandalay Bay. They have that shark tunnel I mentioned earlier. When I click the car function it’s only half a mile away, so I figure we should be able to walk there and back before lunch ends.”
“That’s perfect. My grandma is signing merch in the exhibit hall later this afternoon, and I know she’ll need help. The timing should work out.”
“BamBam is doing that tomorrow, I think.” I paused as the two of us moved to the side to avoid a person in a fanny pack dragging three massive yellow suitcases across the carpet. I frowned at Ethan. “At least, I hope it’s tomorrow. Otherwise, we may be at risk of a double homicide.”
“You think everything is an opportunity for murder.” Ethan laughed, stepping slightly to the side to avoid a person meandering between slot machines. “You must listen to a lot of true-crime podcasts.”
“Horror movies.” I wrinkled my nose. “True crime makes me too sad.”
“Because horror movies are less murder-y?” Ethan asked, his brow furrowed as he fought to keep a smile off his face.
“No. Those are clearly fictional. With true crime, I feel bad, like we are all being entertained when some poor housewife in Ohio was stabbed to death with an icicle.”
“An icicle?” This time Ethan didn’t even bother to hide his grin as we came to the exit, both of us doing our best to ignore a hotel employee waving us over to talk about shows. “No one would murder anyone with an icicle. How did your mind even come up with that?”
“Just the first weapon I thought of. Which, you have to admit, would be a pretty good weapon, since the evidence would melt.” I stepped through the revolving door and into the bright, hot daylight of The Strip.
“When you put it like that…Should I be afraid of you?” Ethan walked out of the spinning doors, blinking rapidly as he tried to adjust to the change in lighting.
“Not because of that. I’m bad at maps, though—that should make you more nervous.” Tracing the screen to refresh the map, I held my breath. The little blue dots were still all over the place. “It still isn’t giving me a direct route, but the hotel is right down the road.”
Ethan checked my phone, then looked in the direction I was pointing. “I can’t really see it from here, but I’m sure once we get closer it’ll make sense.”
Only, it didn’t make sense. By the time the two of us managed to find an escalator to the street level, we were already getting hot.
When we finally realized that there were no crosswalks on the street level and made our way back up to the lofted sidewalk, we were sweating.
To make matters worse, we were near the hotel with the roller coaster wrapped around it, so every so often our attempts to navigate were interrupted by screaming.
But all that was nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to the level of hangry I felt coming on.
“I think we have to go through Excalibur and…” Ethan squinted at my phone, his face flushed from the heat, and then added, “Maybe the Luxor, too. I’m not sure. Maybe we should just call an Uber.”
“Not unless you want our grandmas to know exactly where we are and what we’re doing,” I said, with a little too much force.
Maybe his parents wouldn’t freak out if they got a text saying he’d gotten in a car, but mine would.
In between obsessively calling the driver and watching the safety map, my mom would almost certainly give BamBam an earful. Or my dad on behalf of Mom.
“Right. Forgot about that.”
“I’m hungry.” My voice sounded sluggish, and Ethan studied me like I was delicate and not with the fear that this warning should have induced.
Glancing around the walkway, his face lit up. “There is a sign for the Luxor. We can get a snack in there.”
A little voice in the back of my mind tried to soothe me.
Just like every casino and resort on The Strip, the Luxor had to have a shopping mall with a food court in it.
Sustenance was close at hand. As soon as we got back into the air-conditioning, I’d feel a little better.
I could make it another twenty minutes if we cooled down.
“Alright.” I tried to smile at him, a gesture that was probably a lot closer to me baring my teeth than an actual expression of joy.
Ethan did a double take. “You okay?”
“Kind of.” I readjusted my camera bag and tried not to sigh.
My bag seemed to be about fifty pounds heavier, despite the fact that I had taken one of my cameras out to film B-roll, which Ethan kept ruining by waving at me or filming me while I was filming him.
“I’m not good at being physically uncomfortable. ”
“Define uncomfortable,” Ethan said, steering us around more tourists and down another walkway.
“I can’t be any combination of hot, tired, and hungry, or I become…unpleasant.” I hoped my facial expression conveyed the gravity of the situation.
Ethan eyed me as if I might start tearing at my T-shirt and become a giant, green, screaming monster. Finally, he said, “Scale of negative five to five, with zero being a true neutral, how close are you to a meltdown?”
“Two, I think.” Something about the way the question was phrased elicited a small laugh from me even though we’d managed to walk into a dead end.
“My little sister, Sophie, gets like this. I can work with a two.”
“Can you? Because I can tell you now that once we hit three, I can’t be held responsible for my actions,” I said as another question crossed my mind. “How old is Sophie?”
“Seven.” Ethan winked at me as if he hadn’t compared me to someone who was still perfecting the ability to tie their shoe. I scowled up at him right as something caught his eye. “Aha! There is a tram.”
“What?” I asked, putting the less-than-flattering comparison out of my mind for a moment.
“I saw this shuttle from my hotel window. I wondered if it might be around here.” Ethan said this more to himself than to me as he picked up his pace, navigating us toward an off-white stucco building.
Sure enough, as soon as we walked inside, a tram pulled up.
Ethan turned to gently place a hand on my arm. “Here, let’s get on.”
I took my backpack off and laid it on my lap so I could lean back as the two of us dropped into gray plastic seats while the tram waited the advertised five minutes for additional passengers to get on.
Trying to distract myself from the heat and the lingering feeling of his touch, I asked, “Do you have any other siblings besides Sophie?”
“Yes. My dad had a family before us, so I have two older sisters. They are adults now—Katie and Stephanie. Then there is me, my sister Izzie, who is fourteen, and Sophie, the seven-year-old. So, I’m the oldest, the middle, and the only boy.
” Ethan then reached for my backpack. “Want me to carry this for a while?”
“It’s heavy.” I shook my head. Ethan shrugged at me like he didn’t care, so I added, “And sweaty.”
“Up to you, but I don’t mind,” he said with a wave, as if wearing someone else’s sweat wasn’t a sacrifice.
I was about to say no, when it occurred to me that, actually, I was really over having that sweaty, heavy thing with me. I sucked in a breath. “You sure?”
“Will it keep you from turning into a gargoyle until we feed you?” Ethan teased. I nodded, and he lifted the bag out of my lap as the nearly empty tram started to move. Everyone else knew it was too hot to walk any great distance, apparently. Eyeing me, Ethan asked, “Better?”