14
N oah was standing in the kitchen on Saturday morning, munching the last few spoonfuls of a bowl of cereal and vaguely hoping he’d remembered to put clean underwear in his duffel bag, when a car horn sounded from outside.
He sighed and poured his leftover milk down the drain before rinsing his bowl and setting it on the leaning tower of dishware in the sink.
Normally he would wash his own dishes, but Conner had so many to do already that one more wouldn’t make any difference.
He flung the strap of his bag over one shoulder and headed to the garage with a distinct feeling of unease in his chest. Keeping up the charade with Olivia was one thing, but he didn’t want to lie to her family.
He wasn’t a liar—he hated liars—but every step he took closer to her car felt like one more move in that direction.
He crossed the washed-out gravel driveway toward the idling Mustang before yanking open the passenger’s side door.
“Good morning, honey bug!” Olivia said cheerfully.
“Morning,” he mumbled back. He tossed his duffel into the back seat before sliding in beside her. “Hey, do you mind if I study while you drive?” he asked. He hoped focusing his attention on something besides their destination would help settle his nerves.
She shrugged and took a sip from the silver thermos in her hand. “No. Are you worried about an exam?”
“A little,” he admitted, twisting in his seat so he could unzip the top of his bag and retrieve a thick textbook from the inside. He settled the book on his lap and buckled his seat belt, both literally and figuratively.
“It’s okay if you’re too busy to come. You can stay home and study if you need to,” she offered, and Noah met her gaze head-on.
“Do you want me to come?” he asked bluntly. He didn’t want to intrude if she truly didn’t want him there; this was her chance to give both of them an out.
Olivia’s smile froze for a second, and then she covered it with the thermos again and took another sip. “Mom is excited to meet you,” she said once she’d swallowed.
That didn’t answer his question, but Noah chose not to press the issue. He was packed; he was in the car; he was going. End of discussion. “Alright, then it’s settled,” he told her, and he offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
Olivia studied him for another second before replacing her thermos in the center cupholder and putting the Mustang into reverse.
“Okay, away we go!” she declared as the car backed out onto the asphalt.
Seconds later they were flying down State Route 22, and Noah was trying to focus on the chapter headings in the book in front of him.
But it only took ten minutes for him to decide it wasn’t going to work.
This had to be the most boring class he’d ever taken, and the words were simply bouncing around inside his skull like ping-pong balls.
It didn’t help that the whole car smelled like her, and the sharp, citrus scent was making his brain fuzzy.
He looked over at Olivia, who had remained surprisingly quiet while he was reading, and caught her peeking toward the pages in his lap.
“What is all of that?” she asked when she met his eye.
He sighed and settled deeper into the seat cushions. “ Evaluation and Assessment of Psychomotor Skills ,” he parroted, reading straight from the cover of the book. “It’s riveting.”
“Sounds like it,” she said dryly, and she lifted her drink with the hand that wasn’t on the wheel. “So, a physical therapist, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Well, all the underwater basket-weaving classes were full.”
“Too bad, since that’s such a lucrative field and all,” she teased. She put her thermos down and glanced at him again. “But seriously, why?”
“So I can make grown men cry.”
“That’s not a reason!”
“It is, too!” he insisted. “We’re not all out to save the world, you know.”
She smiled and shook her head. Then she looked over as he set the book on the floor behind her seat. “Well, if you’re not doing that, do you want to play a game?”
“Like what?”
She slowed and made a left turn at a flashing yellow light. “In high school, we used to play ‘Liar, Liar’ on long trips. Do you know that one?”
Noah shook his head, forgetting she couldn’t hear the gesture. “No, but it sounds self-explanatory,” he answered.
“Pretty much. You tell me something, and I have to decide if I think you’re telling the truth or not. If I guess right, I get a point, but if you fool me, you get the point.”
“Gotcha,” he said with a nod. “Your game, so you go first.”
Olivia chewed on her lower lip as she followed the highway to the right and made her way around the county courthouse. “Alright, I’ve got one,” she said. “Believe it or not, I took ballet as a kid.”
She glanced his way, and Noah narrowed his eyes as he tried to picture a younger Olivia in a tutu and tights. Try as he might, he just couldn’t do it. “False,” he said firmly, and Olivia grinned.
“True!” she shouted. “But I only lasted four weeks.”
“What, did you flunk out?”
“Nope. I was asked to leave.”
“You were asked to leave a kid’s ballet class ?”
“Yep,” she said, the word popping from her mouth. “Apparently I kept putting the other girls in headlocks.”
Noah felt his face light up in delight. Now that was an image he could understand.
Olivia saw his expression and shrugged in a self-deprecating sort of way. “I don’t fight without a reason, so they probably deserved it.”
“Aww, my little psycho!” Noah teased, and she reached over to smack his chest with the back of her hand.
For whatever reason, he didn’t mind.
“Your turn,” she reminded him.
He sighed; at least with this kind of game he got to choose what information he gave away. After a few moments, he shifted in his seat. “I once sold sunscreen to a naked man,” he offered.
Olivia whipped her head in his direction before quickly turning back to the road. “You what ?!” she exclaimed. “Okay, you definitely made that up. Unless you were at a roadside stand or something, but even then.”
“A roadside stand that sells sunscreen?”
“You know what I mean! Something other than a regular store.”
“Nope, right there at Watson’s Grocery, lane two,” Noah confirmed, and he watched her eyes grow even wider.
“He showed up in his birthday suit, and one of the managers—I’ll let you guess which one—told him he could come in if he covered himself.
So, the guy finds an old sweatshirt from someplace, ties it backwards around his waist ’90s-style, and waltzes right in. ”
“No! But that wouldn’t even—”
“Cover everything? Yeah, I’m aware.”
She gaped in disbelief, and Noah felt a surge of satisfaction at having provided a tidbit she found so entertaining. Of course, everyone found that story entertaining; how could you not?
“So, all of that is true?” she asked.
“Cross my heart,” he assured her.
“Wow... I have no words, just... wow.” She adjusted the thermostat and turned the radio down a little, like that would help her think. “Okay, so my dad was in the military for most of my life, and I’ve lived in six states and three foreign countries.”
He studied her, searching for signs of deceit, but saw nothing obvious. “I’m going to say... true?” he guessed.
She grinned again, and her smile felt like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. Noah did an internal double take. Since when had he started creating poetic similes for the way she looked at him? He obviously hadn’t gotten enough sleep.
“Only four states, not six,” she admitted, “so I win.”
“Now, wait a minute!” Noah protested. He twisted in his seat to see her better. “That seems like a technicality! ”
“True is true, and false is false,” Olivia sang. She was far too happy about having slipped another point past him.
“Fine,” he grumbled, “but this game is rigged.”
An hour went by, then part of another, and the open fields of winter wheat gradually gave way to sprawling subdivisions, then blocks of towering apartment buildings, and then the urban sprawl of Clarksville proper.
At some point in the drive, they’d transitioned from their game to simply telling stories, and Noah now knew about the time Olivia had accidentally stapled a cartoon drawing of her professor inside a research paper and the day she’d threatened Lexie’s ex-boyfriend with a baseball bat.
“Worst kiss,” she declared, deciding the next topic.
Noah groaned. “One time I got the wrong girl.”
Olivia twisted toward him while she waited for a traffic light to change. “The wrong girl? Okay, that doesn’t just happen ,” she insisted. “What’s the story there?”
Noah scrubbed his palm across his mouth. “Well, this was in high school, and I’d been out with this girl, Anna, a few times,” he explained. “On those dates, she’d neglected to mention—and I somehow hadn’t found out—that she was an identical twin.”
Olivia grimaced.
“So, one day after school, I saw her across the parking lot, and I thought, ‘you know what? You’ve had fun, she likes you, why not walk over there and go for it?’”
Olivia winced again as the light turned green, but Noah went on.
“So, in my infinite teenage wisdom, I did. I walked right up to her, pulled her in and kissed her.”
There was a heavy sort of pause, during which Olivia looked his way. “And...?” she prompted .
“And,” he said dramatically, “she punched me in the face.”
Olivia laughed out loud and made a right turn. “It was the sister, wasn’t it?”
“It was the sister,” Noah confirmed. “The sister I didn’t know existed until after I could open my eye again and thought I was seeing double.”
“Did Anna at least know it was an accident? I mean, surely people had gotten them mixed up before,” Olivia asked.
“Oh, no, she absolutely thought I’d done it on purpose,” Noah grumbled, remembering the aftermath.
“No benefit of the doubt?”
“Nope—just threw me straight into the high school rumor mill. Before the week was out, the story had gone from a simple mix-up to a brawl with school security after I tried to force a girl into my car.”