Chapter 6
The next morning, I wake to a tentative but persistent knocking at my bedroom door.
“Quinn?” Nate calls softly.
I roll onto my side, away from the door. My sleep was fitful last night. Nate and Logan stayed out late on the deck, the low hum of their voices audible through my window for hours.
“Quinn,” Nate calls again.
I press my forehead against the cool wood of the headboard and groan. “Coming.” It feels a little early for clearing the air or whatever he wants to do right now, but I’m not going to hide in my room anymore.
A few minutes in the bathroom leave me washed, brushed, and moisturized.
I change out of my rumpled pajamas into a pastel tie-dye workout set from one of my favorite brands, All it makes people’s lives better.
Then there’s this, with a ton of upvotes: Bestie I thought we were doing single girl september :(
And These are also two of my niche interests but I never imagined they’d collide in the worst way possible. I hope she’s on birth control
They’re mostly supportive of me, in a weird and intrusive way, but they’re completely dragging Logan. If he saw these comments, he’d be upset.
“Nate!” He’s not in the living room, so I fly up the stairs and down the hall, unsure where he could’ve gone. Oh, the video game room, that’s where Logan left his luggage—which I realize too late, when Nate emerges from it as I’m jogging by, and we collide.
Oof. Direct face-to-chest contact. For the briefest moment my nose is buried in his soft, faded T-shirt, and the faintest hint of body wash or deodorant—something with a scent, but not too assertive—rises off the warmth of his skin underneath.
My brain registers muscle and breathing and hands.
Wait, hands? His left one is grasping my shoulder and his right one has landed on my waist, the exact spot he stared at a few minutes ago, the flimsiest layer of cotton between his fingertips and my skin.
I take a big electric-slide-style step backward. His hand, the one that was just holding my waist, twitches at his side.
“I think I know what happened,” I say breathlessly.
“His bags aren’t here.” Nate’s face is grim. “He’s gone gone.”
Any hope I had that today might be the day this trip starts going my way crumbles like the skin of a burnt marshmallow. “It’s not because of what you said.” I fill him in on the video.
“He doesn’t have his phone, though,” Nate reminds me. “How could he have seen it?”
“Did he bring a tablet? A laptop?”
His eyes spark. “No. But I did.”
His laptop is on the kitchen counter. When he wakes it, the browser is open to the video, exactly as I feared.
Logan was already feeling burned out on the attention he’s been getting.
A little lost. He argued with his best friend, who said something hurtful, and then he caved and checked his socials and found more people judging him harshly.
“Should we call his parents?” I ask.
Nate’s hands are fisted. “You think it’s that serious?”
I shrug helplessly. “You know him better than I do.”
Nate turns back to the computer. Two tiny wrinkles appear between his eyebrows as he clicks through the comments. Then an exasperated sigh puffs out of his mouth, his eyes fluttering shut.
“You don’t think it’s that bad?”
He shakes his head. “I know where he is.” He gestures at the screen. “He did wake up early this morning. For maybe the only thing capable of getting him out of bed before sunrise.”
I look at the laptop. There was, evidently, a second open tab in the browser window. A United Airlines flight confirmation page.
One passenger. No checked luggage. RNO to LAS.
Logan took off for Vegas twenty minutes ago.
I relax, but Nate reacts like a windup toy that’s been cranked too tightly. He bolts for his room, and I follow. His duffel bag is on his bed before I realize what’s happening. “You’re going after him?”
He tosses his phone charger onto the comforter. “Do you mind looking at flights for me? I want to get on the next one.”
“Isn’t it a good thing he went to Vegas? He’s safe, we know where he is, and it’s a place he knows well. He’s probably meeting friends. You think you need to chase him there instead of letting him cool off so you can talk it out at home in a couple weeks?”
He heads for the en suite bathroom and mumbles something noncommittal.
“I’m confused,” I say.
He unzips a small bag and fills it with the toiletries lined up at the sink. “Would you rather I stay so the two of us can continue not hanging out in Tahoe together?”
My face heats. “Or you could go back to L.A. and fly home for the party like you originally planned.”
“Please just look at flights for me.”
“Please just tell me what’s going on!”
He closes his eyes, his face reflected in the mirror, and sets a container of dental floss back on the soapstone countertop.
“I need his help with something. The whole reason I wanted to meet him here was to convince him to take a big leap. To go into business with me. I figured this was my best chance at keeping his attention long enough to convince him.”
“A camp? You want your own?” Nate’s managed a summer camp that also does year-round swim lessons in L.A.
since he moved here. Before that, he worked at Logan’s family’s business in Seapoint, First Cove Day and Swim Camp, which has dominated the local camp scene for decades.
Logan worked there too, through college, before he moved to Austin.
Nate nods, eyes downcast. “There’s an existing one for sale. I think it could be good for both of us.”
“Better for him to invest in that than in another doomed custom dog collar business.”
Nate’s mouth ticks down at the corner. A smile.
“Seriously, though, I’m happy for you. It sounds great.”
He picks up the floss again and flicks the lid open and closed. “It’s not a big deal. But I know as the token slacker in our group of friends, the bar is pretty low for me.”
As a whole, the group is successful: Bailey the doctor, Sam the engineer.
Giana sells her blue-and-white abstract paintings for five grand a pop to rich ladies furnishing their beach houses.
And Logan and I have found our own kinds of achievement.
Nate chose a more low-key path, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
“I’ve never thought of you as a slacker,” I say.
He tosses the floss into his bag and shakes his head. “Regardless. I have a…deadline. To submit the proposal. It’s before Bailey’s party, so it can’t wait. I’ve done most of the work, but I can’t finalize it without Logan.”
This is a different Nate than the one I know. More determined. The old Nate didn’t have big goals. If he did, he kept them buried deep inside, and certainly didn’t try to achieve them. His worn-in Vans and apathetic facade made it easy for people to assume his life plan was to go with the flow.
But a Nate who wants things? It’s enough to make my head spin. How did he become this person? How can he still read me so well when I don’t know him at all anymore?
He needs to track down Logan. I haven’t yet followed through on my promise to wow Tracy with my road trip social media content. She wants juicy and single and not a snooze, and no place gives those things like Vegas.
It’s an easy decision. “I’ll come with you.”
He shoots me a skeptical look. “Aren’t you supposed to be finding yourself in nature?”
Yes. But it’s not working yet, and my blister still hurts, so I might as well take a quick detour to make the most of this fleeting moment of fame.
“I didn’t want to follow a strict itinerary anyway,” I say. “Once we find him, I’ll get back on track. There are parts of Utah I’ve always wanted to see, and going to Vegas will put them on the route.” I think.
“So we’ll drive?”
I check Google Maps. “Seven hours. That’s doable. We can figure out how to find him on the way.”
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do it.”