CHAPTER 20 Millie Monroe
Fifteen Minutes Tops
“I have a shark joke,” I say as I break into the tranquility that envelops us in here.
He raises his brows.
“Where do sharks go on vacation?”
“Where?” he asks, shrugging.
“Fin-land. Get it?”
He chuckles. “That’s truly awful.”
“You got a better one?” I challenge.
He thinks for a moment. “What does a shark call a jet skier?”
“What?” I ask.
“Fast food.”
I roll my eyes. “And you thought mine was bad?”
He laughs. “Are you hungry?”
I glance at the clock across from us and realize I never ate lunch. It’s that time between lunch and dinner now, and I’m starving. I nod. We spend a few more minutes looking around the aquarium before we head up to one of the restaurants, and I can’t help but feel like something changed with him.
It feels like we’re on a date. It wasn’t so long ago that he seemed to hate me. But when I’m not on my phone, he almost seems to like me. At the very least, he likes me enough to want to be inside me. To want to check the rest of those items off my bucket list.
He helps me into a booth, and he parks the wheelchair outside the restaurant while I look over the menu.
It feels like it takes him a long time to return to the table, but since I don’t have my phone to check the time, I’m not really sure.
And as I sit by myself in a booth with nothing more than a menu to look at after I’ve already decided what I want to order, something shifts inside of me.
This is when I’d turn to my phone. Scroll to pass the time, see what other creators are posting, check the newest stories, maybe post one of my own.
Edit photos, create captions. Work. I’m always working.
I’m either bartending or working on turning my hobby into my hustle, and for the first time, I feel a sense of freedom I wasn’t expecting.
For the first time since I was a junior in college, I’m actually a little bored.
That word essentially left my vocabulary once I started my blog.
My entire life’s course shifted at that point.
I spent every free moment educating myself on how to run a blog, how to monetize it, how to take and edit pictures, how to write captions, how to use hashtags and keywords… the list is endless.
I guess I feel guilty when I’m not doing something. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to just sit back and relax. I forgot what it’s like not to have a device glued to my hand.
A server drops off a couple of glasses of water and asks if I’d like anything else to drink. Since I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying, I tell her I’ll wait for my friend to get back. I glance awkwardly at the empty seat beside me.
The lobby is behind me, so I take the opportunity to stare out the window at the view. It’s a resort view from this particular restaurant, so I people-watch.
A family of four stops to look up into a tree, and I wonder what the hell they’re looking at.
One of them points. Maybe a bird? A couple passes by them holding hands, and they glance over and see whatever the family sees before moving along.
Another couple passes, this one with the woman walking quickly a few paces in front of the man.
The woman has her arms crossed, and the man is trying to chase her down.
They’re obviously in a fight, and if Archer doesn’t return soon, we might be walking the same way. You know, if I could actually walk.
When what feels like ten minutes passes, I start to wonder if I should ask the server to bring the wheelchair over so I can just go to my room. I feel so weird doing that, though, so I wait a little longer.
Another couple minutes pass when he finally slides into the booth opposite me.
“What took so long?” I snap.
“Sorry. Had to make a quick stop. Thanks for your patience.”
“Where?” I demand, the lack of patience on my part quite evident from my tone.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, and he picks up the menu like it’s no big deal.
“What the fuck, Bradley?”
He laughs. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you swear when I wasn’t inside you.”
My cheeks burn. “You left me sitting here alone for, like, an hour! I’m mad at you!”
He rolls his eyes. “It was fifteen minutes tops, and you won’t be mad when you find out what kept me.”
I don’t admit he’s right. I don’t admit it was almost entertaining watching those people and wondering what they were looking at in the tree. “You’re preventing me from doing my job.”
“What are you ordering? I’m looking at the salmon, but the Asian salad looks good, too.”
“God, I hate you,” I mutter.
He laughs. Laughs! And then he leans in, and in a low, raspy voice, he says, “That’s not what you were saying an hour ago when you were begging for my cock with your little sex agreement.”
My jaw drops. “I swear to God, if I could walk right now, I would storm the hell out of here just so I don’t have to sit across from your smug ass another second.”
“Suit yourself. I can grab your wheelchair if you’d like, but I promise you’ll like the reason I was gone for a few minutes.”
I’m curious enough that I ask, “When will you tell me?”
“After we eat. Now, about that Asian salad…” He glances up and calls the server over.
We place our orders, and he says, “Let’s play twenty questions, and you can figure out where I went.”
“No.”
“You’re no fun.”
“Fine. Where did you go?” I ask.
“Do you even know how twenty questions works? They have to be yes or no questions.”
I let out another frustrated sigh. “Did you leave this tower?”
“No.”
“Did you go shopping in a store?”
“No.”
“I give up,” I mutter.
He laughs. Again. I’m really getting tired of that.
“You know, the Millie you’re treating me to today is a totally different Millie than the one I see featured on Millie’s Miles,” he says.
I raise a brow. “In what way?”
He nods at me. “You’re sassy. You swear, and you’re a little mean. You’d never do that on a live broadcast. Even before you fixed your makeup, you looked beautiful, but you’d never let anyone see you that way.”
“I didn’t particularly want you to see me that way, either, but I didn’t have much choice since you happened to be right next to me when I fell,” I admit.
“Why?” he asks.
I’m not sure I really have the answer to that. “I guess I’ve built my brand on being the girl who has it all together. I don’t like admitting that sometimes…I don’t.” The words feel unintentionally vulnerable as I say them.
He reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. “For the record, I like seeing that girl. The one who doesn’t have it all together. It’s okay to let your guard down and be vulnerable sometimes.”
“I could say the same exact thing to you.”
He presses his lips together. “Yeah. You could. And it would be true. I don’t let many people get to know me, Millie.
But maybe underlining our sex agreement, we could have an understanding between us that it’s okay to just be ourselves for the next month.
We’re not perfect, and I don’t want you to act like you are. I just want you to be you.”
The air crackles between us as this whole conversation leaves me feeling even more frazzled than I already was.
It’s giving a feeling like we’ll keep in touch beyond this even though that’s not what our agreement is.
And for some reason, that’s suddenly a scary thought.