Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
David
We finish dinner and make our way to the car.
“How far away is our hotel?” Zoe asks.
“About an hour. Are you sure you don’t want to drive?”
I hold the keys out to her with a slight tilt to my lips, and she sticks her tongue out at me as she opens the door.
I open my door and hop in, then buckle my seatbelt and start the engine. “Don’t complain about my driving.”
“Then don’t drive like a jackass,” she sasses back.
I smirk at her. “No promises.”
“Then no promises that I won’t bitch the entire way,” she states matter-of-factly, like saying the sky is blue.
I chuckle under my breath as I put the car in reverse and pull out of our parking spot.
Why does bickering with this girl make me so damn happy now when, before, I wanted to wring her neck?
We get on the freeway and make our way out of Bozeman with ease. Once we’re on an empty stretch of highway, I put the car in cruise control and lean back to get more comfortable.
“How’s the drama on your group chat?” I ask when I see she’s been typing away again.
“Surprisingly good,” she replies without looking up from her device.
“Surprisingly?”
She puts her phone down on her lap and turns to me. “Yeah. Sounds like the drama has calmed down.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“We’ll see. There’s still a lot going on.”
“Are you one of those girls who feeds on drama and looks for it, even when there is none?” I say it more jokingly but realize quickly that’s not how she takes it by the way she sits up in her seat and turns to face me.
“Are you calling me a drama queen?”
“Nuh-uh, girl. No need to get all pissy on me.” I snap my fingers and roll my neck, acting like a true drama queen.
She laughs so hard that she slaps her hands on her lap. “Did you really just do that?”
I grin, looking back to the road, acting normal again. “I could tell your fight button just got pushed, so I knew I needed to bring you back down a notch.”
“My fight button?”
“Yeah, that little button deep inside you that seemed to be stuck down every time you looked at me before.”
She laughs again. “I can’t believe you’re calling it my fight button. Where does anyone even come up with something like that?”
I look between her and the road. “You tell me! I swear if I even breathed, you wanted to rip my head off.”
“And you didn’t feel the same way about me?”
I tilt my head back and forth, like I’m weighing my options. “Depended on the day.”
I look at her out of the side of my eye and love the way she’s smiling right now. It’s not an expression I saw on her much before, and I’ll admit, she’s fucking beautiful when she smiles.
We leave the conversation at that, both of us not really wanting to talk about how much we hated each other because today has been nothing like that at all. Instead, she reaches over and turns up the radio, and we drive in comfortable silence, singing along to the songs guiding our way.
Zoe
We get checked in to our rooms, which, of course, are located right next to each other.
“Night,” he says as he opens his door.
“Good night,” I reply, walking into my room to avoid any awkward moment between us.
Before I can even put my suitcase down, I call Macy.
“Why has this been the longest day ever?” Macy announces when she answers the phone. “I need all the tea!”
I plop down on the bed with my arms and legs open wide, like I’m creating a snow angel. Right now, I just need every ounce of energy that’s been trapped inside me to leave my body as fast as possible.
“I can’t believe I made it through the day,” I say with a sigh of relief.
“And think, you still have two more to go,” she teases, and I can just imagine her trying to hold her laughter back.
I cover my face with my free hand. “Ugh! Don’t remind me.”
“Was it really that bad?”
I remove my hand and slap it on the bed in frustration. “You got my messages, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I got your messages, talking about how sweet he was being and how cute he looked when he was teasing you.”
“Exactly! Then you understand how much torture I’ve been through today!”
“If you call that torture, I’m afraid of what you’d call a real bad date.”
“This wasn’t a date!”
“To him, it definitely wasn’t. To you, it was the first time you spent the day with the guy you were massively falling for.”
“Were! Were being the keyword!”
I stare at the ceiling, trying to convince myself that I was falling for Online David and not Work David.
“You can keep telling yourself that, but I don’t think it’s working.”
“I hate you.”
“Ha! You love me because I state facts. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve put myself in this predicament, and I’m not sure if I can get out now.”
Tears well in my eyes when my true feelings come to the surface for the first time.
“What are you talking about?”
“Now, if I tell him who I really am, he’ll hate me because I lied to him for this long.”
“You didn’t lie … per se …” She tiptoes around the subject at hand.
“He’ll ask why I didn’t respond on day seven. What am I supposed to say?”
“That you were scared you were head over heels in love with a guy you never met and that freaked you the fuck out!”
I can’t help but laugh at what she just said.
“You see my point!” she continues. “It’s wild that you two bonded the way you did, having no clue who the other person was in real life.
That would freak a lot of people out. He doesn’t need to know that you knew who he was this entire time.
We can come up with a plan of how you figured it out on this trip.
That way, he won’t think you lied to him all day today. ”
“See, even you’re saying I’m lying to him!”
“Oh, stop. We’ll figure this out. That is …” She pauses.
“That is what?” I ask, confused about where she was going with her thoughts.
“That is, if you actually want to date this guy. Does your work have a no dating clause? Have you thought of that?”
“No!” I sit up and cover my mouth with my hand. “It hasn’t even crossed my mind. I have no clue. What if it does?” Now my emotions really get the best of me, and my voice cracks.
I hear her let out a breath. “Well … I see two things now. One, you just answered your own question about how much you really like this guy, and, two, you need to figure out that dating clause before you go any further. I know this is your dream job, but some companies put the smackdown on that real quick.”
I plop back down on the bed. “I’m so screwed,” I say barely above a whisper because it’s all I can get out.
“Yes, my dear. Yes, you are.”