4. Tessa #2
So she’d planned everything herself.
“Trust me, I’ll take care of you,” he said, leaning in and whispering into her ear.
Up until now, whenever she was out with a man, everything had been divided fifty-fifty.
He drove to meet her somewhere, and she drove her own vehicle.
They split the tab at restaurants and at concerts.
The whole myth of a man coming to take her out, planning the date, and paying for it all was just that.
A myth.
Until now. With a nice guy she probably wouldn’t have ever gotten a date with in real life, who wanted to drive her four hours to New York.
She shut her eyes, wondering what plane of existence she’d suddenly been transported to.
“Alright, if you’re certain.”
“I am,” he said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek, which only stirred more questions for Tessa. With her parents on the other side of the vehicle, it just looked like a tender moment between a couple.
A fake couple.
Why didn’t this feel fake?
She turned and climbed into the passenger’s seat, as Greer shut the door behind her. He then rounded the front of the car and high-fived her father before climbing in to drive.
He sat back, wiggling his bottom in the seat and causing the leather to creak. He looked to the right and the left, adjusting his side mirrors accordingly before reaching up and redoing the rearview mirror, which she’d already adjusted for herself.
“You ready to rock ’ n ’ roll?” he asked.
She turned to him with wide eyes, suddenly fearful of what she’d gotten herself into.
But fortunately, he didn’t wait for an answer, beginning to back out of the driveway and onto the street, her parents waving the entire time.
Tessa had put her tablet into her bag, determined to take advantage of this road trip and give herself some screen-free time.
She had always thought she wasn’t very susceptible to it, given she wasn’t a big TV watcher.
But she had a phone. And her tablet. Not to mention a laptop when the need arose.
Thinking that this would be the perfect time to be present in the moment, and not surf her social media, she’d made the choice to put everything away.
Reaching into her bag, she brought out a pen and a pack of colorful sticky notes.
“You hungry or anything?” Greer asked, pointing out the windshield. “Looks like there’s a service plaza coming up.”
“Um, no,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “That one was rated a three-star out of five. If we wait another forty-five minutes, there’s another one that travelers really seemed to love. Are you hungry, though?” she asked. “I have a snacklebox.”
“A… what?”
“Snacklebox,” she said, turning and reaching behind his seat. She brought out a relatively large, clear box that had been sectioned off with dozens of compartments. “I’ve got beef jerky, pumpkin seeds, broccoli, carrots, some dips if you like?—”
“You brought snacks?” he asked, darting his eyes over to the box before they went back to the road.
“Of course, I brought snacks,” she said. “You can’t have a road trip without snacks.”
She guided his open palm over to the box in her lap, letting him grapple after a couple of baby carrots before tossing them into his mouth.
Greer’s eyebrows hiked. “Wait, you searched the ratings for the service plazas?”
“Well, yes,” she said, clicking the end of her pen. “You don’t want to end up somewhere sketchy.”
“I guess,” he said, clearly never having thought much about it before. Scrawling across the square, blue surface, Tessa pulled the sheet from the pack and stuck it to the dashboard. Scrawling again on the purple sheet beneath it, she placed it strategically on the dash, opposite the blue.
“What are you doing?”
“Planning,” she said, staring at the sheets and realizing she needed another blue one. Pulling more squares off, it quickly began to fill the dashboard in a colorful medley that probably made no sense to anyone but her.
“More planning?” he asked. “Haven’t you, like, planned this trip to death already?”
“Excuse me?” she asked, glancing at him and his audacity for probably the thousandth time since they met. “I’ll have you know there’s always something to think about.”
“So what are you thinking about now?”
“I’m trying to figure out the best way to get over to the antique shop tomorrow so we can take advantage of as much time as possible.”
“You’re kidding me,” he said. “We get up and drive over. Simple as that.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said, pulling another sheet and sticking it to the dash. “I was thinking we would need to put up some shots for our social media accounts after we return, and the area looked really nice in the chamber of commerce’s online guidebook.”
“You downloaded the guide,” he said, but more like a statement than a question. “Of course you did.”
“I was thinking we could get some lovely pictures of the lake out there where we’re staying, and maybe even a sunrise picture, but I’m not sure that’s a great idea. We need all the sleep we can get with being tired from travel and then having to give it our all, hauling boxes in storage.”
“If you want a picture of the sunrise, we’ll get up early,” he said. “Really, Tess, it’s that easy.”