His head tilts. “Kelsey told me you just got dumped.”
Ah. I guess he already knew.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Yes, I got dumped. Thanks for bringing it up.” I slide my feet from the tunnels I’ve made in the sand and brush them off.
“Apparently you’re certain this guy is going to come running back,” he adds.
He’s treading on dangerous ground. Especially given that it washisface I’d planned to rub Thomas in the most. “I am, but how is that any of your concern?”
“Because the one surefire way to make him come running back is if he hears you’re on a road trip with another guy.”
He just lets it hang there for a moment in the air between us, probably assuming that I’m going to refute this or argue in some way. And normally I would, but…he’s actually right. Thomas spent much of his adolescence feeling like a geek, which is one of the reasons this stupid trip with Devon Hunt holds so much appeal—it’s another chance to assure himself those days are behind him. Another chance to have a bunch of girls who’d have ignored him in high school fawn over him now. I assumed it would grow old fast, but it’s not happening as fast as I’d hoped.
He could use a nudge, and a couple of social media posts showing me traveling with Elijah, the six-five prom king, might remind him that the clock is ticking, that there’s something important he could lose while he relives his lost youth. Still, is that worth enduring the next few days with Elijah?
I sit up, folding my arms over my knees. “I’m not even sure I want to marry Thomas badly enough to spend a million hours in a car with you and your grandmother.”
He raises a brow. “Well, that’s probably something you should sort out before you win him back, but I still need help and you know you’ll eventually say yes.”
Okay, sure. But if I’m subjecting myself to all of this bullshit, I’m getting something more out of it than the ability toclaimwe traveled together.
Though I can’t believe I’m about to beg a guy who dumped me to help me win backanotherguy who dumped me. A guy who was supposed to be here to rub the first guy’s face in it.
“I’ll go if you pretend we’re together in any pictures I take. And we stay overnight in West Palm Beach on the way. I can’t sit in the car for eleven hours. I just can’t.”
His eyes narrow. “Why West Palm?”
“A, it’s probably about the halfway point,” I say, ticking the item off on my finger. “B, I know people there from school.”
“Don’t you see enough of them in Boston?”
He’s so obtuse at times. Or maybe he hasn’t spent the past five years wondering how to make an ex jealous.
“The point isn’t to see more of them,” I reply. “The point is for them to see me withanother guy, so word filters back to Thomas.”
Because even if he’s in the middle of nowhere and even if he’s not stalking my Instagram feed the way I’m stalking his, James and Melissa will text people to say they saw us together, and one of those people willdefinitelytext Thomas.
“So what does seeing your friends entail?” he asks. He hasn’t moved an inch and yet it’s as if he’s backed away a foot.
“Jesus Christ, Elijah, I’m trying to marry my boyfriend. Stop acting like I’m asking you to fuck me in the town square.”
His eyes catch mine, as if he’s picturing it. As if he wouldn’t mind. Something flickers inside me, a long, slow pulse of heat. For a half-second, it’s as if the past five years never happened. “Fine. But what do I have to do?”
“Mostly just act like a decent human being who’s interested in me for an hour or two.”
I expect him to make the kind of comment I’d make in his shoes:That’s harder than you might thinkorIt’ll be my greatest acting role ever.
Instead, something like fear flickers in his eyes before he glances away. “I’ll do it. I just see a lot of ways it could go wrong. You’ll be ready Monday?”
“ThisMonday? That’s almost two weeks before the wedding.”
Kelsey wanted close friends and family to get in several days early, a sort of vacation/extended reunion, but two weeks? That’s nuts.
“My grandma wants to stop a lot. Maybe it’ll take three days and maybe it’ll take ten. I’m just planning for the worst.”
Which means, potentially, a lot of time alone with Elijah, time only broken by the presence of an old woman who always disliked me and will be making us stop at every flea market and Cracker Barrel over the course of six hundred miles.
“You really buried the lede, there, didn’t you?”
