I snapped my eyes away from hers, scared that she would be able to know exactly what I was thinking in that moment. She had been looking out at the landscape in front of us, but I was only looking at her. My mouth had been salivating over the way her capri leggings fit her since the moment I laid eyes on them. Her shirt wasn’t as fitted, but it allowed my imagination to play a little, especially when she stepped into direct sunlight. She probably had no idea just how see-through the shirt was and honestly, I wasn’t about to tell her. I wanted to appreciate the view as long as I had her here with me.
“Want to head down?” I asked, staring at my feet now, with my hands in my pocket, not really know what else to do. She had her camera in her hands still and for the first time all day, I felt like a sidekick to the two, instead of the main show.
We’d had fun coming up the mountain, but when I told her she would only be coming here with me from now on, there was a shift between us, one I couldn’t put my finger on.
“Tram or mountain?”
“Mountain,” I said in a scoff and disbelief. Erica hid a snicker from me behind her hand. She was putting away her camera and I realized now that she was joking with the question. “Don’t play, some people take the tram.”
“I do sometimes, but I just wanted to see what you were hoping for.”
“Mountain. Always mountain.”
I took a step toward her, but she sidestepped me and headed toward where the trail recline started. She wasn’t waiting for my queue, but taking the lead. This was the only way I knew I could spend more time with her today while I tried to figure something else out.
Could I get her to go to dinner with me later? Set up something tomorrow before we went back to work on Monday?
I had told Max I’d known what I was doing but that was a fucking lie. I had no idea how to get this girl, because before she was mine, and now that she technically wasn’t, I froze up every chance that was given to me.
And right now was the biggest chance. I had already claimed her time every weekend when she would come here, but now I had to make her see it was so much more than that. More than I just didn’t want her coming here alone, but that I wanted to be the one she came here with.
We started a steady decline, barely speaking along the way, and when we passed the spot where we had done a little photo shoot, her phone rang. I let a little space between us as she answered the call, not wanting to invade her privacy, but whomever was on the other line was speaking loud enough for not just me to hear, but anyone who walked by us.
“Hey, Mom.” Erica’s voice was a whisper compared to what I heard on the phone. I tried not to listen, instead thinking about the phone call I’d had with my own mother before Erica got here. My father wanted me to help with his campaign, telling me it was my duty as his son, but I wanted nothing to do with it. That’s when my mother called, trying to persuade me, but nothing worked. I wasn’t going into politics and wanted nothing to do with my father’s career.
Yeah, he was good at his job, but it wasn’t a job I wanted to be a part of. I loved reading about new worlds, creating new worlds myself, but one thing I didn’t want was to live in the real world every day and have no real escape because so many others relied on me. I just wasn’t about that kind of pressure in life. My father wasn’t having it, though, and neither was my mother. I’d turned my phone off while we climbed the mountain, knowing they would be blowing up my phone. I’d deal with them later, because right now all I’d wanted was Erica.
“Are you...date...tell me who.” I barely heard the words, but the second I made out the word date coming from the other end of Erica’s phone, my ears perked up. The space I had given her was almost nonexistent now.
She peeked her head back and I looked around the scenery, pretending I wasn’t eavesdropping. I could see her cupping the end of her phone with her hand and whispering in. I was glad I had moved closer or else I wouldn’t have been able to hear her, but when the words hit my ears, I almost wished I had kept the distance between us. Kept the illusion of us being here on this mountain what I was thinking it was, a date, or the semblance of a date that I was going to try to turn into more.
But now, I had no idea how I was going to accomplish that, since Erica thought this was nothing.
“It’s not a date, Mom.”
More muffled noises from the end of her phone.
“Shush. It’s not a date, I promise. I’m just out with a friend.”
Her head turned to look at me again and I almost didn’t look away from her fast enough this time. I shoved my hands back in the pocket of my sweats and fell a little more behind her. She thought this was just friends hanging out. She thought I was just a friend.
I took a deep breath and stepped around a boulder she climbed over, taking the long way around, creating a larger gap between us. I thought I was getting somewhere with her. It wasn’t like before where we never saw each other at work. Instead, now we saw each other almost every single day, working on covers and marketing strategies for her to complete later on her own once the photos were taken. I had felt a shift between us, where we would fall into comfortable silence and could work in the same room, next to each other, and not be bothered to move for hours, soaking it in.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had wanted to see all of that, but clearly for Erica I was just a friend. That this wasn’t a date, and as much as I wanted to prove her wrong, I didn’t know how I was going to do that now. I was going slow, building something up, but now I felt like my two steps forward had pushed me back not just four steps, but ten.
I could come right out and tell her I wanted to go on a date with her, but I had no idea how she would take that. Did girls like that? I’d watched Jack be blunt with women before and get turned down, so I wasn’t sure that’s what I needed to do with her. I knew the longer I thought about this, the longer it was going to take her to become mine. But I needed to get out of this friend zone and with that I had to create a new plan. A plan I had no idea what it would consist of.
“Chase.”
Erica was now off the phone and staring at me. Apparently in our walk and my deep thoughts, we’d reached the bottom of the mountain and Erica was standing there with a puzzled look on her face.
“You okay?”
“Yup.” I put the best smile on my face that I could and removed my hands from my pockets and walked over to her. “You get everything you needed today?”
“I did.” She smiled and it made my heart break just a little. I wanted so much from this woman and I was at a complete loss on how to get it. “I’m actually going to head out to dinner with the girls. Did you want to come?”
My eyes met hers and I had to make a decision right then. Leave without Erica and try to thumb up a plan alone at home on a Saturday night, or go out with her and hers friends and try to infiltrate from the inside.
I was never the guy who went after the girl, not like Max and Jack did. But I had a sinking feeling that that was going to be what I had to do with Erica. I was going to have to go after her, but I had no clue what that consisted of. I just knew it was something I had to do.
“Absolutely.”
