“Who, the front desk lady?” Zack said. “She sounded more like she hates her job.”
“Yeah, just be gentlemen,” Cole said. “As best you can.”
I snickered at that. We headed back for the elevator, rode down in silence, walked out without saying a word to Leslie or anyone else, and got to our bikes.
“So, what now?” Zack said.
“Let’s talk more tomorrow,” Mason said. “We need to think about how best to do this. We got what we needed.”
“Which was?”
“Knowing Cole wouldn’t kick us out,” I said.
Mason nodded. With that, the three of us revved our bikes to life and started peeling out.
About five miles in, though, I looked down and saw that I needed to get gas. I could have made it to Santa Maria without filling up, but in what could only be described as the perfect description of how life in Santa Maria was these days, it was probably safer to fill up closer to Albuquerque.
Just before reaching the more deserted areas and the hills separating Albuquerque from Santa Maria, I pulled off at a nearby gas station. There were no other vehicles there, other than one Jeep parked on the side of the convenience store attached to the gas stations. I hopped off, scanned the environment just to be sure, and headed to the store to pay with cash.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I walked in and recognized the girl behind the counter.
Katie. One of the Rogers’ girls’ friends.
She was, frankly, fucking hot. Blonde, curvy, tan, all of the things that one would associate with West Coast beauty. She was sharp, witty, and had one of the driest senses of humor that I knew.
She could also, unfortunately, come across as a massive bitch. She was not afraid to talk shit, and her dry humor mixed with her scathing remarks often came across as her sounding cruel and wicked rather than funny or sarcastic. It was this particular combo that made me refuse to ever see her as anything more than an acquaintance, no matter how hot she was.
I’d had too much experience with girls like her in the past. And all of them would cause headaches, no matter what. I was not fucking going down that road again.
“Ten on pump six,” I said, throwing the bill down.
She looked up from filling out some paperwork. And then she did the damndest fucking thing, quite possibly the worst thing.
She smiled.
