“It’s not an inconvenience. Besides…” She shrugged. “We’re in this together, right?”
That was exactly the kind of emotional attachment he was trying to avoid. It proved that she wanted something he wasn’t willing to give her.
He leaned forward and crossed his arms on the table, ready to give it to her straight. “Jasmin, you’ve got your storm to face and I’ve got mine. You’re going to meet your mother and I have my own shit to deal with. Each of us will do that alone. The concept of we doesn’t exist…There’s notogether. You don’t even know what’s gonna happen after you meet your mom. You may want to stay in Georgia, catch up, bond, whatever. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that, at that point, we’re gonna part ways and never see each other again, okay?”
One small brain-drain twitch followed by a perky smile. She was clearly expecting a different response after they’d shared a bed last night which was all the more reason why it needed to be said. Boundaries.
“Okay, Kevin.”
They sat in silence until Connie came to the table carrying their food. She handed him his breakfast, but an odd expression crossed her face as she placed Jasmin’s waffles on the table. “Hey, I know you. You’re that girl from TV…you were on that talk show.”
Jasmin tensed, glancing nervously between him and Connie. “I think you’re mistaking me for someone else.”
“Nonsense. I never forget a face. Hey, Beth,” she hollered to the other waitress. “Get over here.” She waited for Beth, who was a younger version of Connie, to cross the diner to their table. “Look who we have here.”
“Oh, wow!” Beth exclaimed. “You’re the girl from TV. The human calculator.”
Jasmin glanced over at him, looking extremely uneasy before turning back to the other women. “It’s not…it’s not me. It’s probably someone who looks like me.” She laughed, but it sounded too anxious to be believable. “You know what they say…All Indians look the same.”
She was squirming to get out of this, grasping at any excuse to throw them off. Despite her denial, Connie and Beth were still unconvinced and it made Kevin curious about what exactly they were talking about.
“Don’t be so modest,” Connie said. “It’s not often we have a celebrity passing through here.”
“So are you guys here on vacation?” Beth asked.
Jasmin relaxed then and took full advantage of the change of conversation. “Yeah, we’re on our way to Georgia. Any places you’d recommend while we’re here in Holbrook?”
“We can do better than recommend,” Beth chirped. “We get off at one, so Mom and I could show the two of you around, introduce you to some of the locals. What do you say?”
Jasmin looked over at him for an answer, but he would rather watch paint dry than spend the entire day with three women. “Drop me off at the motel,” he said.
She was relieved by his answer, as if she didn’t want him around. Maybe it was because of his earlier comment, but he had a sinking suspicion that she was hiding something, something Connie and Beth knew that he didn’t.
“I’m in,” Jasmin said. “Where shall I meet you?”
“We’ll pick you up from your motel.”
Jasmin explained where they were staying and once they were all happy with the arrangements for the afternoon, they left the table and allowed them to eat their breakfast.
“So what was that about?” Kevin asked once they were alone.
Her shoulders stiffened and she reached over to take a piece of bacon from his plate. “I don’t know. Like I said, they probably just confused me with someone else.”
He wanted to believe her, but there were three reasons why he couldn’t. She was too tense to be telling the truth. Her face was uniquely weird, impossible to be confused with someone else. And lastly, in Vegas Mandy had called her the same thing—the human calculator. It couldn’t possibly be a case of mistaken identity. What the hell was she hiding?
*****
Kevin placed the can of bug spray they’d bought on the way over on the table between the beds. He was going to be alone for the rest of the afternoon and no goliath-ass spiders were going to catch him unawares. Nope. Not today. They were gon’ learn today.
“That really isn’t necessary,” Jasmin said, walking out of the bathroom. “He’s harmless.”
“I’m not taking any chances.”
He dropped onto the bed and opened up Google on his phone as she passed him to get to the mirror. He was vaguely aware of her undoing her braid and running a brush through her hair. The search he wanted to do should have held his interest, but for some stupid reason he looked up. And he shouldn’t have looked up because what she was wearing made it impossible to look back down. Her peach cashmere sweater accentuated the softness of her honey-colored skin, and even though it did a great job of shaping her tits, that wasn’t what caught his attention. No. It was her jeans. Blue skinny jeans that sheathed her like a second skin, rounding perfectly over her ass. They were so tight. Just. So. Tight.
He got it now, understood with utmost clarity the frustration experienced by Snoop Dogg and Jason Derulo as they battled to answer the age-old question: how could this girl possibly fitall thatin them jeans?
His attraction to her was an enigma. Was she the prettiest girl in the world? No, her beauty wasn’t just at surface level and it took him a while to see it. Was she the sexiest girl in the world? No, she was short, which made her oddly-shaped figure lookdisproportionate. Did he care that she wasn’t perfect? No, she was still hot as fuck.
